Alex Caputo-Pearl

All that criticism of Warren Fletcher as a weak UTLA president and of Alex Caputo-Pearl as a campaign rules scofflaw apparently didn’t make much difference.

They emerged as the top two vote-getters for the president of United Teacher Los Angeles in the first round of voting in the union’s 2014 election campaign and are now headed to a runoff. The survivor wins a three-year term.

While Caputo-Pearl, head of the left-leaning “Union Power” slate, ran away with first-place, collecting 3,408 votes (48%), Fletcher came in second with 1,508 votes (21.2%), and not far behind was Gregg Solkovits, the current secondary vice president, who had 1,142 votes (16%).

Bill Gaffney led the remaining candidates with 323 votes.

Warren Fletcher, current president of UTLA

Only 7,099 votes were cast for the 10 men running for president, representing 22 percent of the 31,000 member union. voting members.

The results are pending challenges and must be certified by the UTLA Board to be official. A challenge is likely – opponents have accused Caputo-Pearl of violating union election rules by campaigning during school hours without permission. (Read story here).

Superintendent John Deasy tells LA School Report that the principal who gave Alex Caputo-Pearl permission to take unpaid time off to campaign has been disciplined. The LA Times reports that Caputo-Pearl is facing discipline for taking a leave of absence to campaign. (Read story here).

The union said ballots for the runoff will be mailed out on April 7. Only the race for the presidency is going to a runoff. For all other offices and positions, winners had a majority vote. Once all election cycles are complete, the new Officers and Board of Directors members take office July 1, 2014, and will serve until June 30, 2017.

Complete election results can be found here.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, far right, at UTLA Forum last week

Recent campaign appearances by Alex Caputo-Pearl at schools around LA Unified have ignited a dispute among candidates for UTLA offices who say election rules — such as they are  — are being applied unfairly. The conflict has also brought into focus how misunderstood the rules seem to be.

The source of the infighting is what some candidates perceive as their right to campaign at school campuses during working hours.

The conflict arose last week after Caputo-Pearl, leader of the Union Power slate and one of the perceived front runners for UTLA president in unseating incumbent Warren Fletcher, said his principal at Frida Kahlo High School had granted him about 12 days of unpaid personal leave to visit 30 schools to campaign teachers to vote for him.

That prompted several of his opponents to raise the possibility that his actions were illegal by district election rules. They were, according to Leticia Figueroa, LA Unified’s director of employee performance accountability, who said a school principal has no say in the decision.

She told LA School Report that permission can only be granted by the district Human Resources department and “the employee did not follow district procedures in obtaining appropriate permission for an unpaid leave.”

“There is no paperwork on file with the district’s HR department,” she said. The “paperwork” is a district form that must be completed in requesting an unpaid leave. It lists 15 possible reasons, and none is for election campaigning although one is vague enough to provide a rationale for it — “Personal Leave, not for family illness.”

For its part, UTLA officials say that by union campaign rules Caputo-Pearl’s has done nothing wrong. The union’s labor agreement with the district lists seven reasons for unpaid leave, but none explicitly covers union campaigning.

In any event, the district put a stop to Caputo-Pearl’s school day campaigning.

At the presidential forum last week, where the issue was first made public, Caputo-Pearl defended his school site visits.

“It’s a way to level the playing field [with Fletcher] who is allowed to be out there, talking to teachers everyday,” he said in an interview with LA School Report.

He also said he made all necessary provisions to ensure his students would not be affected. Caputo-Pearl said the district has no right to prevent him from stumping.

“Classroom teachers and health and human service workers are incensed that the District has attacked my contractual and legal right to take unpaid personal leave,” he told LA School Report. “When that is taken away by the District – this is classic management interference in a union election, and a glaring unfair labor practice, which we are pursuing filing.”

Over the last few days, candidates have been raising questions to each other, union officials and the district about what the rules are and how they should be applied — under an apparent false assumption that the candidate’s principal can grant the leave.

Some are are demanding that the union election committee step in and disqualify Caputo-Pearl and other members of the Union Power slate who may have also campaigned during school hours.

And this is what has some candidates up in arms, the idea that if left to the discretion of an administrator, campaigning rules could be applied unevenly, impacting the outcome of a race.

As an example, Laura McCutcheon, a candidate for UTLA treasurer, heard about Caputo-Pearl’s lunch-time meetings with teachers and sought to do the same, according to a collection of emails sent to LA School Report, bearing the the names of UTLA candidates. But her request was apparently turned down by her school principal, according to her email.

It was McCutcheon who first alerted the UTLA elections committee about the apparent irregularities of the policy, setting off a chain of finger pointing and charges of discrimination. A union official confirmed the authenticity of her email.

In her email, McCutcheon referred to LA Unified’s downtown headquarters in messages to several other candidates: “Well, Beaudry deferred to my principal who defers to Beaudry who said no but said up to principal who will put nothing in writing but will not sign my [request]. Uhm.”

Figueroa said McCutcheon’s understanding of the process was incorrect.

The same collection of emails included messages that appear to have been sent by presidential candidate Marcos Ortega II and David Garcia to union officials, each expressing their displeasure over Caputo-Pearl’s actions and threatening to file complaints against the union.

But efforts to reach both of them to confirm the authenticity of the emails were unsuccessful.

Previous Posts: At a UTLA candidate forum, issues break out within the mudslinging; In forum, UTLA president candidates discuss big ideas — and a strike.

The latest to join the race for a three-year term is Innocent O. Osunwa, a labor lawyer and English teacher at Stevenson Middle School. He joins a field that also includes Gregg Solkovits, Alex Caputo-Pearl, David R. Garcia, Marcos Ortega II, Leonard Segal, Saul Lankster, Kevin Mottus and Bill Gaffney.

The complete list of UTLA candidates for all offices can be found here. The elections are a three-round voting process that ends in July.

Osunwa has previous political experience although his last run for office was probably less successful than he intended. As a write-in candidate for the 32nd Congressional District in California, he lost to Democrat Hilda Solis, 130,042 to 8.

“There was a mistake,” he told LA School Report. “I am a Republican. They listed me as an independent.”

One of his major campaign issues, he said, is the union’s labor contract with LA Unified. “It has too many loopholes in the way it is worded,” he said. “It has teacher protections, but on the other hand, teacher protections are taken away.”

Also, he said, the system of teacher evaluation is “too subjective.”

Previous posts: The LA teachers union explains why it’s demanding a salary increase; UTLA calls for a do-over in union elections over unpaid dues; Fletcher is facing 8 in reelection bid for LA teacher union presidency.