Voters in school district boot two - Teachers union backed winners

[Hestia]

LITTLE ROCK — Newcomers Gloria Lawrence and Tom Stuthard easily won election Tuesday to the Pulaski County Special School Board, unseating incumbents Charlie Wood and Danny Gililland and shifting the balance of power in support of the teachers’ union.

Both Lawrence, 56, a retired district teacher and grandmother, and Stuthard, 55, retired from the military and now a maintenance mechanic for the U.S. Postal Service, were endorsed by the Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers.

The association has spent the past 10 months fighting a 4-3 majority of the School Board to retain collective-bargaining rights for the Pulaski County Special School District’s more than 1,200 teachers.

As a result of Tuesday’s election, the board is expected to be 5-2 in favor of continuing to recognize the teachers association.

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Both Wood, an engineer for Entergy Corp., and Gililland, owner of six Popeye’s restaurants, were part of the four-member board majority that ardently supported severing all district ties with the teacher and support-staff unions and replacing union negotiated employee contracts with contracts based solely on School Board-approved policies.

Read more: http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2010/sep/22/voters-school-district-boot-two-20100922/