Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1545561
3 ADVOCATE | SUMMER 2026 LOCAL NEWS Building Power & Raising Pay: A Q&A with Flagstaff President Derek Born THE ADVOCATE: Tell us about how this campaign came about. How did FEA organize members and make the case to the Board and the broader community? DEREK BORN: Salaries have been low in Flagstaff for a long time. We'd been using our district's cash analysis to make the case for a raise for years, but we hadn't closed the gap. Our first step was to make sure members understood the extent of the problem. Teaching salaries in Flagstaff are more than $5,000 below the state average. Everyone knows how bad teacher pay is in Arizona. Confronting people with the reality that we were thousands of dollars behind the state average in an expensive area like Flagstaff was dynamite in terms of riling people up and getting them agitated to do something. We started highlighting that $5,000 gap, and we formed a task force within the district. At first, our goal was to get people energized and hopeful that something could happen. We made the task force open to all members, rather than making it a product of our negotiations team. is campaign was an opportunity to engage more people, and it did. I got obsessed with the numbers over Christmas Break and ended up building a database that compares our district's M&O [Maintenance & Operations] budget to comparably-sized districts. We already knew that FUSD was a state outlier in terms of low instructional spending. Looking at the data, we could tell that our spending on instructional improvement, transportation, and operations were all higher than in peer districts. at data allowed us to make the case that better resource allocation would free up funding for salaries. Looking at those buckets of spending was a new way of thinking in our district. In January, we formally launched the campaign with an all- member meeting where we presented the comparatives and moved quickly into organizing. We knew we had good data, but data isn't how things happen. ings happen when you create a public narrative about the need for change. During the meeting, we signed up members to speak at our upcoming board meetings, and they committed to bringing colleagues from their work site as well. Once a couple of people stood up and showed courage, it inspired others. at was basically the heart and soul of this whole thing. roughout it all, our leadership team was following up with members, making sure that they were ready to make their voices heard to the Board. e good news was that we elected all three of our union- endorsed board candidates last cycle, so we already had allies. THE ADVOCATE: Where did funding for the raise end up coming from? DEREK BORN: We were able to get to a roughly 4% raise for certified staff just through M&O dollars. We were getting close to the end of the year, and we decided that wasn't good enough. We wanted to close the statewide pay gap by at least 50% in the first year, if possible. We found the extra money using one-time funds — basically, savings in the 301 Classroom Site Fund. In May, aer months of organizing, union educators in Flagstaff secured a 6% raise for certified staff — a raise that will mean thousands of dollars in the pockets of educators next year. In this interview (which has been edited and condensed for clarity), Flagstaff Education Association President Derek Born explains how union power led to this big win.