Bernstein’s Death Creates Void in School Reform

A year after Helen Bernstein left the helm of the Los Angeles teachers union, she continued to be the connective tissue that held local school reform efforts together and linked them to similar movements across the nation, said those who mourned her Friday.

Bernstein’s death in a traffic accident robs Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan of his education advisor. It saps the momentum of two groundbreaking projects to improve teacher training and soften traditional resistance of teacher unions to change. And it steals a confidant upon whom countless education leaders had continued to depend.

“I talk to her every night,” said Mike Roos, president of LEARN, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s largest reform movement, still unable to use the past tense.

Acerbic and witty, quick and quick-tempered, Bernstein, 52, began working doggedly behind the scenes after stepping down as president of United Teachers-Los Angeles last June.

Even the way she died was vintage Bernstein--late for a meeting, hurried and harried, jaywalking across seven lanes of Olympic Boulevard carrying a mountain of campaign literature.

People who knew the former Los Angeles teachers union leader were shocked by news that she had been struck and killed by a car while rushing to a political meeting--but none were surprised.

Through their tears, they even joked. “You almost want to ask what happened to the car, because she’s so tough,” said Los Angeles school board President Jeff Horton.

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It was that combination of toughness and single-mindedness that defined Bernstein, making her a figure of increasing stature on the national education scene and a lightning rod for public distaste of teachers unions. And it explains why her death will have an impact.

On Friday, flags flew at half-staff at hundreds of public schools and municipal buildings--an unusual honor for an oft-abrasive union leader. Riordan mentioned her at each stop on his daily campaign tour.

“Helen was the most brilliant, caring, outrageous person I’ve ever known,” Riordan said at City Hall. “She’s irreplaceable.”

Supporters and detractors alike agreed that Bernstein’s death creates a void at a crucial intersection in the drive to redefine, and perhaps salvage, public education. It comes on the heels of February’s cancer death of Albert Shanker, the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers and one of Bernstein’s mentors.

It also happened just as the public has begun to accept some of the controversial ideas both union leaders championed, sometimes over the objections of their members: higher academic standards, a greater emphasis on classroom discipline and challenging student testing programs.

“Shanker was not a consensus leader; he went out and took stands on things and he truly led . . . and Helen was in that same tradition,” said Jamie Horowitz, a spokesman with the American Federation of Teachers, one of two national unions affiliated with the Los Angeles union.

Asked what set Bernstein apart from other labor leaders, many touched on her ability to rip through the fancy wrappings of any discussion. That clarity allowed her to focus debate on issues that most mattered to classroom teachers.

For instance, even when embroiled in mediation over what clearly was destined to be a deep pay cut for Los Angeles district teachers in 1993, Bernstein took time to negotiate for better gynecological services for women, who make up the majority of the teaching force.

Then too, admirers say, her near-daily visits to classrooms in the 660-school district kept her in touch with the students. Early in her six-year tenure with United Teachers-Los Angeles, she adopted a credo then uncommon among teachers union leaders: “That if students do well, teachers do well, and that no community would accept for long students not doing well--nor should they, she would often say,” said Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Assn. in New York, who starred alongside Bernstein on the national stage for several years.

That philosophy, which Urbanski had long shared, built the foundation for the job Bernstein took on when she left the union last June. From an office at UCLA, she became the director of a new nationwide network of urban teachers union presidents dedicated to changing the status quo.

Bernstein and the others involved thought that if unions do not become players in reforms at their inception, they will end up fighting them later. And they viewed that as a fight unions will lose and lose badly.

The new job built on Bernstein’s significant role in starting LEARN, the district’s reform effort, which offers campuses more governing and fiscal independence. There would not have been a LEARN, many people said Friday, without Bernstein.

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But since leaving the union, Bernstein had been struggling to accept a role away from the podium. First, she dived into one of her pet projects, professional development, helping gain an $8.2-million Weingart Foundation grant for providing teacher training on Los Angeles, Long Beach and Pasadena campuses.

In November, she became Riordan’s first education advisor--a sign that the mayor hoped to play a more active role in public schools. Later, she was one of 10 people who gained Riordan’s backing for a spot on a citizens panel to rewrite the city’s charter, which comes before voters Tuesday.

In fact, Bernstein was headed to a charter commission candidates forum in the Mid-Wilshire area Thursday night when she stepped in front of a car on Olympic Boulevard. As word of an accident made its way into the forum, participants flocked outside to find her already dead, political fliers bearing her photograph strewn around her on the street. Police said Friday they do not expect to file charges against the driver.

As recently as Monday, Bernstein had complained about the unwillingness of organized labor to endorse her for the commission because of her volunteer position in Riordan’s cabinet. She said she was unsuccessful in her efforts to suggest that they were well served by a liberal union sympathizer having the mayor’s ear.

It was an insult, she said, to someone who had worked so hard for unions.

Bernstein took the helm of United Teachers-Los Angeles in 1990, the heady era after a strike led by her predecessor ended with a contract promising 8% pay raises in each of three years.

But soon the union paid dearly for that gain. When the school district found itself in financial straits in 1993, many blamed the union.

Bernstein contributed to that furor with her strident tone and anti-administrator bent, which at times caused even her fans to worry that she was harming the already downtrodden school district.

“I fault her for a lot of Sacramento punishing us as a school district,” said Peggy Funkhouser, president of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, a privately funded reform group. “She bullied the district and administrators, and people saw them as buffoons.”

Funkhouser said Bernstein’s reputation as a scrappy fighter made it difficult to lobby on her behalf when she wanted to join the partnership’s corporate-dominated board. But Bernstein’s persistence won out--and Funkhouser said the board rarely regretted it.

“She was . . . always on the phone with everybody who was involved with schools,” Funkhouser said. “She was a one-woman clearinghouse on the status of education reform.”

The loss is felt most deeply by the many teachers who were Bernstein loyalists. “Her work wasn’t done,” said Phyllis Gudoski, on leave from Strathern Elementary School and working on the Weingart teacher training project that Bernstein helped start.

“The impact of this goes deep, deep into the teacher in the classroom, not just among people who knew her personally, because she was so widely known for her interest and love of education and kids,” she added.

Gudoski said it was bitterly ironic that Bernstein was killed hurrying to a meeting. “She was so involved . . . so many of us used to say to her, slow down, Helen.”

Services for Bernstein are set for 4 p.m. Sunday at Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 Centinela Ave., Los Angeles, with Riordan, Roos and United Teachers-Los Angeles lobbyist Bill Lambert scheduled to speak.

Bernstein is survived by her daughter, Jessica, a graduate student at UC Berkeley; her mother, Sara Sherman of Los Angeles; and three brothers, Alan and Victor Sherman of Los Angeles and Sheldon Sherman of San Diego.

Times staff writers Jeffrey L. Rabin and Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.