One of the most absurd conceits of the “reformers” is that they are leaders of the civil rights movement of our time. They bust unions. They strip teachers of hard-won due process rights. They include in their ranks the titans of Wall Street. How long can they pretend that they have any common ground with Martin Luther King Jr., who died while helping the sanitation workers of Memphis who wanted a union ?
In this post, Julian Vasquez Heilig conducts a mock interview with labor leader and civil rights leader Cesar Chavez. Heilig seeks to show how Chavez would see today’s Status Quo billionaires and their apologists.
A sample:
“Q: How about charter and voucher approaches that help the few at the expense of the many?
A: We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community… Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“A recently formed union representing teachers at Cesar Chavez Academy, a Detroit charter school, has resolved an unfair labor practices complaint with the company that manages the school.
The settlement agreement with the Leona Group means one teacher who was laid off will be reinstated and receive back pay. Seven other teachers — six of whom were laid off and another which had her hours reduced — will also receive back pay.
Teachers last year voted to organize and formed a union, called the Cesar Chavez Academy Alliance of Charter Teachers & Staff.
The settlement came on the birthday of Cesar Chavez, the late labor organizer and civil rights activist for whom the school is named.”
The Leona Group is a for-profit company that has 60 charter schools in 5 states.
http://www.freep.com/article/20140401/NEWS06/304010099/Chavez-Academy-settlement
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Long time Minnesota Latino activist Ramona de Rosales worked with Cesar Chavez, who visited her home and recruited her as an organizer. She has developed 2 departments at two universities: Department of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota and the Hispanic Pre-College Project at the University of St. Thomas.
…
Ramona has been an affiliate member of NCLR (National Council of La Raza) for over 20 years.
She sees the charter public school she founded and now directs in St. Paul as a continuation of that work.
http://hometownsource.com/2014/04/03/joe-nathan-column-terrific-new-movie-honors-courageous-complex-cesar-chavez/
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Are teachers at her charter school unionized? If not, would she support a union if they wanted one? How do wages at her school compare with wages at local public schools? Benefits? Hours?
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Teachers are not unionized at this school. Mn law explicitly allows teachers at any charter to form a union if they want one. I can’t tell you how wages compare.
I can tell you that hundreds of spanish speaking families are sending their youngsters to the school – so many that the school is looking for more space.
Ramona de Rosales has a 40+ year history in St. Paul of being involved in a vast array of efforts to challenge the establishment – including establishments at two local universities.
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How many minority families send their children to a particular charter school is pretty irrelevant. Kool-Aid is easy to sell, especially when you have everyone convinced that public schools are “failing”. After all, thousands of minority parents send their kids to Noble and Concept charters in Chicago, not to mention how many go to Rocketship or do K12 online around the country. Doesn’t mean any of them are getting a quality education.
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Charters are usually low wage and high turnover. I hate to say it but she could easily have sold out for a lot of money.
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So she is making money?
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She directs the school and like school directors, she’s paid to do that. Our local paper asked charter school directors in 2007-2008 what they were being paid.
http://extra.twincities.com/car/schools/charters/
At the time, she was being $84,975. That’s a bit less than an elementary school principal in St Paul Public Schools was paid at that time.
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“Last February teachers, counselors and social workers at Cesar Chavez Academy (CCA), voted to join a union by an overwhelming margin. The union victory came just weeks after Governor Snyder signed “right-to-work” legislation – a major setback for unions in Michigan. CCA, Detroit’s largest charter school with four campuses that together serves about 2,000 K-12 students, became the city’s first unionized charter school. School employees said they were relieved and hopeful for a fair collective-bargaining-agreement after a hard-fought campaign to be legally recognized by administrators as bargaining partners.
But teachers and staff members said The Leona Group, the for-profit education company that operates CCA under a charter from Saginaw Valley State University, has not bargained in good faith as required by law. The Michigan Alliance of Charter School Teachers & Staff has filed charges against the Leona Group alleging over two dozen violations of the National Labor Relations Act.
In May, CCA changed their health care policy without notifying or bargaining with the union as required by labor law. In October, school administrators told social worker Lynne Santoscoy her position at CCA Middle School was eliminated due to budget cuts resulting from drops in student enrollment. Santoscoy, who had been publicly active in the effort to join the union, said she felt singled out for punitive dismissal because of her union activity. Other social workers hours were cut as well, but only Santoscoy’s position was eliminated.
Union members and supporters said they intended to present the petition to the CCA Board at its November meeting and pressure The Leona Group to postpone recent staff cuts and hour reductions until a collective bargaining agreement could be reached. But there was a problem: the CCA Board did not meet that month. The meeting was canceled after only two out of five Board members necessary for a quorum showed up. The previous meeting in October had also been canceled. Teachers said the school is currently operating on an unapproved budget partly because of repeated Board meeting cancellations.
Teachers and staff members were undeterred. They said they hoped the Board, which oversees the school administration, would hear their concerns at the next scheduled Board meeting on December 12. When that day came, the Board announced it would not meet for a third straight scheduled meeting. Union members and supporters said they viewed the cancellation as a sign of disrespect, adding insult to injury.”
ritical-moment.org/2014/02/16/foul-play-at-cesar-chavez-academy-detroit-charter-school-union-charges-administrators-with-bad-faith-bargaining-labor-law-violations/
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What you described about Leona’s actions is classic anti-union bs that is done in charters. Let’s watch to see if over time this union stays together. Most charters have extremely high turnover. Many teachers leave to go work in public schools because the charters are awful. Leona will try to force high turnover to make the union dwindle.
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Here’s an update on the Detroit Cesar Chavez situation from the AFT’s perspective: http://www.aft.org/newspubs/news/2014/040114chavezacts.cfm
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Well, I’m glad the teachers and staff finally won and the charter operator had to reinstate an employee and pay a fine for unfair labor practices, but that doesn’t really change the fact that “Cesar Chavez Academy” is run by an anti-labor, for-profit company.
Looks to me like the charter operator fought them tooth and nail.
Here’s charter school hero Eva Moskowitz being quoted on the National; Right to Work site:
“Eva Moskowitz, former chair of the New York City Council Education Committee and current founder & CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools (currently operating 14 charter schools in Harlem, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan, and an additional 6 planned the 2013-14 school year, noted:
The problem with the Soviet Union was not its leaders or its employees; it was the closed, uncompetitive economic system that stifled its innovation. We have the Soviet equivalent in our schools; it’s a system that shuns competition and thwarts change. But in America, it’s the [union] collective bargaining agreements that are the glue keeping the monopoly together.”
Give me a damn break.
Public schools with teachers who belong to a union are “equivalent to the Soviet Union”?
I’ll be sure to tell the folks at my local public school, where all the teachers belong to a union. They’re probably unaware they’re equivalent to the Soviet Union in the eyes of celebrity ed reformers.
http://www.nrtw.org/charterschools
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Can you believe she says garbage like that? What a farce.
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When are these types of stories going to get more publicity? When did Democrats become anti-labor? (stupid questions given who controls most of the media and who holds the purse strings)
I live and work in the Deep South. At least in GA, our teachers have no collective bargaining rights and are often barred from forming/joining a union*. Our purposefully weak professional organizations have very limited lobbying powers and primarily exist to provide liability insurance. Tenure is effectively non-existent, if not out-right banned in some areas. In many districts, teachers are forced to sign contracts that do not list the # of days they will work and may not state the exact rate of pay. Though all teachers in GA are actually state employees and should be able to move from one district to another without voiding their contracts, they can be fined large sums for doing so. In at least two districts, the teachers do not contribute to SSI. The State Health Benefit Plan for teachers (and other state employees) this year was limited to a company our insurance commissioner has ties to. I could go on and on. None of this is new to GA (well the insurance funny business is, actually) and has be around for many decades. Really our only selling feature is our incredibly solvent teacher retirement system, though the same cannot be said for other state employees’ retirement systems.
Are our schools performing off the charts? That is what Eva M. and those like her are trying to sell us all on.
But the evidence says “no”. Our test scores are abysmal and have a long history of being abysmal. Even when our state makes the test, our students still perform poorly!** Our teachers are poorly paid compared to many in the Northeast or Northwest, particularly when you compare districts with similar socioeconomic makeups. Our schools are overcrowded and crumbling. No wonder our economy has been stagnate in many regards for decades and we are more segregated than we were in the 1960s.
But, by gosh, by golly, we are a conservative’s wet dream: insanely low taxes, incredibly limited regulation, right to work down to the core, and almost exclusively Republican leadership!
Yeah, the r(he)eform agenda is going to do wonders for the US. Not.
*Atlanta Public Schools is an anomaly as it has had a teachers’ union for so long it was effectively grandfathered in. They are still pretty much barred from striking, but are the highest paid teachers in the state. The districts’ problems stem less from teacher maltreatment than from mismanagement at the top and a very, very troubled and poverty-ridden student population. Interestingly, it was the APS school bus drivers who had to take the hit to force the district and the state to recognize Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Day as a holiday–in the 1980s or early 1990s. It is possible there are other similar anomalies throughout the Deep South.
**The poor performance is relative as areas with privileged students perform quite well, even when stacked up against students from Ed powerhouse states. Most students, however, are not so lucky.
I apologize for any typos, blaming the iPad and frustration.
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Joe the people you have mentioned are nothing but sell-outs. The people are creating inferior work places and schools.
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“Teachers fighting for collective bargaining rights at a public charter school are working to put the pieces back together after a federal ruling dissolved their union.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of the Chicago Math and Science Academy and its governing organization, Concept Schools, asserting jurisdiction over the charter by determining it is a private institution, despite it receiving millions in public dollars since 2004.
Mazza and others at the school had been waiting for the labor board’s decision for more than two years after a ruling in favor of the teachers was appealed by the academy in September of 2010.
But now, under the new rules, 30 percent of the academy’s employees must sign a petition for an election, said board spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland. Then a majority vote would be needed for the union to be recognized.
“It’s becoming a process where we’re in the grassroots and the big boys are playing their game to figure out what’s this legal process,” Mazza said. “There are so many unknowns right now.”
The academy, at 7212 N. Clark St., receives 80 percent of its funding from Chicago Public Schools, according to the ruling, while the remainder comes from federal and state resources. Tax records show the school received $5.7 million in government funds in 2010.
The Illinois Federation of Teachers, and several other national and state charter advocacy organizations, supported the union in its original form.
“In some senses the [board] is trying to say these aren’t public schools,” said federation spokesman David Comerford. “When it comes to funding charter schools, operators want to be public schools, but when it comes to unions,” they want to be private.
“We don’t think they should have it both ways,” he said.
Some teachers contend that the pushback from Concept Schools through the years at best proves the school’s administration had been stalling negotiations over a contract.”
The NLRB ruled that the charter school was “akin to a government contractor” which of course makes it a private sector company, so subject to NLRB jurisdiction, which was the ruling the charter operators were looking for.
http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130218/rogers-park/chicago-math-science-academy-union-regroups-after-ruling
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I have always been somewhat perplexed and certainly outraged that two of the most common charter school names in the US are either Cesar Chavez or Martin Luther King. Instead of honoring the legacies of these two giants who heroically fought for labor, charters insult their work and legacies by attaching their names to an anti-union establishment. It is certainly ironic that charters have usurped these heroes of the labor movement, but then again the corporate reformers have said that public education is a “civil right.”
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I blame “close reading” for misinterpreting the legacies, lives, and messages of visionaries like Dr. King and Chavez. Similar misinterpretation is rampant among certain (cough Tea Party cough) politicians in regards to the Founding Fathers, President Lincoln, and, apparently, the Soviets (not that I count them as visionaries, mind you).
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Whatever the issue or where I stand on it, I despise attempts like this one to project the thoughts of the dead regarding modern issues. The fact is, no one really knows where Chavez, King, Kennedy, or anybody else no longer in this world would view the issues we currently face. On education issues, in particular, we have seen how it has made for strange alliances.
Let the living debate today’s issues — imaginary interviews with the dead are little more than cheap theatrics.
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Jack,
There is not a doubt in my mind that Martin Luther King, Jr., would oppose union-busting. He died helping sanitation workers who were trying to organize a union in Memphis. I have not a doubt that he would not be standing with those who are privatizing our schools for profit. I have not a doubt that he would challenge those who rank human beings on the basis of heir test scores. He believed in the equal worth of every human being.
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That’s fine, and you are entitled to your opinion, and I happen to agree with your assessment. I have no problem — within reason — with people arguing that this or that position is in line with someone’s legacy (although as you yourself have noted, many on the reformy side are trying to claim King would be with them due to the supposed emphasis on minority educational improvement).
All of that said, I think you can take this too far. Using the words of the deceased out of context is poor form. Inventing words for them out of whole cloth is pretentious and vulgar.
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Teachers’ unions, as is completely understandable, try to protect teachers’ jobs, even where it is arguably the case that poorer and minority kids are more often served by under-performing teachers. Who is to say that MLK Jr. would have come down on the union side of such a conflict?
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We project their thoughts and legacies when we name a school after them. It is right to speak of what Chavez might think/say when speaking in regards to labor rights issues going on at a school named for him. It would be right to do the same were segregation occurring at a school named for Dr. King or elimination of the Supreme Court being advocated for at a school named for Marbury.
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Exactly. Thank you!
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Not really. Were Kennedy’s or Reagan’s “thoughts and legacies” projected when we named airports after them? Were Washington’s thoughts and legacy projected when we named a state on the Pacific coast after him? We name buildings and institutions after people to honor them, but this is quite different than carrying out invented interviews with their ghosts.
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@jack: Prove to me that Ceasar Chavez Charter was not named after him to invoke his legacy to help sell the charter. I will happily eat crow if you are able to do so.
And, yes, I do believe Reagan’s legacy was being invoked when we named an airport after him. Same for Kennedy. Were something to be done at one of those airports that violated it’s namesake’s legacy (I’m not sure what, but something), we have the right to speak of what that person would have thought of such actions.
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As noted earlier, Ramona de Rosales, who Cesar Chavez recruited to help organize, and who visited Chavez in her home, named the charter she founded in his honor.
In an earlier email conversation, I mentioned that Childrens Defense Founder Marian Wright Edelman, who worked with Dr. King, spoke favorable about charters at the 2011 National Charter School Conference in Atlanta. She’s also a big fan of many other reforms and has worked tirelessly on behalf of children for decades:
She doesn’t praise every charter or district public school…she quite rightly acknowledges a good idea can and sometimes is poorly implemented.
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Brandy — I don’t disagree with what you said. I think maybe you are misreading my point. I have no problem with invoking someone’s legacy, or arguing that someone else is invoking it unfairly. I am only specifically complaining about the often-employed tactics of 1) claiming an historical figure would support this or that cause that was not even on the radar during their lifetimes, and 2) conducting made-up interviews with the deceased where words they never said are put in their mouths. I just think it’s crass and does not afford them proper human respect.
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@jack Perhaps. The words attributed to Chavez in this post were in fact quotes from Chavez; however. The author makes that very clear. This post is an example of a common type of rhetorical device/structure, one that is done quite well here.
In my opinion, his name was put on this school to give the impression that the school was honoring or fulfilling his legacy. When his own words show that the school is doing the exact opposite, I have no problem with his words being invoked to make that point. I highly doubt Chavez would support this school/company and I believe that he would fundamentally stand with the teachers.
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Jack, I am honored that the 1st Vice President of UFW apparently left the following comment after the Cesar Chavez blog post:
Irv Hershenbaum April 1, 2014 at 5:37 pm
The new Cesar Chavez is a tremendous educational opportunity to build pride, respect for non-violent action and the importance of standing up to injustice.
…So, “That’s fine, and you are entitled to your opinion,”
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How much of King’s writing have you actually read? The man made his mind quite clear.
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For use on Twitter: Just copy and paste. The link leads to this page.
The Fake #CivilRightsMovement of our Time
Led by Wall Street titans
Bust unions
Break teachers
Test kids to tears
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The “civil rights” issue of our time is about stealing schools and tax money. It is about cash cows.
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Didn’t have room left for “cash cows”. Twitter is limited.
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