By Theresa D. Daniels

CHICAGO. The Chicago Teachers Union House of Delegates convened January 11, 2006 at Plumbers Hall, 1340 West Washington Boulevard.

In a stunning reversal of business-as-usual, where the Union administration of President Marilyn Stewart is virtually always able to ram through its pre-set agenda and stifle input from delegates, the House of Delegates succeeded in stopping the administration’s motion for a rushed approval of the contract proposals for 2007 at this meeting.

The new date set for the consideration of this proposal package is the House meeting of April, 2006.

Supporters of the administration’s motion argued that “It’s always been done this way,” that plenty of time had been given for members’ input, that these proposals had gone through all the committees, and that these were only proposals — some of which wouldn’t even necessarily appear in the final contract after negotiations.

At the union’s January meeting, CTU president Marilyn Stewart claimed that the Chicago Board of Education was beginning to see the light on school closings. Two weeks later, the Board approved another round of closings and Stewart sent vice president Ted Dallas (above) to the Board’s January 25 meeting without a prepared statement from the CTU to complain. When challenged by reporters to back up the remarks he had just made, Dallas (above outside the January Board meeting) was unable to provide details. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

Despite these arguments, the majority of the delegates voted their conviction that the time they had been given to study the mailed proposal package (possibly as little as three days), let alone discuss it with their constituencies, was inadequate time.

Worse yet, delegates argued, it was only at this meeting that delegates were given separate pages of corrections and changes to the original mailed package of contract proposals. Therefore, delegates said, they had no time at all to study these corrections and changes. Delegates complained that contractual language in general was already minefield enough without the confusion of this type of presentation.

Delegate Ray Wohl, of Irving Park Middle School, argued against the passage of the motion to approve the contract demands. He said that good teachers needed to read the document in its totality before making a decision.

“Even after the Union Professional Problems Committee’s (PPC’s) and the Executive Board’s hard work to get these demands out a year in advance, 10, 11, 12 items were found needing correction….All of us know more than any one of us,” Wohl said. He asked for another month to read the document, asking also for the corrections and changes to be incorporated into a new document for teachers to read. He urged that we wait till at least the February meeting to work on approving the contract proposals.

Wohl suggested that the House of Delegates could work on fine-tuning the proposal package at the February, 2006 meeting, and perhaps ratify it at the April meeting, since the March meeting was cancelled because of the Delegates Workshop March 24th and 25th. He added that possibly the proposals could be discussed beneficially during the meetings at the workshop. Other delegates at the microphones voiced similar concerns and proposals.

President Stewart calls new parliamentarian “an outsider”

After Delegate Ray Wohl spoke, President Stewart threw the meeting into a parliamentary confusion that ensued despite the December, 2005 appointment of a new parliamentarian, Barbara Hillman, who replaced Attorney Larry Poltrock’s daughter, Attorney Jennifer Poltrock, as parliamentarian.

While President Stewart has called new Parliamentarian Hillman an “outsider” in her President’s Report in the January, 2006 issue of the Union newspaper, it is evident that the Poltrocks are definitely insiders.

Why not legal strategy against Ren 2010? Despite repeated claims that the Chicago Teachers Union opposes the expansion of Renaissance 2010 and the proliferation of Chicago charter schools, during the past 18 months the union has spent more than $100,000 on legal fees to promote the policies of the United Progressive Caucus — and nothing on litigation to block charter school expansion or the school closings which are now a centerpiece of Renaissance 2010. CTU attorney Lawrence Poltrock (above left, in white shirt) abolished the union’s law department when the UPC returned to power in 2004. Poltrock again receives the union’s legal business to his outside firm. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.

Attorney Larry Poltrock had to take a leave from serving as General Counsel to the AFT (American Federation of Teachers) to be the lawyer for the UPC (President Stewart’s United Progressive Caucus) during the contested Union officer election of 2004.

The AFT then sided with the UPC against PACT (former President Deborah Lynch’s caucus Pro-Active Chicago Teachers & School Employees). The Poltrocks are now the firm that does the legal work for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).

My calls to the Union officers regarding the new parliamentarian went unanswered, but Parliamentarian Hillman returned my call. She told me she didn’t know why she had replaced Attorney Jennifer Poltrock as parliamentarian, but that she was installed just before the December, 2006 meeting.

Hillman told me that the parliamentarian can advise the president during a meeting only when asked by the President. She said that she cannot just step in to help direct parliamentary procedure at the meeting. Attorney Hillman said that she had served as General Counsel for the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) for almost forty years.

Stewart did not seek out her advice when needed at this meeting nor the last.

The appointment of a parliamentarian who came from the IFT raised the hope among delegates that the Union parent organization was concerned about the flagrant disregard by the Stewart administration of Roberts Rules of Order, the Union Constitution and the By-laws which govern these meetings.

President Stewart misrepresents the role of the parliamentarian

In the January, 2006 issue of the Union newspaper, in her President’s Report, Marilyn Stewart said regarding the new parliamentarian, “It is unfortunate that we have to use the services of an outsider [italics added] in this way; however, the more important task is to make sure the House does the business of the members in a constructive and orderly manner, rather than succumb to the political goals of a few.”

Stewart completely misrepresented what a parliamentarian could do at our delegates meetings when she said in the newspaper, “Again, we have made real progress in making sure the House meetings keep to the agenda, and we now have engaged an official professional parliamentarian to assist in that regard.”

As if the parliamentarian, who can advise Stewart only if Stewart asks, has the latitude to step in and tell Stewart that Stewart is running a meeting that does not respect the rules of order. As if President Stewart’s agenda isn’t to keep the House delegates from bringing up any Union business that is critical of her administration or contradicts the party line she is trying to enforce.

One example of Stewart’s mendacity is that while she stated in this written report that one of her major headaches last year was the Lynch budget deficit, she nonetheless managed to hire a greater number of staff and give Christmas bonuses of one or two weeks’ salary to staff members last year and this year, something which Stewart does not deny. This was a practice eliminated by former President Lynch during her administration.

Those Union members who went to the Union offices based on Stewart’s promises that anyone could make an appointment and come to see staff contracts were never shown contracts which spelled out the perks they received, like possibly as much as 21 percent Union paid annuities added to their already inflated salaries. Other perks that members suspect — unlimited expense accounts, car allowances (of $750 or more per month), cell phone allowances (at least $100 per month), Union paid medical and life insurance policies, annual bonuses, “overtime” salary arrangements, and who knows what else since no one was allowed to see the contracts. Prior to the 2001 election of Deborah Lynch, for example, one perk of union staff was a monthly expense account of $1,500 — $18,000 per year (as much as some union members earn working full-time) — that didn’t require receipts or other proof.

Other examples of Union business that Stewart works hard to suppress abound. She fears any number of motions by the delegates and so works hard to keep the mikes out of delegates’ hands as much as possible through the “parliamentary maneuvering” with which she charges others in her written newspaper report.

Above: Despite increasingly dangerous conditions (gang members beating up students outside the school, while the school’s patronage “security” staff does nothing) inside the new $18 million “Aspira Haugan Middle School”, CTU officials have made no effort to organize the school’s staff. Substance photo February 2006 by George N. Schmidt 

Above: Community residents fear the Mayor Daley and Alderman Margaret Laurino plan to give the new Albany Park Middle School to politically connected private contractors, just as Laurino and Daley engineered the giveaway of the Haugan Middle School a year ago. Substance photo February 2006 by George N. Schmidt

Parliamentary confusion reigns again

After the delegates spoke at the January meeting saying they needed more time and an orderly presentation of the corrections and changes on the contract proposals, a motion was made to put a time limit for the consideration of each page of the proposal package. “Ten minutes? Fifteen?” some administration-supporting delegates said. When it was pointed out that first the Item for Action (C) itself on the proffered procedures had to be voted up or down, the vote was taken. The No’s had it.

Before the “No” vote took place, as frequently happens at these meetings, President Stewart attempted to take a “Yes” vote of the delegates to close debate for a “Yes” vote to consider the motion on the time the House would allot to each page of the proposal. The first times this happened, some delegates attributed it to inexperience. By January 2006, most delegates had begun saying otherwise.

After the “No” vote on the procedures, President Stewart skipped over some speakers at microphones, including me, in order to call on Veronica Rieck, delegate from Lafayette School (and part-time employee on the Union newspaper). Reick was allowed by President Stewart to speak out of turn at her mike several times during the meeting.

Rieck made a motion that the consideration of the contract proposals be deferred to the February meeting. Without following parliamentary procedure on that motion, Stewart herself then proposed that April would be the best month for this. The delegates agreed, since that’s what they had been saying they wanted. No orderly parliamentary procedure was at work during this part of the meeting.

Stewart said that the contract proposals fully integrated with corrections and changes would be on the Union website for the convenience of the Union members.

Many delegates saw the refusal of the House to be forced to rush through an approval as an index of the Union members’ dissatisfaction with and distrust of President Marilyn Stewart’s administration.

Meeting again adjourned early

Giffen Trotter, delegate from Burr School, moved to adjourn the meeting just four questions into the official Question Period, a move frequently used to stifle the voice of the delegates during this administration’s tenure. The official Question Period should be given the full title of Question, Comment, and Motion Period because comments and motions, as well as questions, must be allowed.

In these reports, I always try to name the delegate (or in one case Union staff member) who moves to adjourn the House of Delegates meeting before business can be fully conducted.

The official Question, Comment, and Motion Period has already been shunted to the end of the meeting by President Stewart, with the last two items on the agenda, the Committee Reports and “New Business” treated like throw-aways that the House never gets to when meetings are adjourned early.

Ironically, for over 30 years the leaflet included in the delegates’ meeting packet titled “Procedure for House of Delegates Meeting,” while allowing the President to set the agenda, also allowed the House of Delegates to change the order of business. The constitutional by-law that still allows this has been omitted from the recently changed version of the leaflet. This is a moot point, however, since the Stewart administration won’t allow delegates to the microphones during the times one would change the order of business.

And with the Question, Comment, and Motions Period (what it should be called) frequently truncated by early adjournment, no independent delegate motions get to be made. Many delegates are disenfranchised by this maneuver.

The meetings are adjourned early if there are delegates at the microphones the administration doesn’t want to allow to speak.

I pose this information in contrast to President Stewart’s claim in her President’s Report in the January, 2006 issue of the Chicago Union Teacher newspaper. President Stewart claimed that one of her major headaches were “dissidents” at the House meetings who used parliamentary maneuvering to cause disruption. By “parliamentary maneuvering” by “dissidents,” she must be referring to delegates who desperately try to get her to follow Roberts Rules of Order so that they could have their fair say.

If you examine the names of those using parliamentary maneuvering to disrupt the meeting by ending it, you will find that they are supporters of the Stewart administration, often with committee appointments and sometimes part-time union jobs. I have not been able to catch a “dissident” doing it.

The official Question Period is virtually the only time during the meeting that delegates can possibly make comments and motions on Union business without being called out of order by the Stewart administration. Or at least they should be able to do so.

In past practice, delegates had been able to ask questions and make motions after the President’s and other officers’ reports, as well as during the agenda’s Items for Action. Now the microphones are hi-jacked by the administration to the very front of the hall where they are guarded by the sergeants-at-arms during those parts of the meeting.

Nowadays, even comments that are made legitimately by delegates during the Question Period, if they are comments that the Stewart administration doesn’t like, are almost always interrupted by the administration’s unruly supporters with shouts of “What’s your question? What’s your question?”

[UPC insiders who wish to remain anonymous say that UPC members are assigned to boo “dissidents,” especially former President Deborah Lynch. Hard to believe, but since the booing happens without Stewart asking for order or chiding certain shout-outs, I have to wonder.]

Motions, input by delegates suppressed even in House minutes

Motions — when a “dissident” can squeeze one in before the Question Period is prematurely adjourned — are also hijacked even when the House passes them overwhelmingly, like the motion made by Devon Morales of South Shore High School at the December, 2004 meeting. His motion was not reported in the minutes of the following meeting, and it was reported to be “unconstitutional” in the January, 2005 issue of the Union newspaper. The Morales motion was that the House would have to approve any new Union staff whose salary was over $100,000.

Well into this second school year of the Stewart administration’s term of office, the delegates were still receiving minutes from Recording Secretary Mary McGuire that were a mere copy of the previous meeting’s agenda. Through the work of delegates like myself and others, McGuire has now learned to add the “d” to the word “approved” so that the minutes reflect that something happened to the motions made by the Executive Board in the Items for Action, but since delegates are rarely given the opportunity to make a motion, we can’t know if she has learned to add a motion not made by the Union Executive Board to the minutes.

McGuire hasn’t learned to ask for corrections, even though at the last meeting in December, the parliamentarian answered a question passed to her in writing by Delegate Allegra Podrovsky. Parliamentarian Barbara Hillman wrote that the Recording Secretary should ask for corrections. I guess Hillman is not at liberty to volunteer this to McGuire unless the parliamentarian is asked for this advice.

Stewart Administration still stalling on the referendum for a mailed ballot

A motion feared by the Stewart administration is one that would pin them down to finally conducting the referendum for a mailed ballot. At the May 2005 meeting, they were handed a PACT petition signed by 2,400 members asking for a referendum on the mailed ballot. This is a ballot that would be mailed to the homes of school employees in an attempt to ensure an honest election process.

To date, they have been stalling on this referendum, while they try to get together their own petitions to have ballots mailed to school employees at their schools, rather than at their homes. This procedure would offer far less security for ballots.

When asked in September, 2005 about the referendum, the Union officers said that it was a long process to verify the signatures on the petitions. In November, they said the signatures were verified, and the petitions were legal, and that the question would now go to the Rules-Election Committee.

At this January meeting, Delegate Larry Milkowski of Carver Military Academy said during the unofficial question period before the beginning of the meeting (when motions cannot be made and the full body of the House has not yet assembled) that the members at his school wanted to know if the Stewart administration was putting off this referendum because they feared an honest election. Financial Secretary Mark Ochoa answered that while the signatures had been verified, there were certain legalities that were being investigated to make sure that the referendum was done correctly.

[Had Delegate Milkowski asked, “What legalities?” he would have been told, or a member of the booing claque would have yelled, “Your question’s been answered. You get only one question.” Such is the sad state of discussion at these meetings.]

January Meeting’s President’s Report

Dealing with very much the same issues as in her December report, President Stewart again decried how in the wake of Hurricane Katrina the political agenda is profit for those in power and their friends. [I join her in decrying such havens for patronage, of which I’m sorry to say our Union is one.] She said that the contracts to rebuild New Orleans and contracts for charter schools are going to the politically connected.

She said that only two public schools remain in New Orleans, with 126 schools made into charters to be run by friends of the Bush administration. She said that at the end of the month of December all union bargaining members were fired and must find jobs. Seven thousand applied for relief. The Relief Fund gives each applicant $500.

She said New Orleans residents are scattered throughout all the states and won’t even be able to vote for mayor and governor in the coming elections because it is said that they can’t be found.

Stewart said the good news was that the Supreme Court declared the vouchers in Florida unconstitutional. Before the ruling, $400 million had gone to religious and private schools, but “Public funds should be used for public schools,” she said. Public schools are not inherently bad, she added.

Stewart took up what she called an old-fashioned collection for the victims of Katrina because the AFT goals for donations have not been met, and the sergeants-at-arms passed through the rows of delegates with buckets.

[I had argued at the September, 2005 meeting that the Chicago Teachers Union should give more than the $10,000 they were moving to give. I said that the amount was as insulting as President Bush’s first offer to the victims of the tsunami. I talked then about how Union staff giving up a possible $100,000 or more in Christmas bonuses could greatly enhance the Union’s donation. I was overridden.]

President Stewart again addressed the issue of public schools buildings in Chicago, some recently built at great public expense, being turned over to charter schools. One example was the new Haugan Middle School which was turned over to the “Aspira charter school group”, even though the teachers at Haugan had written a plan that had been accepted by the Chicago Public School Board. Three members on the Aspira Board are close to the Mayor, she said.

The Union and others are watching closely, she said, to what will happen to the beautiful, huge school built for the new Albany Park Middle School, currently housed on the third floor of Von Steuben High School. Albany Park Middle School has 300 students, but the new building is being built to the east of Hibbard Elementary School for a thousand. In a point of information, Delegate Dr. George Drelios added that he had worked there for eight years as a psychologist and that the principal of the school was very anti-union and had made it a practice to get rid of teachers who were Union delegates.

Coordinator Nick Cannella was asked to address the question of why the traditional Union/Board Food Drive had not occurred at the time of the holidays. He said the Greater Food Depository had been involved with Katrina and other disasters, so the food drive had been postponed to January when donations are typically slow. He said the food would go to neighborhood depositories.

Educational Support Personnel (ESP) Field Representative June Davis was called upon to clarify questions raised by a December 14, 2005 issue of the Chicago Tribune. She said there was “a lot of untruth” in the article which had said that only ESP’s hired after 2002 would have to meet No Child Left Behind (NCLB) standards. She said, No, all ESP’s must take the test or have sixty college credits.

President Stewart again defended the “Toledo Plan” in the Fresh Start Schools which would have master teachers assigned to new teachers as mentors and who would write up their observations of the teachers in their first year. She found herself defending it throughout the meeting. Many teachers say they are highly dubious of this Union involvement in teachers evaluating teachers.

Stewart claimed that the Toledo Plan will work. She said the Union wants to change how teachers are evaluated. She said that principals fail to do a good job because they don’t have time and are not doing it correctly. She said that evaluations are subjective and based on no standards. She said that mentors would be “someone familiar with your area to coach you to make you the best teacher you can be.”

Earlier, in the question period before the meeting, Delegate Vince Macina from Steinmetz High School, said that Chicago teachers degrade their peers in this pilot program of the Toledo Plan. He asked, “When did the Union get in bed with the Chicago administration?”

President Stewart rose to answer his question and said—besides what’s already been reported here—that the Toledo Plan has been around for a long time.

Stewart said, “We have to monitor our profession. We’ve all worked with teachers who should not be teaching….These teachers should be weeded out….The process is wrong….flawed. We’re in the process of shaping the process.”

There was no guest speaker to take up the time at this meeting, possibly in anticipation of the lengthy review of the contract proposals.

Other Items for Action on the agenda

Item A, an executive motion to cancel the March delegates meeting because of the Delegates Workshop March 24th and 25th was passed by the House. In the past, there has been a March delegates meeting held on the first evening of the workshop before dinner, but no delegate proposed that change to the motion. No doubt the $45 stipend delegates won’t get for March will greatly help to pay for the sleep-over workshop which far fewer delegates attend. The event this year will be held at the Holiday Inn Mart Plaza.

Retiree Delegate Barbara Baker asked Financial Secretary and Retiree Officer Liaison Mark Ochoa after the meeting if the retiree delegates would be able to attend the workshop. The Question Period had been cancelled by early adjournment while she stood in line to ask the question.

Ochoa said No, according to Baker, the retiree delegates would not be allowed to attend the workshop. This policy again displays the willingness of the Stewart administration’s United “Progressive” Caucus to blatantly—and apparently without shame—discriminate against its senior elected delegates as it always has in this regard and others. Retiree delegates attended during the Deborah Lynch administration when the Union was able to reap the benefits of their wisdom and experience.

The other executive motion (Item B) to be approved by the House was support for Senate Bill 1839 which was moved and seconded before President Stewart could even read it. This is how eager administration supporters are to show they’re on the job and willing to cut through the rules to do it.

Stewart said that the bill ensured that consumers would be informed if a car they were buying had been in a disaster. She said that cars which have been submerged in floods have been brought here to be sold. With this bill, a police report would follow every such car.

Information gleaned from the question periods

During the unofficial pre-meeting question period beginning at 4:00 p.m., the following responses were given by the officers and other Union staff members in answer to the delegates’ questions:

The Board is trying to get its system changed so that social security numbers would not appear on check stubs.

The IEP’s (Individualized Educational Plans) that teachers must write for special education students can be used to evaluate the teacher.

The Union has already lodged a complaint that the Board’s flawed computer system won’t allow teachers to input Board-required information according to the deadlines set by the Board.

All workshops have been changed to half a day. There is no all-day planning session for CPS employees.

It is beneficial to offer the Board a contract for only one year, as the Board will then have to make it worthwhile for the Union to extend it for another year.

All delegates must run again for office. An election meeting for associate delegate must be conducted after a delegate has been elected, and such meetings must be held even if only one person wants to run for each of the offices.

Negotiations for Teachers Appreciation Day which didn’t happen last year are in question. The date of April 7th was suggested by the delegate asking.

The Fresh Start Schools will be a model for getting out of the quagmire of probation schools which have testing scores that go up and down while the Board keeps moving the bar.

The Union will not give away veteran teachers if there were system-wide per-pupil spending which caused principals to hire new teachers because veterans cost too much.

Union dues deductions are made on every paycheck with 26 deductions in all. Political Action Committee deductions are made only once a month.

Whether or not a school has an associate delegate depends on the number of teacher members in the school. When each of two schools doesn’t have enough members for a delegate, they each elect one and then there is a run-off election for the delegate who will then represent both schools. ESP’s have their own functional group which elects delegates.

The money automatically placed in a tax shelter account for sick days goes into the annuity set up for that purpose. A member does not have the option of splitting it to get some of the money as cash in hand unless a law limits the annuity. In that case the member would get the rest in hand.

Letters had already been sent out to members of the city-wide functional group regarding a nominating meeting held at the Union offices January 18th for the upcoming elections.

The number of cadre teachers in elementary schools is limited to one.

There will be a printout of the contract after the House approves the proposal package. A copy of the contract will also be given to every member before there is a vote on the contract.

There would be no valid contract in place if we disaffiliated from the AFT.

Tenured teachers must be given a hearing before they are terminated. ESP’s have to be given due process and cannot be terminated by a cautionary notice. Steps must be taken.

Contract negotiations will be pushed forward immediately to repair things members are not satisfied with.

Complaints should be lodged with the class-size committee if inclusion of special education students causes oversize classes in gym, art, or library.

During the official 15-minute Question, Comment, and Motion Period, the four questions entertained before the motion to adjourn cancelled the rest of the question period and adjourned the meeting engendered these responses from the officers and staff:

The procedure in Action Item C was nothing new, and there was no attempt to sneak in something new.

Renaissance 2010 was losing steam. The mayor had not gotten the funds that he wanted. The Union had shown that charter schools were not the way to improve education in Chicago.

Thanks were given for a delegate’s comment on his appreciation of the leadership team, and in answer to his question, it was stated that a “new and improved” fashion show would be held June 4, 2006.

There has been no change in the qualifications from No Child Left Behind (NCLB). There has been a major change in State requirements for middle schools since July 1, 2003.

Corrections

In the January, 2006 issue of Substance I misspelled the name of the new parliamentarian, Attorney Barbara Hillman. I apologize. I was given the wrong spelling by an employee at her law firm.

I also gave the wrong year for the Delegates Workshop from which retiree delegates were barred. During President Marilyn Stewart’s administration, retiree delegates were not allowed to attend the weekend workshop held in March, 2005. They did attend the workshop during the former President Deborah Lynch’s administration.

When I discussed the election first won by Lynch (but not by the majority of 50% plus one), then “lost” in the run-off as determined by the AFT, I wrote the wrong year. The election was won by Lynch (by a plurality—the greatest number of votes) in May, 2004, and “lost” in the run-off election in June, 2004.

The Retiree Delegates Election

I want to thank those who voted for me and for the other PACT-affiliated candidates. I was elected, as were James Alexander, Fred Ackerman, Marybeth Foley, Louis Pyster, Al Korach, Marianne Pyster, Rose Meyer, John Lewis, Barbary Baker, Marilyn Clark, Dorothy Pearson, Willie Scott, George Milkowski, Monroe Morgan, and Elizabeth Hernandez.

These and others will be voices of those not beholden to those in power.

The entire list of elected candidates and election results can be found elsewhere in this issue, and will be published in the Union newspaper as well. The vote, as has often been happening, was pretty evenly split between affiliates from two of the caucuses in the Union, PACT and UPC, promising a tough fight in the Union officers’ election in 2007.

There were also several independents who won office as retiree delegates as well.

At least four of the UPC affiliate winners were Union staff members. At least eight of them had nominated each other to the amazement of the retirees gathered at the Holiday Luncheon nominating meeting. I say “at least” with the numbers because information is not shared with the House of Delegates as to all of the UPC affiliates and caucus members who might have full or part-time jobs at the Union, nor has anyone been allowed to see the contracts of staffers.

Nominations closed by Union staffer despite the rules

There were worthy candidates who did not even get nominated because Union Field Staff Coordinator Gail Koffman, an already nominated candidate herself, moved to close nominations while retirees were still standing in line waiting to make those nominations.

Koffman did this despite the rules that had been passed in the December House of Delegates meeting the night before. The specific rule on page 2 of the document titled “Rules for Nomination and Election of House of Delegates Members” stated: “Nominations shall be closed, when no further nominations are offered.”

No integrity to the election say observers

There were worthy candidates nominated who did not win, and one would hope that it was the luck of the draw rather than the entirely unprofessional and incompetent way this election was conducted by the Union Rules-Election Committee. The committee had been purged by President Stewart of many experienced members who, she said, did not share her philosophy.

Please see a full report by Sarah Loftus, a designated observer at the vote count, elsewhere in this issue. Loftus is a teacher at Marquette School and a former director under Lynch.

Candidate-designated observers reported that at the vote count on February 3rd at the Union offices, no procedures for verifying the legitimacy of the ballots or the voter were in place.

No outside agency had been hired, and so people with a vested interest were doing the counting. There was so much the observers could not get to see.

Who could know if the right name was called out from a ballot (while they were still calling out names for the first hour) or whether the hash mark for a vote was put at the right name. After the first hour of counting, vote counters were put on their own.

Simple human tiredness could have accounted for mistakes that easily could have cost some candidates the election. Many counters had already put in a full workday and work week before getting to the Union offices after school at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, February 3rd to count the ballots. They counted and tallied until after 2:00 a.m. Saturday.

In one case, a counter was reportedly legally blind. In another case, a Union staffer, Peter Ardito, serving as an observer for staff member and candidate Larry Laughlin, was allowed to handle ballots.

Only long after the counting had begun was the Rules committee persuaded to separate the ballots (and only the remaining ones) into piles reflecting the 72 different types of ballots. These different types of ballots were made so that no candidate’s name appeared at the top of the ballot more than once.

The “verifying” coral-colored highlighter slash on the outer envelope (which could be easily duplicated) was ignored in its absence by the committee, as many voters had sent in their own business envelopes. These were accepted. There were no verification codes and no watermark on the ballots to keep them from being easily duplicated.

There was no procedure to verify that a voter was legitimate, or that he/she only voted once.

In the first mailing, an envelope marked “SAMPLE BALLOT” was sent to be used by the voter as an inner envelope in the double envelope ensuring confidentiality. But no one ever mails back a sample ballot, nor was a sample ballot sent.

So at great expense of our dues money, a second mailing had to be sent to the 3,600 retirees, explaining the unbelievable error, and this time giving the voter an inner envelope which said “SECRET BALLOT.” Voters were told that either inner envelope would be accepted. Many voters chose to use no inner envelope and that was accepted.

I, as well as others, had spoken repeatedly at House of Delegates meetings and elsewhere of the need for procedures to ensure the integrity of our Union elections. We were called out of order and were ultimately ignored.

This Union administration needs to stop being such a mess.