In teachers’ union election, challengers say leaders lost touch; incumbents point to raises
A new political caucus is hoping to unseat United Teachers of Dade’s leadership by focusing on three focus areas: advocacy, community and transparency.
Alexandria Martin is running to become the new president of UTD, the association that represents thousands of educators across Miami-Dade County Public Schools; Richard Ocampo, the next vice president; and Katherine Prelaz, the new secretary-treasurer.
The trio comprises People Over Politics.
Incumbents Karla Hernandez-Mats, Antonio White and Mindy Grimes-Festge, who ran in the Frontline caucus, in 2019 were reelected to their positions of UTD president, vice president and secretary-treasurer, respectively.
“The reality is, the people who are in positions of power right now have been removed from the classroom for a very long time,” Martin said. “And although [current leadership] advocate[s] for classroom teachers, they miss that critical piece that lets you know the difference between trying to advocate for someone and actually being able to put yourself in their shoes.”
If chosen, Martin would be the first Black woman elected as president of UTD.
Hernandez-Mats, however, defended the leadership’s efforts to support and advocate for its members.
“We have a track record of proven leadership, bringing the union forward and making it stronger than it’s been in the last 20 years,” she told the Herald. The union is active in the community and “we are advocating for public education.”
New caucus promises to ‘act’
The new caucus’ focus areas — advocacy, community and transparency — stand for ‘A.C.T.,’ which is what Martin, Ocampo and Prelaz “vow to do to act on the members’ behalf,” they said.
The workforce is “struggling to try to not only just exist during a pandemic, but also trying to advocate for themselves and take care of their students,” Martin said. That’s why advocacy is so important to their platform, she said. People over Politics hopes to be in schools “working on behalf of membership,” she said.
Moreover, she said, advocating better for members could help turn the union’s declining membership. In 2019, when members voted to keep current leadership in place, UTD had about 16,000 members. Today, that number is around 14,000, according to Martin. (Miami-Dade County Public Schools has around 17,500 teachers.)
For her part, Hernandez-Mats said membership overall remains higher than when she took office. She said union membership has grown by about 6,000 during her tenure.
On its community plank, People Over Politics hopes to bring members together, primarily by utilizing the UTD headquarters building that’s gone unused during the pandemic.
“Most members don’t know where the headquarters is or they’ve never been,” he said. The trio hopes to transform the building into community and recreational space that offers psychological services, professional development and child care, when possible.
Transparency is the final pillar. People Over Politics wants to increase communication within the union, but also with district parents and community members, Prelaz said.
The caucus hopes to make meetings and events more accessible so members who struggle to find child care can tune in; it wants to provide professional development so teachers can learn how to better understand the district’s budget, and UTD’s; and it wants to create a mobile app so members can speak to their representative or track a grievance, to name a few goals.
‘Frontline caucus has the receipts’
Jeffrey McKay Sr., a veteran teacher, was one of the educators who left teaching, and the union, last month.
After suffering a major heart attack three years ago, he sought support from the union to maintain a safe working environment during the pandemic. But after his requests for a larger room and improved safety measures were declined at his school, McKay felt that he was “expendable,” he told the Herald.
Though he’s “always been a union man,” McKay did not believe the union would fight for him. Others, too, he said, have expressed similar sentiment, saying they no longer want to be in the union because “it’s failing them.”
For her part, Hernandez-Mats refuted any ideas that described current leadership as failing its members. Not only did current leadership spearhead the district’s campaign and help pass a tax referendum to give teachers a raise, it advocated to keep healthcare premiums frozen and removed the union from debt, she said.
Supplemental pay raises from the referendum, however, shouldn’t be touted so long as teachers’ base pay remains unmoved, Martin argued. Base pay for starting teachers in the district is $47,500, in accordance with House Bill 641.
Frontline caucus’ three core focus areas are salary, healthcare and benefits, and to those areas, Hernandez-Mats said, leadership “has the receipts.”
In an op-ed published in the Herald, she argued that the Frontline caucus and UTD for the last six years have “worked tirelessly to improve the lives, working conditions and pay for our A+ educators and staff in Miami-Dade. Simply put: We deliver.”
“They can’t deny their W2s are bigger than they have been. That’s a fact,” she said. “We fought during COVID [and] we’ve been at the forefront to ensure we had working conditions that were adequate during the pandemic.”
Perhaps more importantly, she said, with the referendum up for another vote this summer, Hernandez-Mats argued current leadership is best prepared to lead the district through another successful campaign.
“We’ve done it before and we’re ready” to do it again, she said.
Initial plans of action
If elected, one of the first things Martin, Prelaz and Ocampo plan to do is have union presence at every school.
“Immediately, we want to be on the ground, listening to members at school sites and incorporating the concerns and the issues of members” across the district, Ocampo said.
They want to have monthly membership meetings and reestablish who oversees and runs union elections. They want to remove the president’s ability to serve as the chair of the executive board. They want to move bargaining from the morning to 5 p.m. so the workforce can attend and “actually be part of the conversation,” Martin said.
“The moment we take power,” Martin said, “we want to relinquish it.”
This story was originally published February 22, 2022 at 7:56 PM.
