Princess Moss is the new president-elect of the National Education Association, and will take the reins of one of the most influential K-12 organizations in a time of rapid change in the education landscape.
Moss, 65, taught elementary music for 21 years in Louisa County, Virginia before joining the national union. She said her rural upbringing—both her parents drove school buses in Memphis, Va.—spurs her drive to improve equity and support for rural students.
“We are not only educators, not only organizers. We are advocates. We are the ones to know what our students need and we are willing to fight for all of them,” Moss said.
The nation’s largest teachers’ union, she said, “can be and must be the most powerful force in America.”
Moss will need to steer the union as it confronts big challenges. It faces a hostile administration in the White House; the rollout of a federal school choice program that the union contends could cut into school funding, as well as membership (since many private schools that could benefit are not unionized); and a teacher workforce whose demographics are rapidly changing.
A close election, by NEA standards
Moss, currently the union’s vice president, won the election at this year’s Representative Assembly with 50.3% of the vote of some 5,800 delegates, barely avoiding a run-off with Kate Dias, the president of the 40,000-member Connecticut Education Association. The relatively close contest is unusual in an organization where incumbents typically move up a slot in each electoral cycle.
This year’s race also included Sean Spiller of the 200,000-member New Jersey union and Tania Kappner, a English and history virtual education teacher in the Oakland, Calif. district.
“We have been on defense for too long. We have been defending funding, defending rights, defending the very existence of public education,” Moss said in a speech to delegates on July 4. “We must go on the offense. It’s time to move from resistance to renaissance.”
Moss has served as vice president throughout current NEA President Becky Pringle’s tenure. The union has worked to regain ground after sharp declines in membership following a perfect storm of the 2018 Janus Supreme Court ruling, the pandemic, and union restrictions in several states.
So far in 2026, NEA membership is up by 32,000 members from last year, amounting to more than 2.8 million active, retired, and student teachers, education support and higher education professionals.
In an earlier interview with Education Week Pringle said she was “very encouraged” that all presidential candidates stressed the need for national support for ongoing organizing, particularly by local unions. Moss, in her campaign speech before the vote, explicitly called for the NEA’s 2.8 million members to actively support ongoing organizing for education and workforce issues.
“I feel very good that we will continue to grow and get better and change as it needs to adapt,” Pringle said.
