GUILDERLAND — The school district’s largest and most powerful union, the Guilderland Teachers’ Association, has a new president, Tara Molloy-Grocki. She teaches second grade, and is the first elementary classroom teacher to head the union. She has been the union’s vice president for the last seven years.

The GTA has nearly 500 members, including guidance counselors, school social workers, librarians, school nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech therapists as well as teachers.

Molloy-Grocki began teaching 24 years ago, starting with three years at a public school in Harlem, followed by 21 years at Guilderland Elementary.

She originally became a teacher because, she said, “I just really like working with children.” She comes from a big family, as the fourth child of 11, “right in the middle of the pack.”

Outgoing president Erin McNamara has “brought us so far in uniting us and having us talk to one another,” Molloy-Grocki said, adding that she wants to continue that work. She said that she also wants to support other nearby districts if needed, “joining forces to fight for what’s best for kids.”  

She is very politically involved, she said, and takes part in lobbying days sponsored by New York State United Teachers, meeting with legislators and talking about funding for public education. NYSUT, with 600,000 members statewide, is the umbrella union for the GTA.

Molloy-Grocki is a delegate for the Albany Labor Federation.

“I do a lot of work to support children and public education,” she said.

She organized a meeting several years ago in which she brought in speakers to let parents know about their rights to opt out, or refuse to have their children take state-required standardized tests. Molloy-Grocki personally supports the opt-out movement. The youngest of her three children, daughter Clare, who is 10, has never taken the state-required tests, she said, “and until things change, she never will.”

The tests became controversial once they were tied to teacher evaluations, something NYSUT had initially supported in order for the state to get federal Race to the Top Funds. The state’s Common Core Task Force in 2015 recommended that, until the tests are properly aligned, they “shall not have consequences and shall only be used on an advisory basis for teachers.” The moratorium until the 2019-20 school year on linking teacher evaluation to student test scores was backed by the Board of Regents, which governs public education in New York.

Tests on Common Core Standards, in Molloy-Grocki’s opinion, are “not developmentally appropriate for primary students.” The testing begins in third grade; many third-graders are just 8 or 9 years old, she said, and have only been reading fluently, accurately, and with understanding for a year. The State Education Department has made changes such as removing the time limit and reducing the number of testing days, and these are “steps in the right direction, but need to go further,” she said. She emphasized that these are her own views, and not those of the GTA.

Molloy-Grocki has also taught third, fourth, and fifth grades. She administers standardized tests when she teaches grades that are tested. She does not have her students work throughout the year on multiple-choice worksheets, as some second-grade teachers do.

Her husband, Tony, is a film editor at WMHT. Her son Conor, 21, is a senior at The College of Saint Rose, while son Sean, 17, is a senior at Guilderland High School. Clare is in the fifth grade at Guilderland Elementary School.

None of Molloy-Grocki’s children have ever been assigned to her classroom.

McNamara, an English teacher at Guilderland High School, could not be reached for comment. She started as the union’s president in 2014, after serving as a building representative for the high school for two years and as building president for four years.