Francine Lawrence ~ At-Large Board Member

Executive Vice President

Francine Lawrence was elected to be executive vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, by a unanimous vote of the AFT executive council, and she assumed the responsibilities of the office in September 2011.

Lawrence served on the AFT executive council as a vice president from 2008 until becoming the union's executive vice president and is a member of the AFT Teachers program and policy council. She served as the PPC's chairperson from 2006 to 2008. She also is the AFT's chief spokesperson for the Global Campaign for Education, a broad-based coalition dedicated to ensuring access to quality basic education in developing nations. 

Lawrence has a longstanding history with United Way.  In the 1980s, she chaired allocation committees with the United Way of Greater Toledo and served on the local board of directors.  In 1990, she was the first female campaign chairperson and became engaged with the United Way’s Women initiative in Toledo.  

From 1997 to 2011, Lawrence was president of the 3,000-member Toledo (Ohio) Federation of Teachers. She led contract negotiations that focused on what matters most: student achievement. The resulting contract provisions addressed how to attract and retain good teachers, defined expectations for teachers' subject-matter knowledge and skills, and provided for high-quality, teacher-driven professional development. A differentiated compensation system to identify and reward accomplished teachers was implemented in 2002. The Toledo Review and Alternative Compensation System (TRACS) promotes teacher quality while improving the academic performance of students. TRACS provides incentives for excellent teachers to accept assignments at schools identified as high-needs or other difficult-to-fill teaching positions. Lawrence co-chaired the union and district's Intern Board of Review, which oversees the Toledo Plan, Toledo's peer assistance and review plan. Peer mentoring and evaluation have dramatically changed the attitudes of Toledo's teachers and school managers about competence, responsibility and the importance of teaching standards. It is an example of a school reform that works.

Through 2011, Lawrence also was a member of the Ohio Federation of Teachers executive committee, and she served as vice president of the Northwest Ohio AFL-CIO Council. She is a member of the board of the Northwest Ohio Center for Labor-Management Cooperation. In addition, she co-chaired the Ohio 8, a strategic alliance of superintendents and teacher union presidents from the eight largest urban school districts in Ohio. The coalition's mission is to improve academic performance and close the achievement gap for urban children throughout Ohio.

Lawrence was an invited participant at the Aspen Institute's 2007 Summer Workshop, Rethinking Human Capital for K-12 Education, and its 2008 Summer Workshop, Rethinking Human Capital: Designs for Urban School Districts. She also was a member of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) Strategic Management of Human Capital Task Force.

Active in her community, Lawrence has served on the Juvenile Justice Advisory Board, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, the Lucas County Mental Health Board, and the Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commission. She currently serves on the board of advisors of the Lovell Foundation, which funds programs in mental illness, integrative medicine, cultural/spiritual enhancement and philanthropic education.  An experienced educator, she was a speech-language pathologist in the Toledo Public Schools for many years. She holds a Bachelor of Science in speech and hearing therapy, and a Master of Arts in speech pathology, both from Bowling Green State University.