A middle-school English/Language Arts teacher for more than 24 years in Westchester, Ulster and Rockland counties, Lee Cutler was elected New York State United Teachers secretary-treasurer at the 2008 Representative Assembly.
While the bulk of his teaching career has been in Nanuet, Cutler also taught in Marlboro and Tarrytown and spent a year as a teaching assistant in The Walkabout, an alternative high school program modeled after Outward Bound. Cutler was a leader and eventually a director for Children’s International Summer Villages, a world peace organization, where he brought groups of children to international villages in both Denmark and France.
Cutler is an adjunct professor in the Humanistic and Multicultural Education Graduate Program at State University of New York at New Paltz.
A longtime community and union activist, Cutler served as president of the Nanuet Teachers Association for 11 years and is a member of the NYSUT Board of Directors and NYSUT Executive Committee. Since 2006, he also has served as an AFT vice president.
Cutler served as president of the Rockland County Teachers Association and the Hudson/Catskill Central Labor Council. He was a member of the Hudson Valley Area Labor Federation executive board and has served as a chair or co-chair of numerous NYSUT committees and task forces, and organized events for the union’s retirees and School-Related Professionals. Cutler was a policy board member of the Rockland Teachers Institute, a standing member of New York State Education Department’s internal advisory committee on middle-level education and a board member of Orange County United Way.
A graduate of both the NYSUT and AFL-CIO leadership institutes, Cutler’s role as secretary-treasurer has expanded to overseeing the NYSUT social justice agenda.
Cutler, a graduate of SUNY New Paltz, is certified in both elementary education and secondary English/Language Arts. He lives in Newburgh with his wife, Rissa, and their children.