Turbulent Times Await New Union Head : Education: Lois Tinson takes helm of California Teachers Assn. today. She will have to battle voucher drive and persuade others that they are not a barrier to reform.

Like a diminutive general pumping up her troops before battle, Lois Tinson, the incoming president of the California Teachers Assn., stood at the podium in a hotel ballroom packed with union activists and taunted their opponents.

Two years ago, the union had led the charge to defeat school vouchers. Now voucher forces are resurrecting the measure, and Tinson’s job is to gird the union for battle again.

“We beat you before. We beat you bad,” she said, harking back to one of her union’s greatest triumphs. “We will beat you again. We will beat you even worse!”

The teachers erupted in applause, then handed Tinson the first victory of her young administration: permission to assess union members $3.8 million a year to gather a war chest for the voucher fight.

Tinson, a veteran of 30 years in the classroom, officially takes the helm of the powerful, 240,000-member union today at a turbulent time for one of the state’s largest and most powerful unions.

Sacramento politicians, frustrated by policy gridlock, have fingered the CTA--with its financial influence over key legislators--as a barrier to educational reform. Gov. Pete Wilson has targeted the union on such key issues as tenure and merit pay.

Meanwhile, pressure on the schools to improve is mounting among parents and legislators from both sides of the political aisle, who cite spring test scores showing that the state’s fourth-graders are reading worse than students in 39 states.

And as it gears up to fight the reborn voucher movement, the union is struggling with its own internal tensions over issues such as bilingual education and how hard and fast to push for more money for schools.

Given all that lies ahead, many are urging Tinson to push the CTA to become more moderate and cooperative.

Delaine Eastin, a Democrat and former assemblywoman who was elected state superintendent of public instruction last fall with CTA help, said the organization must transform itself from a traditional labor union concerned mainly with wages and working conditions into a force for change.

“They really do have some legitimate concerns about salaries and benefits,” Eastin said. “But if they could focus on what’s good for children instead of how we position our association . . . it would get rid of the concern that the public has that they are a self-interested entity trying to feather its own nest.”

It is a perspective that Tinson acknowledges.

“We have got to let . . . the people out there who are constantly criticizing us know that we want to be a very positive force in the education of a child and that we are not against everything that is proposed,” Tinson said.

Last year, in response to the voucher initiative that the union helped defeat, the CTA put forth its own five-point plan for reform: make schools safe, professionalize teaching, reduce class size, make sure children learn English and bring more technology into the classroom.

It was the first time that the union had made its position known on school reform. Although the document took some familiar union positions--calling for smaller classes and greater involvement of teachers in governance and instructional issues--it also drew praise for going beyond timeworn demands for more money.

When it comes to reform, however, the CTA is in an awkward position, Tinson said. Many accuse it of hindering reform when it is merely trying to carry out its mission of protecting the employment rights of its members.

Tinson, a lifelong Democrat, may well be the right person to try to achieve the proper balance between those two goals, said Lawrence Kemper, superintendent of the Baldwin Park school district and a past president of the Assn. of California School Administrators. “Lois . . . is somebody who is very strong . . . who really is interested in the bottom line, which is . . . to make certain that kids learn.”

A resident of Los Angeles, Tinson, 55, is the first African American president in the CTA’s 132-year history.

In conversation, she is soft-spoken and proud when discussing her rise to power from the cotton fields of Arkansas City, Ark., a community so small that she comprised the entire class the year she graduated. “I was valedictorian, salutatorian and everything,” she said.

She began teaching at the school from which she had graduated after only two years of college, but continued taking classes to get a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas. She later earned a doctorate in institutional management from Pepperdine University.

Tinson, the oldest of five children, came to California in 1962 and became involved in the teachers’ organization in the 1960s. She rose through the ranks and was elected to the $120,000-a-year job as president in January by acclamation. She will serve a two-year term and, if tradition holds, will be reelected.

She is said to be particularly effective in small groups, behind the scenes.

“She has a very quiet presence, but it’s a presence that says, ‘Don’t mess with me,’ ” said Judith Goodson Knedel, a union activist at Jones Junior High School in Baldwin Park, who has known Tinson for 25 years.

“The antagonism against public education and the perception that California doesn’t need to spend money on its children is just ludicrous,” she said, and Tinson’s strong but calm manner will be effective in countering that idea.

“Pounding on the table and getting in the face of folks isn’t effective,” Knedel said.

Her skill as a conciliator will be essential as she attempts to mediate a bitter split within the CTA over how to teach students not fluent in English.

Teachers who are staunch supporters of bilingual education have been angered by the union’s efforts to ease state training requirements for veteran teachers who are not bilingual. Meanwhile, many teachers believe that schools, especially in Los Angeles and Orange counties, keep students in bilingual classes far too long.

Tinson said the range of opinions among teachers merely reflects the ambivalence of the community on the issue, and she pledged to listen to both sides to “come to some resolution that will benefit all kids,” she said.

Tinson and the CTA say they are willing to embrace reform, but not at the expense of giving up their extraordinary power, which comes from having the members, money and ability to knock on doors in every community in the state to argue in favor of their positions.

And they spend millions supporting legislators who agree with their views. “We support those who support public education, that’s what we are all about,” Tinson said.

The CTA and other education groups are working to increase their share of the 1995-96 state budget. The union also is crafting a longer-term solution, in the form of a constitutional amendment, to boost California per-pupil spending above 40th, relative to other states.

“On this issue, we must become radical,” said John Perez, a vice president of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the CTA’s largest local.

But polls that the union has commissioned show that the public is lukewarm about paying higher taxes, and what the CTA fashions will indicate how well the organization is reading the public’s mood, said Maureen DiMarco, Wilson’s education adviser.

“If the CTA comes forth with what they’ve been talking about--another tax increase--that’s old style,” she said.

CTA critics remain dubious about the organization’s direction.

So far this year, the CTA has blocked most of Wilson’s conservative education agenda, which called for rewriting the state Education Code, rolling back job protections for teachers, establishing merit pay and instituting alternative credentialing procedures.

CTA opposition also stalled several bills that would have increased the number of charter schools, which are free from most state and local regulations and can choose to hire non-union teachers. A union spokeswoman said the union does not oppose the concept of charter schools but believes that the 90 or so in existence should be evaluated before more are established.

Conservative Assemblyman Bruce Thompson (R-Fallbrook), who has carried much of Wilson’s education agenda this spring, said that he has gotten little cooperation from the CTA. “They have dug their trench and once in a while they come up to say they are open-minded, but they are not,” Thompson said.

Tinson disagrees. She said she is willing to work with legislators regardless of partisan politics and is open to change.

She has even met with the San Diego-based organization that is developing a new voucher initiative and had amicable discussions about what compromises the CTA might be willing to make.

That group, the American Education Reform Foundation, has a big jump on the backers of Proposition 174, the measure that the CTA spent $12.3 million to help defeat in 1993. It has a financial commitment from John Walton, a billionaire scion of the Walmart family fortune, and Bill Oberndorff, a wealthy San Francisco Bay Area investment banker. And it has the political wisdom to realize that, to have a chance, a voucher measure must be written to have broader appeal.

Tinson said the bottom line is simple. The CTA will not back any voucher that diminishes the amount of money available for public schools.

“We aren’t against reform, but when you are taking public money for private schools, we have a problem,” she said.