Sandra Feldman facts for kids

Sandra Feldman (born Abramowitz; October 13, 1939 – September 18, 2005) was an American teacher and a leader in labor unions. She was the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1997 to 2004.

Early Life and Activism

Sandra Abramowitz was born in Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York in 1939. Her family was very poor. Her father was a milkman, and her mother worked part-time in a bakery. Sandra and her two siblings first lived in a small apartment building. Later, they moved into public housing because their money problems got worse.

She went to James Madison High School in New York City. After high school, she attended Brooklyn College, where tuition was free at the time. She studied English literature there. Sandra became very active in socialist politics and the Civil Rights Movement.

When she was 17, she met Bayard Rustin, a famous civil rights activist. He became her mentor and a close friend. In her early days with the Civil Rights Movement, Sandra worked to help integrate Howard Johnson's restaurants in Maryland. This meant making sure people of all races could eat there. She also became a leader in the Congress of Racial Equality in Harlem. She took part in several Freedom Rides, which were protests against segregation. She was arrested twice during these protests.

In 1958, she met Paul Feldman while working for her college's literary magazine. They got married. Paul Feldman later became an editor for a socialist magazine. They divorced in 1975 and had no children. In 1980, she married Arthur H. Barnes, who had two children from a previous marriage.

Becoming a Teacher

After graduating from college in 1962, Sandra Feldman worked as a substitute teacher for third graders. She taught in a public school in East Harlem. She soon realized she needed more training. In 1963, she went to graduate school at New York University to earn a master's degree in literature.

During her time in graduate school, she continued to be active in the Civil Rights Movement. She participated in the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. While studying, Feldman also taught fourth grade at Public School 34 in New York City. She quickly joined the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). When teachers in New York City won the right to form unions and negotiate for their rights in 1960, she helped organize all the staff at her school within a year. During this time, she became friends with Albert Shanker, who was a leader for the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).

Union Work

In 1966, Albert Shanker, who was then the head of the UFT, hired Sandra Feldman as a full-time representative. Over the next nine years, she became the union's executive director. This meant she managed the union's staff. In 1983, she was elected as the union's secretary, which was the second most powerful position.

Just two years after joining the UFT staff, Feldman played a big part in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike. This strike happened because New York City tried to give local communities more control over their schools. The Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of Brooklyn was one of these areas. The local school board fired 13 teachers. The UFT, led by Shanker, demanded that the teachers be given a fair chance to defend themselves.

A big conflict started between those who supported the local school board and those who supported the UFT. There were several illegal strikes between September and November 1968. Some people supporting the local board made unfair comments about race. Shanker was called a racist, and some African-Americans said the UFT was controlled by Jewish people.

Sandra Feldman was often at the center of this strike. She had been involved in early talks about money for the independent school. The principal of Ocean Hill-Brownsville even claimed she hadn't objected to the teacher firings at first. Feldman was the UFT's main person on the ground in Ocean Hill-Brownsville. But this was a very difficult situation for her personally. She was writing articles and making statements against groups she had worked closely with before, like civil liberties groups and minority parents. Feldman felt very conflicted and hurt by accusations that she was insensitive about race.

In 1974, Shanker became president of the AFT, but he also stayed president of the UFT. In 1986, UFT members worried that Shanker couldn't manage both jobs. So, Shanker retired as UFT president, and Sandra Feldman was elected to take his place.

Leading the AFT

Sandra Feldman had been elected a vice president of the AFT in 1974. She served on the national union's main council. She also led a group that advised the AFT on teacher issues. When Albert Shanker passed away in February 1997, the AFT council chose Feldman to be president in May of that year. She ran for election and won in July 1998. This made her the first female president of the AFT since 1930. At the UFT, her long-time lawyer, Randi Weingarten, was elected president.

In May 1997, Feldman was also elected to the AFL-CIO executive council. The AFL-CIO is a large group of many different unions. During her time leading the AFT, Feldman also served as a vice president for Education International. She was also on the board of the International Rescue Committee and Freedom House, which are groups that help people.

She faced several big challenges in her first two years. One challenge was overseeing a vote about a possible merger with the National Education Association (NEA). This was another large teachers' union. They had talked about merging since the 1960s. The two unions signed an agreement not to try to take members from each other. The AFT council approved the merger terms in February 1998. However, NEA members voted against it in July, as they needed a two-thirds majority to approve it.

Feldman continued to support the idea of merging. She oversaw several efforts to merge at the state and local levels, especially in Minnesota, Montana, and Florida. The AFT and NEA also kept working together on education policies for the whole country.

Another challenge was how the union was organized. Feldman pushed for and won approval to add a new executive vice president position for the AFT. This was the first new executive officer added to the union's leadership ever. In 1998, about 3,500 members of the AFT's health care division left the union. This happened because they disagreed about how much money the union was spending to get new members.

In 1998, Feldman also started a full review of the AFT's organization and goals. A committee called "Futures II" was created to build on earlier work. Their final report, approved in July 2000, suggested a four-part plan:

• Building a "culture of organizing" throughout the union. This meant encouraging everyone in the union to help bring in new members.
• Making the union's political efforts stronger.
• Starting campaigns to help the schools and places where AFT members work.
• Recommitting the AFT to supporting democratic education and human rights around the world.

Feldman quickly made sure this plan was put into action. She created new committees and groups to help. The AFT had not supported John Sweeney when he was elected president of the AFL-CIO in 1995. While Feldman supported Sweeney's efforts to organize new members, she also openly criticized his involvement in the internal politics of the Teamsters union. Feldman's position in the AFL-CIO became stronger when AFT secretary-treasurer Edward J. McElroy was also elected to the council in 2001.

In October 2002, Sandra Feldman was diagnosed with breast cancer. After treatment, she returned to work early the next year. In 2003, Feldman suggested a big new education idea called "Kindergarten-Plus." This program would let children as young as three years old attend kindergarten. It would also make the kindergarten school day longer and reduce the number of students in each class. The goal was to help children be better prepared for first grade. It also aimed to help overcome some of the difficulties that poverty caused for young children. Even though the idea was well-received, only one state, New Mexico, had started a Kindergarten-Plus program two years later.

In the fall of 2003, Feldman was diagnosed with cancer again. In March 2004, she announced that she would retire as president of the AFT in July. Edward J. McElroy, who had been the AFT's secretary-treasurer since 1992, was elected the next president of the union.

Sandra Feldman passed away on September 18, 2005, at the age of 65. She was survived by her second husband, Arthur Barnes, two stepchildren, two grandchildren, and her brother and sister.