The following are excerpts from President Iannuzzi's address to delegates at the NYSUT Representative Assembly.

Sisters and brothers, three years ago I stood before you at this very lectern and took office for the first time as your president.

I said then that it would be presumptuous to suggest my agenda before you got to know me — before I earned your trust and confidence.

For three years, I have set out to earn that trust, that confidence, and today you have honored me with your support, with your willingness to allow me to continue to lead our great union — all 600,000 strong.

For this I am truly honored and humbled, for leadership is something I hold precious — not because of the accompanying respect and attention; after all I know that really belongs to you. But, because of the responsibility it places upon me — responsibility: to make the right choices; to uphold our values; to advance our mission.

I realize how precious and fragile that gift — responsibility — is when I reflect on how so very recently in our own state we've seen the greatest of potential, of intellect, of determination waver and then fall from grace, under the mantle of leadership.

Yes, leadership is an honor and a responsibility each of you share. And leadership is central to defining this year's theme: On the Move.

Indeed, without the kind of leadership so many of you demonstrate every day, we could not succeed.

Yet, we all know, as John F. Kennedy told us, "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."

When we talk about NYSUT on the move, it will not be about these great leaders or those leaders you elected here today, but it will be about leaders such as yourselves.

Leaders such as Kay and Steve White.

Kay is the president (now for 20 years) and Steve, the chief negotiator for a small BOCES, a former NEA/NY local.

With fewer than 150 members, the Delaware-Chenango-Madison-Otsego BOCES provides services to 16 small and rural districts in the Southern Tier of our great state.

I first met Kay and Steve in the summer of 2006. Their local had already gone a full year without a contract, expiring about the time I took office.

But that was not why I was visiting them.

You see, Kay and Steve live in Sidney, which suffered great hardships from massive flooding that spring.

I was touring members' homes and delivering donations that came from NYSUT's Disaster Relief Fund and from drives run by great local leaders from every part of our state.

I found Kay and Steve standing ankle-deep in mud in rooms with water marks four feet high, their basement and first floor completely ruined.

Steve was tearing down walls and Kay — well, Kay, with some help from friends — was trying to salvage negotiations notes for their next bargaining session.

They never stopped serving their local, even while their home was in ruins, even while their son Sean was on his way to Iraq, shipped out only days before the flooding.

Their story spans my first term in office and exemplifies what you do — what real leaders experience every day.

Sisters and brothers, if we are to address the achievement gap, we must address the needs of all students in every type of community:

• We must address creating high expectations for all students.

• We must address pre-K, early childhood education, and class size.

• We must address how we meet our responsibilities and accept our role in ensuring the highest quality teaching force for every child.

• We must address the ludicrous language of NCLB.

• And, we must address health care, housing, nutrition and a living wage.

Yes, if we are to address the achievement gap we must address its root cause: poverty.

As leaders, sisters and brothers, it is our moral obligation, our mission, to demand equal educational opportunities for all, I repeat all our children. Yes, the achievement gap is a challenge we face in every part of our state, indeed our nation.

But, as leaders we know, in fact, that we must also choose to face challenges beyond our boundaries. And you do.

You do so with your continued support for teachers and citizens of the south who were victims of Katrina.

You do so in the international arena with support for issues such as AIDS in Africa. And you do so with your commitment to Fair Trade products and to green products.

And then there are the challenges that confront each region of our state:

• In Monroe County, our leaders face a county executive who chooses to fill her county coffers by stealing from local school districts.

• And in Buffalo, a control board strangles the ability of labor unions to fairly provide for their members.

• TAXPACs threaten downstate, and economic stress and fluctuation surrounding correctional institutions and military bases impact upstate.

• Privatization takes its toll at health care facilities, and the failure to restore full-time faculty lines restricts access to the best opportunities our higher education campuses have to offer.

• And those in private-sector higher education, as well as workers in government and not-for-profit agencies, are at the mercy of a rollercoaster economy, an economy whose volatility stresses the lives of so many of our retirees.

Yet you, the elected leaders of our members, get up each and every day and go to work in your chosen profession, and then again you go to work each and every day as union leaders.

Sisters and brothers, in 2005 when I first stood before this body as your elected president, I defined myself by saying that who I was that day was who you were, a NYSUT member and a union leader fighting to protect and advance the needs of our constituents.

And last year and the year before, I quoted Woody Guthrie to define how I viewed my role as your elected leader.

As Woody said: "The only way I can pay back all you good walkers and talkers is to work and to let my work help you to do your work."

Sisters and brothers, today I thank you for allowing me to continue as your president.

I thank you for allowing me to shape NYSUT as the vehicle by which you … take on the mantle of leadership and march into battle, facing adversity in defense of our members.

Dr. Martin Luther King said, "We are on the move now, like an idea whose time has come."

So, sisters and brothers, I thank you, our leaders, for allowing me the opportunity to stand at your side as, together, we take NYSUT — on the move!