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I am asking for your vote to be reelected AFT Vice President. During the past 2 ½ years, I and the other three United Action officers have worked tirelessly to deliver on a vision of a revitalized, strong and progressive UTLA. In less than three years, the new UTLA leadership, by engaging and mobilizing the membership won an 8 ½ percent pay increase within our first 18 months, negotiated the first ever class size reduction and class size cap in grades 4-12, and held the line on active and retiree health benefits.
By working with our members and staff, I and the other United Action officers have also:
- Helped defeat the anti-teacher measures in the Nov. ‘05 Special Election
- Mobilized thousands of teachers at Beaudry and the Valley for good contracts
- Made UTLA a key force in the fight to win single payer health care in California
- Reenergized UTLA’s important role in the Southern California labor movement
- Forged ties with parents and the largest community organizations in the city
- Launched an ambitious campaign to improve conditions in PE
- Helped stop a divisive merit pay proposal and the reauthorization of NCLB
- Began building an alliance to oppose disastrous state budget cuts
Of course, much more needs to be done. That’s why I urge you to vote for the entire United Action team – union leaders who are both veteran classroom teachers and experienced organizers. Let’s not allow UTLA to move backward by electing officers of a past administration that stymied union activism, took nearly 20 months to negotiate a paltry 2% raise over two years and attempted to sell concessions in health benefits.
I came to this office directly out of the classroom where I spent 22 years teaching at Manual Arts HS. As a long time teacher, union leader and parent of an LAUSD third grader, I know firsthand what it takes to improve our schools while standing up to the forces that want to dismantle public education
“In the past 2½ years, I, along with the other United Action leaders, have organized, mobilized, and energized UTLA, winning salary increases of 8½%, maintaining benefits, lowering class size, and forging real alliances with organized labor, parents and community organizations. We must continue to fight for improved salaries and conditions and greater school autonomy, while pushing back against the educationally disastrous mandates of NCLB. Let’s not return to the failed strategies of the past. We need a unified leadership team to move forward.”
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