Now here is a surprising turn of events. The billionaire funders of charter schools see them as a way to crush teachers’ unions. More than 90% of charters nationwide are non-union. Teachers in them have no rights and there is high teacher attrition.
But teachers at BASIS in Tucson voted to unionize, the first to do so in Arizona. BASIS is owned by its founders, Michael and Olga Block, and operates for profit. Anyone may apply but all students must pass multiple AP exams to graduate. The BASIS schools do not reflect the demography of the state. They have small numbers of Hispanic Americans and Native Americans, and large proportions of whites and Asian Americans. They are regularly ranked among the “best” high schools by US News.
Channel 12, KPNX IN Tucson reported:
A Tucson charter school recently voted to become the first unionized charter school in the state.
Author: William Pitts
TUCSON, Ariz. — A Tucson charter school has become the first charter school in Arizona to unionize.
BASIS Tucson North teachers voted Wednesday to form a teacher’s union.
The union will be represented by the American Federation of Teachers.
It’s the first time a charter school in Arizona has voted to form a union to negotiate with the owners of the school.
“We are managed by a private company with opaque finances,” teacher and union organizer Trudi Connolly said. “We completely believe that they have the ability to make more money available to the individual schools that they, in theory, manage.”
BASIS is a multistate charter school company that began in Arizona. It’s privately owned and for-profit. Connolly said she believes the company could do better by its teachers.
As for whether other Arizona charter schools could follow their lead, Connolly said she believes others, including other BASIS schools, might organize.
“We feel that if we can do this, others will see that they can too,” Connolly added.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
AWESOME NEWS!!!
It would be so lovely to see this happen throughout the country!!!!
Yes and yes! Huge victory for education, and hopefully a snowball effect in the desert.
Has anyone started a betting-pool based on predicting the hour and date BASIS closes announces that school is closed and we have fired all those (WOKE) teachers?
I put WOKE in parenthesis because that word might not be in the press release, unless the billionaires that own BASIS are big supporters of Dangerously Deranged Despot DeSantis, Abusive Abbott and Psychosis Sanders.
No school with a requirement that students have to pass AP exams can call itself a good school. Rather, they have just found a way to exclude anyone difficult to teach. No excellence in that.
Down with College Board!
agree
I wonder what they consider to be “passing” on an AP exam. Here is the “score scale table.”
AP Exam Score–Recommendation–College Course Grade Equivalent
5 Extremely well qualified A+ or A
4 Very well qualified A-, B+, or B
3 Qualified B-, C+, or C
2 Possibly qualified —-
1 No recommendation —-
Don’t see anything about passing on that score scale.
How dare they! Who do those teachers think they are? (Snark alert)
This is not surprising, really. Most–not all–working folks look favorably on the idea of having the support of a union, as many polls have shown, for many years.