Louis Aguilar

The Detroit News

Detroit — A run-off election for leadership of the Detroit teachers union pits a slate of candidates that ran on a campaign of forging alliances versus a slate that vows hardline resistance and strikes.

The departing president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers called the leader of the dissident slate, a Cass Tech math teacher, "an anarchist." In response, that candidate said his opponent will continue to allow the "disintegration of the union."

The candidates are vying to lead the DFT, which has 4,000 members, when privately run charter schools and academies are siphoning off students and a governor-appointed emergency manager controls Detroit Public Schools.

The two groups of candidates will face each other in the run-off because neither slate received 50 percent of the votes in the month-long general election that ended Friday.

The DFT released results Sunday that showed the leader of the more moderate United Teacher Rights slate garnered 390 votes for president. The candidate for that slate is Edna Reaves, executive vice president of the local.

Steve Conn, the candidate for the Equal Opportunity Now/By Any Means Necessary slate, received the second-most votes with 300.

A third candidate, Meshira Oliver, had 168 votes. She ran for the slate called Greater Educators Movement.

Each of the slates had candidates who ran for president, three vice president seats, secretary and treasurer.

All of those offices are still up for grabs and will be part of the run-off election in the coming weeks.

The United for Teacher Rights slate won all the executive board and trustee seats in the general election.

Reaves said she wasn't too surprised by the run-off because there were three slates in the general election and that siphoned votes from the top two candidates.

Reaves and others on her slate ran on promises of deepening city and statewide partnerships and improving membership services.

Reaves taught computer science for years in various schools before being elected the union's executive vice president in 2012.

She and other union leaders successfully pushed back a 10 percent pay cut at the start of the school year.

Conn and his slate have taken a more strident tone.

"As president, my first order of business will be to call mass meetings of teachers, students and the entire Detroit community to decide what actions we take to stop these attacks and to defend the jobs of Detroit's teachers and win an equal, quality education for the students," Conn said.

Conn said he supports the idea of strikes over the issues of pay cuts, more students in classes and school closings.

Conn barely lost his bid for president the 2012 election against current president Keith Johnson. That election also forced a run-off.

On Sunday, Johnson said Conn's "solution to everything is simply strike" and said that approach would cause far more harm than good.

Conn's slate of candidates is affiliated with the group By Any Means Necessary, which has participated in a number of street protests, including the Detroit bankruptcy and the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting.

Last month, members of the group halted the Board of Regents meeting at the University of Michigan. They demanded greater minority enrollment at the school.

Details of the DFT run-off election have not been announced, but it is expected to be completed by Jan. 17.

laguilar@detroitnews.com

Twitter: LouisAguilar_DN