Teachers Union Elects Bernstein President

Los Angeles teachers union members have voted overwhelmingly to elect union Vice President Helen Bernstein as their new leader.

She will take the reins of United Teachers-Los Angeles in July from President Wayne Johnson, who headed the nation’s second-largest teachers union for six years, leading it through a bitter nine-day strike last spring. Johnson was precluded by union rules from running for another term.

Bernstein, a high school counselor and history teacher, has been the union’s leading advocate for the school restructuring process negotiated during the strike and now under way in the district’s 600 schools.

She won nearly 65% of the vote, with about 12,000 of the union’s 28,000 members casting ballots during the three-week-long election. Ballots were counted this week and results will be formally certified and announced by the union’s board of directors next week, said union spokeswoman Catherine Carey.

Bernstein, whose low-key style is a marked departure from the confrontational demeanor of her predecessor, said she has intends to stay the course Johnson has charted for the teachers union.

“I have a different style and I’ve taken on different issues than Wayne, but I have the same priorities he does,” Bernstein said in an interview Thursday.

She called her lopsided victory over three opponents “as much an endorsement of Wayne and what he has stood for in this union as a mandate for me.”

“Wayne went out of his way to endorse me,” she explained, “and people voted for me on the assumption that I would continue to push on the priority that we have had as a union in the past few years--that the district’s money is not spent in the classroom.

After three terms as president, Johnson plans to return to the classroom this fall but will continue to serve on the union’s board of directors.

Johnson’s confrontational style has led to a bitter relationship between the union and the district, but that may change some under Bernstein, who has had to work closely with district officials in getting school-based management off the ground.

School board President Jackie Goldberg said she looks forward to working with Bernstein and has been impressed by her commitment to the school restructuring process. “I know she is completely dedicated to that and that will certainly be an area of agreement for us.”

But Bernstein said she plans to go even further in pushing for teacher empowerment.

“We need to restructure the entire district, from the superintendent’s office on down,” she said. “Our school system is in crisis: The schools are not properly supplied, we don’t have the resources to compete in this technological world, the curriculum is not responsive to the multicultural, multilinguistic needs of our children.

A Los Angeles native and graduate of Hamilton High School, Bernstein, 45, began teaching history in 1967 at Sun Valley Junior High School in the San Fernando Valley.

She has a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a master’s degree in counseling from Cal State Northridge.

Bernstein was elected to the union board in 1987 and to the vice president post in 1988.

Newly elected union vice presidents are Day Higuchi, Denise Rockwell, Nina Greenberg and John Perez. Jerry Folender was elected treasurer.