Five Years, One Vote, and a New Voice for Norman ESPs
With support from educators across the district, Norman ESPs turned conversations into action and action into victory.
Written By Joe DuVall, OEA Communications Staff
The text message finally arrived.
Outside the Norman Public Schools administration building, bus driver trainer Georganna Zachary and bus driver Yossi Toney waited while votes were counted inside. Alongside them stood Oklahoma Education Association Southwest Organizing Specialist Amber Spradlin. Years of organizing, conversations and relationship-building had led to that moment.
A few minutes later, the result was official.
Norman education support professionals had voted 111-62 to select the Norman Support Professionals Association (NSPA) as their bargaining representative.
“We were swimming and jumping up and down,” Zachary said.
For Toney, the memory is still emotional.
“When we finally received the text, you know, we just all hugged,” Toney recalled, “You’re not ready to cry. Yeah, it got really emotional.”
The victory was decisive. But the story began years earlier.
In 2021, frustration was growing among support staff in Norman.
“It actually started in 2021 when we got a really crappy raise of 10 cents and a step and it really made a lot of people upset,” Zachary said.
Employees talked about quitting. Some talked about striking. Zachary reached out to the Oklahoma Education Association for help.
“I knew somebody that worked at OEA and I called them and they sent Carnie (Cullen) and Amber down here and we had a meeting.”
At the time, OEA membership among Norman support professionals was small. Zachary remembers around 33 members.
That first meeting changed things.
“We signed a lot of people up that day and it just kind of went from there,” she said.
What followed was not a quick campaign. It was years of building trust, answering questions and helping coworkers understand what collective action could accomplish.
“It kind of landed in my lap and I latched on to Yossi to help me because misery loves company,” the NSPA president said with a laugh. “I needed somebody with me and we just kind of went from there and we’ve been trying to build it up.”
For Toney and Zachary, one challenge stood out immediately: Norman’s support staff are spread across dozens of job classifications and work sites.
Transportation employees, paraprofessionals, secretaries, maintenance workers, nutrition staff and others often have different schedules and different concerns.
“Being ESP, it’s very diverse,” Toney said. “They’re all over the place.”
That meant progress came one conversation at a time.
“We had to go around and just spread the word and try to get people involved, talk to them where you can find them,” Toney said.
There were informational meetings. There were after-work conversations. There were visits to schools. There was repetition.
Lots of repetition.
“I think the first time that you hear something, it might seem exciting, or it might seem intimidating,” said Adrienne Hall, president of the Professional Educators of Norman (PEN), the OEA-affiliated association for certified staff in Norman. “You might need to hear that information several times.”
Throughout the campaign, certified educators in Norman played an important role.
Hall said PEN members understood that schools only function when every employee is respected and supported.
“We know that we can’t do our jobs without all of the cogs in place to help the education bus flow,” she said.
Teachers helped answer questions, share information and connect support staff with organizers.
“We definitely had a lot of teachers who, especially at the elementary level, who were able to see like, ‘Hey, let me show you what this is about.’”
For Toney, that support mattered.
“PEN was a lot of help,” she said. “I don’t think we could have spread the word fast enough.”
The effort also helped break down misconceptions.
For years, many employees believed they already belonged to a union because they were enrolled in another organization during onboarding.
“People would say, well, I joined the union and no, you didn’t,” Zachary said.
“That’s not the union,” Toney added.
Spradlin said educating employees about the difference became one of the campaign’s biggest tasks.
“Everybody thought that SPAN was OEA, and so breaking that barrier was very difficult.”
For years, support staff had a meet-and-confer arrangement that many employees felt left them with little real influence.
“Before when SPAN (Support Professionals Association of Norman, not affiliated with OEA) had it, they would go to the board and they would basically say, um, what do you guys have? What do you got left? What can we have this year?” Zachary said. “It was an ask.”
Support staff voted on proposals each year, but many felt their voices weren’t truly reflected in the outcomes.
“The 10 cents thing passed,” Toney said. “And it was like, how? Everybody was not happy about it.”
Winning bargaining rights changes that dynamic.
“Instead of going in and asking what can we have, it’s going to be saying this is what we want,” Zachary said.
Spradlin said the difference is accountability.
“Whereas we know in a contract, when it’s signed, it’s done. There’s a grievance process if it’s not followed.”
Toney put it more simply.
“It gives accountability to them.”
When it came time to gather signatures for the bargaining election petition, the pace accelerated.
Zachary credits Spradlin and OEA Metro Advocacy Specialist Carnie Cullen for helping make it happen.
“Amber spent three weeks going from school to school gathering signatures, talking to people in parking lots after work,” Zachary said. “I mean it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Amber at all.”
The effort produced something even more important than signatures.
It produced confidence, as the work was relentless and effective.
People began attending meetings in larger numbers. Questions became more specific. Employees wanted to know what bargaining would look like and what role they could play.
And membership continued growing.
The local that once had roughly 33 members climbed to 86 before the petition drive began. By the time of the interview and before publication, it had reached 100 members.
“We’ll get more,” Zachary said matter-of-factly.
On election day, no one knew what would happen.
Norman is one of Oklahoma’s largest school districts. The outcome would influence hundreds of employees.
A loss would have meant waiting two years before trying again and Toney knew the energy might not survive another setback.
“It wouldn’t have been the same energy because it would have been like, well, we did it already.”
Then the votes were counted.
111 for bargaining representation.
62 against.
The years of work had paid off, but the celebration didn’t last long.
Now comes the work of building a bargaining team, developing proposals and negotiating a contract.
“The really hard work begins,” Zachary said.
The local is already preparing for elections, leadership development and a possible name change that better reflects Norman’s education support professionals.
“We’ve had a lot of feedback,” Spradlin said. “People are really wanting to get involved.”
That may be the most important result of all.
The campaign wasn’t driven by a large staff or a massive budget. It was driven by bus drivers, paraprofessionals, teachers, organizers and coworkers who kept having conversations until enough people believed change was possible.
Hall said that effort deserves recognition.
“I just want to congratulate these ladies for like sticking to it, because it’s a lot of hard work.”
Then she offered a reminder that reaches far beyond Norman.
“It’s hard,” Hall reflected. “But when you can have someone sit beside you and be an ally to you, to help you understand or get some clarity, it makes a big difference.”
The victory in Norman comes at a time when education support professionals across Oklahoma are building momentum. Earlier this year, education support professionals in Muskogee also voted to secure bargaining rights, adding to a growing movement of ESPs seeking a stronger voice in their workplaces.
That momentum has been reflected within OEA as well. At the 2025 Delegate Assembly, delegates unanimously approved an ESP Bill of Rights, reaffirming OEA’s commitment to elevating the voices of support professionals and advocating for the respect, compensation and workplace protections they deserve.
For Zachary, Toney, and the many support professionals who helped make the Norman campaign successful, the election victory is not the end of the story.
It is proof that change is possible when members get involved, build relationships and stay committed to a shared goal.
For five years, they kept having conversations.
They kept answering questions.
They kept showing up.
Now, support professionals in Norman have a seat at the table and an opportunity to shape what comes next.
And educators across Oklahoma are paying attention.
This article appears in the Summer 2026 Education Focus