This election is off-limits to voters. But the results will matter a lot to L.A. school families
One ballot this season is off-limits to the public but carries far-reaching ramifications for hundreds of thousands of youths and their families — the election of a new president and other officers for the Los Angeles teachers union.
United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl, who led 30,000 teachers in a strike that gripped Los Angeles last year, is barred by term limits from running for a third three-year term. His replacement will instantly become a major voice in the nation’s second-largest school system and the leader of a union that has long influenced education policy in Los Angeles. The winner also will confront internal challenges, including the mobilization of anti-union groups that seek to persuade members to abandon UTLA entirely.
“The UTLA elections always matter,” said Tyrone Howard, professor of education at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. “They are an important player in the educational landscape in Los Angeles. They shape board elections, influence policies and have a critical voice in the current and future makeup of Los Angeles.”
Just a year ago, the union’s leadership led members in a momentous six-day strike — and won broad sympathy for teachers who rallied public attention to difficult working conditions and their crucial mission to educate Los Angeles’ most underserved youth. The union election represents an internal referendum on how all that worked out, whether the gains of the strike justified losing six days of instruction and 3% of last year’s salary.
“Many members are questioning what they gained,” said Howard, and the election will determine how the union wields its influence going forward and the extent to which it remains “a critical voice in school reform.”
“The right leader can hurt or hinder that process,” he added.
UTLA often has changed the classroom or political equation. In the 1990s, when the union couldn’t win raises, it pushed for greater control over schools and classrooms, winning the right for teachers — not principals — to in many cases choose which grade levels or courses they taught.
The union also won the ability for members to earn lifetime health insurance. The cost has created financial strains for the Los Angeles Unified School District, but supporters see that benefit as a valuable recruitment tool.
More recently, UTLA was among the first unions to push back successfully against a nationwide trend to rate teachers based on student standardized test scores.
Teachers unions remain among the most powerful interest groups in California — they played a key role in last year’s legislation that could limit the growth of new CONTINUE READING:
