Teacher shakes up union June 4, 2001 BY SABRINA WALTERS STAFF REPORTER For years, Deborah Lynch-Walsh worked from the trenches for the underdog--student underachievers, teachers at risk of losing their jobs, children with disabilities. Now Lynch-Walsh finds herself on top after unseating one of the most powerful labor union leaders. As newly elected president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Lynch-Walsh said she wants to restore the group's reputation as a fiery representative of teachers rights not afraid to take on the administration. "We intend to speak up when there are injustices," Lynch-Walsh said last week. "We intend to be proactive." Lynch-Walsh, 49, takes over as CTU president July 1. She will leave her $50,000-a-year teaching job at Marquette Elementary School for a $95,000 annual salary as full-time union leader. Small in stature but strong on ideas, Lynch-Walsh seems to have single-handedly taken control of the CTU--an organization that traditionally selected leaders from its executive ranks. An eighth-grade teacher, Lynch-Walsh created her own opposition party and waged a boisterous five-year campaign to unseat Thomas Reece--a longtime political favorite with widespread support. Mayor Daley had publicly endorsed him. After two unsuccessful bids in 1995 and 1998, Lynch-Walsh last month pulled off what most observers considered impossible: She persuaded a majority of teachers to join her ProActive Chicago Teachers & School Employees Caucus. Teachers also voted to remove almost all of the union's 47 executive members, replacing them with those of PACT and ensuring almost exclusive control by the Lynch-Walsh group. The election results stunned just about everyone. "The caucus Tom Reece was part of was in office since the 1960s, and there has always been a continual transition. When someone retired or resigned, someone else working in the union moved in. That's the way it has worked for 40 years," said Jackie Gallagher, Reece's assistant. That was before Deborah Lynch-Walsh. Since arriving on the political scene in 1995, Lynch-Walsh has been a constant agitator. In 1999, she waged a court battle saying votes were tampered with when teachers approved a union contract by just 58 percent. A staunch opponent of the school district's get-tough policy on teachers, Lynch-Walsh has denounced reconstitution--a way of overhauling school staffs and removing teachers at chronically low-performing schools. "The underlying assumption was that if you replaced experienced teachers with inexperienced teachers and gave them the same resources, that we would get higher test scores. That just doesn't work," Lynch-Walsh said. Lynch-Walsh is only the second woman to lead the 33,000-member teachers union. The other was the late Jackie Vaughn, a legendary union president who led teachers to strike three times. Since Vaughn's death in 1995, Lynch-Walsh said she has made it her mission to shake up a sleepy union. "She successfully painted the image that we were co-opted as opposed to being cooperative," Gallagher said. "It was a campaign she believed strongly in, and she was able to get the message to the members better than we were." Friends and colleagues describe Lynch-Walsh as a fierce leader who also is a compassionate mother and teacher. "She's a very ambitious and ardent worker, a go-getter, always a go-getter," said Lovly Billups, Lynch-Walsh's former boss at the American Federation of Teachers, where she worked on education reform in the late '80s and early '90s. Lynch-Walsh, whose career as an educator is chronicled in her book, Labor of Love: One Chicago Teacher's Experience, grew up in Chicago. She is the daughter of Irish-Catholic parents. At 13, while volunteering with disabled children, Lynch-Walsh decided she would pursue a career in education. Now she faces new challenges. Her supporters expect her to make good on campaign promises to gain more control of schools and persuade government officials to earmark more money for the classroom. Schools CEO Paul Vallas, accused by Lynch-Walsh of having too cozy a relationship with the teachers union, said he shares some of Lynch-Walsh's concerns about failing schools. "Many of the things the union president has talked about, getting teachers more involved, reducing class sizes, we all agree on," Vallas said. The two sides will meet this week to discuss strategies. "We anticipate establishing the same cordial relationship with the new leadership as we had with the old," Vallas said. Lynch-Walsh said she thinks teachers have been unfairly targeted by recent mandates to raise student achievement or face sanctions. She says low student achievement is the result of crowded classrooms and a lack of money. Lynch-Walsh said she favors doing away with costly consultants and diverting money from affluent schools to fund ones in poor neighborhoods. "We want kids with so many strikes against them before they come to school to get what they need," Lynch-Walsh said. "If we can simply lower class size, we will raise student achievement, it's definitive." Short biography of CTU chief BORN: March 15, 1952. EDUCATION: Graduate of Mother McAuley Catholic High School. Bachelor's degree in elementary and special education from Western Illinois University; master's in special education from Chicago State University, doctorate in public policy analysis from the University of Illinois at Chicago. EXPERIENCE: Chicago Public Schools teacher for 11 years, now teaching eighth grade at Marquette Elementary. Worked for eight years in Washington, researching educational reform for the American Federation of Teachers. Ran the Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center, a teacher development program, from 1993 to 1995. CREDITS: Author of the book FAMILY: Married to Bill Byrne, an engineer at Marquette Elementary, since 1996. Four children, 11 to 18 years old. RESIDENCE: Orland Park. FAVORITE AUTHOR: John Grisham. FAVORITE MUSIC: Everything--jazz, classical and rock. HOBBIES: Soccer, basketball--and volleyball mom. CHARITY: Organizer of a group formed to promote healthy dating relationships among young people. -- This is the CPS Science Teacher List. To unsubscribe, send a message to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For more information: <http://home.sprintmail.com/~mikelach/subscribe.html>. To search the archives: <http://www.mail-archive.com/science%40lists.csi.cps.k12.il.us/>
