Your donation will help us produce journalism like this. Please give today.
Ballots were dropped in the mail today to the 35,000 members of the Los Angeles teachers union (UTLA), to decide who will win the top job of the second largest teachers union in the country, in a second-round runoff.
It’s down to two candidates from the original field of ten: between current president Warren Fletcher, considered a moderate, and left-leaning candidate Alex Caputo-Pearl. Pearl not only pulled in twice the votes of Fletcher in the first round (although not the 50 percent needed to prevent a run-off), but made a clean sweep with his slate called Union Power, claiming a win for almost every internally elected seat which included dozens of positions.
(See list of Union Power endorsements, here. See full list of the results from the first round, here.)
In this runoff, which ends when members send their ballots in at the end of April, there are just three seats up for grabs: UTLA president, Valley East Area Chair and Valley West Area Chair.
While only a quarter of the members participated in the first round, interest could pick up as it did in 2011 when Warren Fletcher came from behind to beat his opponent Julie Washington in the runoff.