Amie Baca-Oehlert was elected, by acclamation, to be the next president of the Colorado Education Association during the delegate assembly for the 35,000-member teacher’s union Friday night in the Denver Tech Center.

She will begin her three-year term in July. Baca-Oehlert has been the CEA’s vice president since 2012 and succeeds Kerrie Dallman, who was term-limited. Dallman will resume teaching high school social studies in Jeffco Public Schools.

“Why I belong to the association is grounded in being a voice for my students,” Baca-Oehlert said in her acceptance speech, according to a press release from the union.

“This work is not about me and my story. This work is about us and our story. This is about the U and I in union. I pledge to stand by you and with you as collectively we say, ‘Our students deserve better.’ We deserve better and we will not stop until our voices are heard.”

Baca-Oehlert is a high school counselor in Adams 12 Five Star Schools. She is a past president of the District 12 Educators’ Association and an ethnic minority at large member on the CEA Board of Directors.

She is a graduate of Clemson University with a bachelor’s degree in secondary education-English.

“I got my first teaching job at Adam’s City High School in Commerce City,” she wrote on her campaign website for union president. “It was there that I learned firsthand the value and the importance of being a voice for our professions and for our students. It was there that I came face to face with the harsh realities that many of our students bring with them into the classroom, such as poverty and mental health struggles, and I learned that if I do not speak up for them, then who will.

“But I had hope as I also quickly learned that it was the Association that was the force to be that voice for our professions and for our students, and so I became involved in the Association as much as I could as I knew that I wanted to be a part of something that was making a difference for students and public education.”