Randi Weingarten - UFT Presidency

UFT Presidency

Weingarten has won re-election by consistently wide margins since her appointment in 1998. The local union's constitution required her to run for the UFT presidency within a year of her appointment. She received 74 percent of the vote against two opponents in 1999, and served the final two years of Feldman's term. She ran in 2001 for a full term and was re-elected. She won her third full three-year term with more than 88 percent of the vote, despite having two opposition candidates. On March 30, 2007, Weingarten won re-election to a fourth term as UFT President, garnering 87 percent of the vote.

During her tenure as UFT president, Weingarten has pushed for higher salaries and improved training for teachers, often agreeing to longer work days and more tutoring time in order to win better pay. Between 2002 and 2007, salaries for New York City teachers rose 42 percent. Weingarten has also endorsed merit pay for city teachers, and in 2007 negotiated a controversial contract which paid teachers bonuses if their students' test scores rose.

Weingarten is outspoken on issues of education reform and school choice, especially when it concerns the hiring, retention, and evaluation of teachers. She has not opposed school reform efforts in New York City, although she has challenged them when they threaten the rights and economic benefits of her members. She is a vigorous opponent of standardized testing being the be all and end all of schooling, private school tuition tax credits, and increased funding for charter schools at the expense of public schools. She has attacked vouchers in the strongest terms, arguing they do little to improve education. However, she cautiously supported Mayor Rudy Giuliani's plan to use city funds for a pilot voucher program, once Giuliani agreed not to fund the program out of the city school budget. She has, however, opposed school privatization.

Unlike some education union leaders, Weingarten has not opposed charter schools on principle. Rather, she has argued charter schools are worthwhile experiments in public education so long as worker rights are protected. Weingarten voiced reservations over but did not oppose New York City's charter school program, preferring to negotiate workplace due process protections and better salaries for charter school teachers. Weingarten has also advocated the unionization of charter schools, and attempted to organize some of them in the city. Weingarten's support for charter schools led the UFT to found its own publicly-funded charter school in the summer of 2007.

Smaller class sizes have also been a major initiative of the UFT under Weingarten. She attempted to tie smaller class sizes to salaries in each of the three collective bargaining agreements she has negotiated, and linked class size to school repair and rebuilding issues. In 2003, Weingarten and the UFT pushed for a change to the New York City Charter which would force the city to reduce class sizes. The charter revision became caught in lawsuits and was eventually dropped, although Weingarten continued to advocate for smaller class sizes.

Run-down (even unsafe and hazardous) and unhealthy schools and violence in the public schools have also drawn Weingarten's attention.