Lydia Howrilka is a Social Studies teacher at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, NY. Lydia earned her Bachelor’s in History and Secondary Education from CUNY Hunter College. At CUNY Queens College, Lydia earned her Masters in History after writing a thesis on the history of the UFT and the grievance procedure.

Working as a founding member of both Don’t Tread on Educators and UFT Solidarity has enabled Lydia to reach and educate over 1000 educators (and counting!) on reclaiming their careers using the Educator Toolkit she co-authored.

Since 2013, Lydia has been dedicated to educating teachers on their rights to defend their careers against aggressive attacks against tenure and mandates that hurt the learning environments for their students. Lydia has served on the council of UFT Solidarity for multiple terms. Last year, she successfully organized a class-action lawsuit on behalf of UFT members unable to get medical accommodation or childcare accommodations. She has participated in several forums hosted by Educators of NYC representing her caucus and she has been pivotal to the consensus-building of the United for Change coalition.

In the 2019 UFT Election, she ran with UFT Solidarity as the UFT Presidential candidate; she came in second place. She is also a former high school UFT delegate.

In her own words, “I am running for a High School Executive Board position because I know that our union leadership can be better. The pandemic has made us all realize how especially problematic Unity’s over sixty-year tenure has been to our profession and our schools. We deserve a union that is willing to fight for our members and communities. We deserve a union that will take a strong stand about municipal government and not allow give-backs. We deserve a union that values us and ensures that our health, safety, and working conditions become the gold standard.”