Texas AFT is governed by an Executive Council of local union presidents across the state. Officers (president and secretary-treasurer) are elected every two years by delegates at our union’s state convention.
President Zeph Capo
Zeph Capo is the current president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. Previously, he was the president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.
Capo believes that a quality public education and old-fashioned hard work are requirements for a robust economy, and public schools are the key to a robust civil society. Before becoming a union leader, Capo was a science teacher.
Capo is known for his honest and direct approach to solving issues and building lasting relationships in the communities he serves. In 2011, he spearheaded community meetings to develop a paradigm in how neighborhoods can effect change in a community. Capo believes in strengthening the school-to-work pipeline and dismantling the cradle-to-prison pipeline. To do so, he believes we must improve the learning conditions for our students, which also happen to be the teaching conditions of our members.
Capo has served on several community boards that have added perspective and developed cross-sector relationships that will benefit Texas AFT as we forge a new direction. Texas AFT must invest the time to listen to our leaders and members on the ground and be committed to building a shared vision for our future.
Secretary-Treasurer Wanda Longoria
Wanda Longoria is the secretary-treasurer of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. Previously, she was president of Northside AFT.
A retired public school teacher who served students in both Oklahoma and Texas, Longoria has been an AFT member in every district she was employed. Throughout her 36 years of public school service, she worked to educate, organize, and mobilize her community to actions, empowering them to have voice in the decisions that affected them.
That commitment to service goes beyond her work on school campuses. While teaching in Oklahoma, Longoria volunteered for the State Legalization Impact Assistance Grants Program, which assisted immigrants in becoming naturalized citizens. With her father, a Baptist minister, she helped the local Hispanic community navigate this process. She taught weekly night classes to provide participants with the English and history knowledge they needed to meet their citizenship requirements.
Longoria went on to do similar work in the San Antonio community. One year after her election as the founding president of Northside AFT in 2018, she began to build a local network of volunteers, local pro bono immigration attorneys, university law students, and various nonprofits to work with the Texas AFL-CIO to conduct informational forums and citizenship clinics across the city.
Together, we are better. Longoria endeavors to lift others up whenever possible, whether that’s through her leadership of the Alamo Reading Council’s literacy outreach, her work as a trustee of the Bexar County Central Labor Council, or her role as the recording secretary for the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the national organization representing the interests of approximately 2 million Latino trade unionists throughout the United States and Puerto Rico.