O.C. Educator Elected as President of CTA : Teaching: Del Weber says the crisis in state funding and growing cultural diversity top his agenda of issues.

Union leader and computer teacher D.A. (Del) Weber of Huntington Beach will head the 208,000-member California Teachers Assn. starting in June, it was announced Sunday.

Though he ran unopposed for the two-year term, Weber, 59, received 99% of the vote from 600 delegates to the state convention of CTA’s State Council of Education in Los Angeles Saturday. The vote came as no surprise but shows a “tremendous amount of respect for Weber,” said Ed Foglia, former CTA president.

Weber was in his fifth year as vice president of the CTA and had previously served for nine years as CTA treasurer.

Weber called the crisis in funding the overriding issue for California teachers, who are expecting an influx of 220,000 new students each year through the end of the decade with no budget increases.

“I want more than anything else, if we can get through the crisis of funding, to find a way for California to deal with its multilingual, multicultural base,” he said.

“If we are the melting pot we obviously are becoming, we have to find a way to absorb all these cultures into the mosaic of California,” Weber said. “I don’t think (voters and political leaders) have even begun to recognize that problems exist, much less find a way in which we can tackle them.”

Credentialed to teach in the fields of mathematics, social science, English and music, Weber has taught for more than 35 years in kindergarten through graduate school.

Weber came to California with his family in 1960, teaching first in Blythe before moving in 1962 to Orange County, where he taught in the Anaheim Union High School District and the Rancho Santiago Community College District.

Weber has been on leave from the classroom for the past three years while fulfilling his duties.

He said Sunday that he is still “numb” from the election, and plans to continue commuting from Huntington Beach to Burlingame, where the CTA is headquartered.

In two years, he will be eligible to run for a final two-year term. He said he still considers himself a teacher and plans eventually to return to the classroom.