President

In recognition of her success as a forceful and passionate advocate for public school teachers and students, California Teachers Association President Barbara E. Kerr was named as the third most powerful Southern Californian on a list of 100 influential Southlanders selected by the Los Angeles Times West Magazine in the summer of 2006.

Whether she’s teaching a roomful of first-graders or building powerful community coalitions to fight for educators and public education, Kerr, of Riverside, is making a significant difference in the lives of our students and the 340,000 members of CTA.

Becoming the president of her local chapter just after the passage of Proposition 13, which began the drain of money away from public schools across the state, Kerr quickly became an expert on school finance issues. She served on the teacher task force that created and secured passage of Proposition 98 in 1988, which guarantees that at least 40 percent of the state budget must go to education.

For several years, Kerr has served as the CTA liaison to the statewide Education Coalition, which has won many victories to keep state budget cuts as far away from the classroom as possible. She’s also fought in Sacramento to protect smaller class sizes, provide additional resources for our schools of greatest need, improve teacher salaries, and free up more time for student learning by reducing the battery of state-mandated tests.

Kerr is highly regarded by elected officials on both sides of the political aisle. She has led several historic CTA political campaigns. She led CTA’s unprecedented battle in 2005 that protected teachers and schools by defeating Arnold Schwarzenegger’s special election agenda. A coalition builder, she helped bring together a new alliance of educators, nurses, firefighters, police and other working Californians who joined the public at the polls in rejecting Schwarzenegger’s special-interest initiatives to destroy teachers’ due process rights, silence the political voices of unions, and gut school funding.

She has also coordinated efforts to pass three statewide school construction bonds since 2002, totaling more than $35 billion, worked to defeat two voucher initiatives, and helped elect hundreds of school board members and lawmakers who support public education and teachers.

Committed to CTA’s mission of maintaining a quality public education for all students, Kerr is leading CTA’s charge for educational change in critical areas. These areas include basing school funding on adequacy and equity; improving teacher salaries and training and assistance for beginning teachers; creating accountability systems that improve student learning, rather than sanctioning schools; and helping our schools of greatest need.

Thanks to Kerr’s leadership, our schools of greatest need won tremendous legislative help in the fall of 2006 with the passage of the CTA-sponsored Quality Education Investment Act (Senate Bill 1133). These schools will now receive nearly $3 billion over seven years to reduce class sizes, improve teacher and principal training, hire more counselors and take other steps critical to improving student learning.

Kerr stresses the power of family involvement and provides tips to parents to help their children learn in a series of annual statewide radio ads. And believing that CTA’s own family must grow to continue to remain strong in our communities, Kerr led efforts to allow education support professionals to become members of CTA.

A graduate of public schools, Kerr attended elementary school in Southern California and then moved with her family to Hawaii, where she graduated from Waianae High School on Oahu. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California at Riverside, and completed advanced work in education at California State University, Long Beach. Kerr is a long-time first-grade teacher at Woodcrest Elementary School in Riverside.

She was elected president of CTA in 2003 and re-elected to a second term in 2005.

Contacting Barbara E. Kerr

California Teachers Association
P.O. Box 921
1705 Murchison Drive
Burlingame, CA 94011-0921
Phone: (650) 552-5306 
FAX: (650) 552-5007
E-mail: bkerr@cta.org