CTA Executive Director Carolyn Doggett, a veteran classroom teacher and strong public school advocate, is responsible for a staff of more than 500 people who serve the largest state teachers' organization in the nation from offices across California.

 

Under her leadership, the union's staff has worked side by side with educators to win countless battles for teachers and students, both at the local level and in Sacramento.

 

Since Doggett became executive director in 1995, CTA led the successful fight to pass the statewide $13 billion school bond in 2002, launched an ongoing campaign to help our schools of greatest need in 2001, defeated a well-financed voucher initiative in 2000, secured a new state program to reduce class sizes in the kindergarten through third-grade levels, helped increase state education funding, and greatly improved teachers' pensions.

 

During her tenure, CTA membership has swelled to more than 335,000 public school teachers, counselors, psychologists, and librarians. They work in the more than 1,000 chapters that comprise what's also the largest professional employee organization in California.

 

Doggett also maintains CTA's strategic alliance with the powerful National Education Association, which represents 2.7 million educators in the country. CTA is the NEA's largest affiliate.

 

Her roots run deep in the state. She is a fourth-generation Californian and a fourth-generation teacher, having begun her career by teaching first grade at Brookside Elementary School in Willits, California.

 

She taught high school English from 1969 to 1981 in Anchorage, Alaska. She was twice president of the Anchorage Education Association and twice president of NEA-Alaska, the state association affiliate of the National Education Association. She lobbied the Alaska Legislature and sharpened her organizing skills in that state, going on to work on California school board and legislative campaigns.

 

From 1983 to 1992, Doggett worked in San Francisco as a primary contact staff person for United Educators of San Francisco, CTA's chapter there. In 1992, she became assistant executive director for special projects at CTA headquarters in Burlingame, San Mateo County.

 

In 1994 she was promoted to CTA deputy executive director, and took her current post a year later.

 

Doggett holds a bachelor of arts degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara. She has taken advanced course work at the University of Alaska, Anchorage; at California State University campuses in Sonoma and Hayward, and at the Harvard Trade Union Program.

 

Doggett and her husband, Roger Severin, live in Belmont.

 

California Teachers Association

P.O. Box 921, 1705 Murchison Drive

Burlingame, CA  94011-0921

Phone: (650) 552-5329

Fax: (650) 552-5001

E-mail: cdoggett@cta.org

Carolyn Doggett

Executive Director