Caucus of Working Educators plans to challenge PFT leadership
The caucus, which has been organizing since 2013, plans a "listening campaign" in advance of next year's vote.
Photo: Caucus of Working Educators
From Left: Amy Roat, Yaasiyn Muhammad, Ismael Jimenez, Kelley Collings
The Caucus of Working Educators (WE), a group of mostly younger teachers committed to social justice unionism, announced plans Thursday to put up a slate in next year's election against Jerry Jordan and the current leadership of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.
The challenge is the most robust and coordinated effort since the 1980s to unseat the dominant Collective Bargaining Team that has run the PFT for more than 30 years.
WE's mission -- to put stark focus on educational inequality and the damage it does to teachers, students, and society -- is in the spirit of internal dissent that has ousted long-term union leadership in cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Milwaukee. Its action has the potential to shake up the historically dysfunctional PFT-District relationship, although whether it would become more or less adversarial under WE is still not clear.
"We are a diverse group of rank and file members who felt disconnected from the PFT leadership," said Larissa Pahomov, an English teacher at Science Leadership Academy and co-chair of the caucus. "We don't believe essentially that a one-party union is good for the teachers of Philadelphia."
The group, which formed 18 months ago and claims about 200 members, has been emphasizing issues not usually on the front burner in union elections, such as the school-to-prison pipeline, racial injustice, and, most visibly, students' right to opt out of standardized tests.
Active in opt-out
Two of the four teachers who will be vying for the top union posts as caucus candidates, Amy Roat and Kelley Collings, have been frontline activists in the "opt-out" movement, Caucus of Working Educators plans to challenge PFT leadership | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:
