Teachers' Union President to Step Down

Teachers’ Union President to Step Down; New Yorker Is Seen as Succes... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/education/13teachers.html?_r=1&e...

February 13, 2008 Teachers’ Union President to Step Down; New Yorker Is Seen as Successor

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Edward J. McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, announced Tuesday that he would step down in the summer, a move widely expected to put Randi Weingarten, the president of the teachers’ union in New York City, in line to succeed him.

Ms. Weingarten, who won significant pay raises for teachers in recent contracts, said only that she was weighing a run for the presidency of the national union, which represents 1.2 million teachers, school aides and other workers. But union officials and other educators say she all but has the job wrapped up.

“Randi seems like the likely successor — there’s obviously no clear alternative,” said Andrew J. Rotherham, a former member of the Clinton administration who is director of Education Sector, an independent policy group.

Mr. McElroy called Ms. Weingarten “an outstanding possibility” in a telephone interview from San Diego, where his union’s executive council was meeting. “I think the world of her.”

Mr. McElroy, 66, took his union’s helm in 2004 after his predecessor, Sandra Feldman, stepped down because of breast cancer. She died a year later.

He has turned the union into one of the nation’s fastest growing; it added 81,000 workers last year, including 28,000 child care providers in New York City.

Mr. McElroy, who was the union’s secretary-treasurer for 12 years before becoming president, was widely seen as a transitional figure. He spent much of his focus on A.F.L.-C.I.O. matters and on strengthening his union’s state federations and political activities. He was less focused on broader educational issues.

“I’ve pushed most for getting the union back to organizing and for strengthening our political program,” said Mr. McElroy, who is proud of his union’s fervent campaigning for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Ms. Weingarten, 50, who was widely seen as a protégé to Ms. Feldman, praised Mr. McElroy in a statement.

“I am honored by the talk of my potential candidacy, and I will certainly give national union service serious and careful consideration,” she said, adding that she would consult with the union’s leaders as well as with her members in New York at the United Federation of Teachers.

In July, 2,000 delegates from the nationwide union will meet in Chicago to elect new leaders. Several union officials said it was possible that Ms. Weingarten would run unopposed.

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Several education experts said she was likely to make the union more open to changes like performance-based pay and charter schools, which get public money but are independently run.

“In New York, she’s been willing to take on some pretty leading-edge ideas,” Mr. Rotherham said. “Under her leadership, the U.F.T. has opened two charter schools, and they’re piloting a pay-for-performance plan.”

In many cities, including New York, teachers’ union locals have opposed merit pay that ties a teacher’s pay to how his students perform on tests. But last year Ms. Weingarten and her union struck a deal with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg for a schoolwide bonus pay plan in which teachers in some of the poorest neighborhoods could receive bonuses.

In her decade heading the union, Ms. Weingarten alternately battled and cooperated with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Mr. Bloomberg. She said her most important accomplishment was “to take teachers to a different income bracket.”

“When I look at the teaching force these days, because of the 43 percent raise we were able to negotiate between 2002 and 2008, you see a real change in their economic status,” she said.

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