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UTLA Statement On LAUSD Votes Today

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2019 //
5

MEDIA ADVISORY
1.29.19
Media Contact:
Anna Bakalis, UTLA Communications Director
(213) 305-9654 (cell)

UTLA statement on LAUSD School Board votes, including approval of a resolution calling for a charter moratorium

Today the LAUSD School Board approved unanimously a historic UTLA contract that prioritizes what students need in their schools. This is a reaffirmation of the effectiveness of our 6-day strike and the overwhelming parent and public support for LA educators. Additionally, in a 5-1 vote, the School Board passed a resolution calling for a state study and an 8- to 10-month moratorium on new charters in the district until the study is complete.

The charter moratorium vote is a groundbreaking moment in the fight for public education in LA, one that is reflective of what UTLA members, parents and our communities have fought so hard for: A sustainable public school district that serves all students.

“LAUSD has joined the NAACP and other key organizations in calling on the state of California for a moratorium on charters,” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. “This is a win for justice, transparency, and common sense. We need to invest in our existing schools, not follow a business model of unregulated growth when new schools are fundamentally not needed in LA.”

The California Charter Schools Association bused students to the meeting, leaving a day of instruction behind to attend. CCSA did so under the false pretense that the board was considering a ban of all charter schools. Teary-eyed students talked during public comment, thinking that their school would be closed if the resolution passed.

Charters have grown exponentially at LAUSD, from 10 in the 2000-01 school year to 277 this year, with the district now the largest charter school authorizer in the nation. The current oversaturation of charter schools means that more than 80 percent of charter schools cannot meet their projected enrollment numbers. This calls into question the charter industry’s assertion that their schools have waiting lists and underscores that there are already more than enough charter schools to meet demand.

Nick Melvoin, who disavows any responsibility over charter school regulation despite being on the school board of the largest charter school authorizer in the country, was the lone vote against the resolution.

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Longview, Texas: New Charter Schools Will Get More Funding than Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
5

The Longview (Texas) News-Journal doesn’t understand why Longview needs charter schools. A chain of 7 is opening.

But the answer, the newspaper says, is money.

The charters will get more money than the public schools. After all, they need more money for field trips, for international field trips. What?

The charter industry is making its move in Texas.

Will Beto stand up for public schools even though his wife operates a charter?

If he doesn’t, he can write off the votes of teachers and public school parents.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, Texas

Virginia: Why Teachers May Strike

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2019 //
16

 

Who deserves more money? Amazon or Virginia’s teachers and children?

In Virginia, many students are learning in trailers while the state offers Amazon a huge tax break.

The Guardian reports that teachers are about to strike sue to low salaries and a huge underinvestment in facilities over the years.

“Due to overcrowding, more than 22,000 students in Fairfax county receive their education in cheaply constructed plywood trailers, often with visible signs of green mold, like those parked next to the baseball fields next to McClean high school.

“Those trailers, the poor state of school funding in general, low teacher pay and now the huge tax breaks the state is giving to lure in Amazon have led the teachers to strike on Monday, the start of the latest in a series of strikes by educators across the US.

“In Fairfax county, the third richest county in America, there are over 800 trailers serving as temporary classrooms because the school district cannot afford to build new classrooms….

”Throughout Virginia, school districts own thousands of cheaply constructed trailers that present health and safety risks. The trailers are often poorly heated, their plywood construction makes them susceptible to mold, and in some schools, students have even reported accidentally falling through their floors.”

The Governor Ralph Northam supports education, but is not offering the schools as much as Amazon.

”While Virginia’s Democratic governor Ralph Northam is proposing to increase education funding by $269m, he has proposed to spend nearly three times as much, $750m, to lure Amazon to northern Virginia. The offer was made to secure Amazon’s “HQ2” – the tech company’s second headquarters which it split between Virginia and a second – equally controversial – site in Long Island City, New York.

“Teachers are pushing back and now are going out in the first statewide teachers’ strikes in Virginia’s history.

“Inspired by a wave of #RedforEd strikes that have swept the nation, teachers in Virginia, who make $9,000 less than the national average, are calling on Northam to nix the tax cuts and instead invest the money into eliminating trailer parks outside of so many of Virginia’s schools.”

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Funding, Resistance, Students, Teacher Pay

Jan Resseger: L.A. Teacher Strike Ending, But State Underfunding of Schools Continues

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2019 //
7

Jan Resseger provides a valuable context for understanding the dismal state of public schools in California. They were once the envy of the nation, but now they are desperately underfunded.

She writes that the bottom line is the urgent need for a 38 percent increase in California school spending—an additional $25.6 billion—with much of the greatest need in the schools serving California’s poorest students—many of them English language learners. Those numbers are essential background for understanding this month’s teachers’ strike in Los Angeles.

California spends somewhat less per pupil than the national average. It spends about the same as South Carolina and Louisiana, which is shocking when you consider that California is the richest state in the nation.

Spending by states:

States that spend more than California:

Alaska, NY, CONN, Maine, Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Penn, RI, Vermont, Wyoming.

Tied with:

Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin.

Spends more than:

Alabama, Az, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, S Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah.

Lowest spending state: Utah and Idaho

Categories Accountability, California, Funding

Los Angeles: Board, UTLA Reach Agreement, Teachers Will Vote on Accord

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2019 //
15

The leadership of the Los Angeles Unified School District reached an agreement with the teachers’ union, UTLA.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/01/22/los-angeles-teachers-reach-agreement-with-district-leaders-end-strike/?utm_term=.c3ff5c71aaea

“Beutner said the agreement provides for a 6 percent pay increase for school employees and a “meaningful class size reduction.” Further information about the pact, he said, would be released later Tuesday.

“
Beutner said that he is still has “tremendous” concerns about the school system’s financial health but that those concerns must be balanced with students’ needs.


“Today and tomorrow, when school opens, begins a new chapter in every classroom,” he said, noting that “40 years of underinvestment in public education” can’t be solved in one week.


“Caputo-Pearl said teachers will review and vote on the contract Tuesday. The agreement, he said, will bring crucial services to students and impose caps on class size.”

Not clear yet whether there was any action to limit charter school expansion.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles

Network for Public Education: Tell Congress to Choose Public Schools, Not Privatization!

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2019 //
9

This week is National School Choice Week.

The Network for Public Education urges you to contact your member of Congress and let them know that you choose public schools, not charters or vouchers.

Since 1994, Congress has allocated billions of dollars to expand and launch charter schools.

This year, Congress will award nearly $500 million to charter schools that are already supported by billionaires.

Stop the School Choice Scam! Congress should allocate money to underfunded public schools, instead of wasting money on charters and vouchers chosen by fewer than 10% of students across the nation.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Federal Government Dishes Out Hundreds of Millions to Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2019 //
13

Just in case you thought that charter schools were very well funded by the Walton Family (the richest family in the world, at nearly $200 billion), the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, Reed Hastings, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, John Arnold, Philip Anschutz, and a slew of other billionaires, think again.

The U.S. Department of Education will award nearly $500 million to expand charter chains this year.

Here are the list of grantees, all of them already overflowing with private and state funding.

Why, you might ask, is the Department of Education (and Congress) funding already well-funded privately managed charter schools?

Why give this kind of money to schools that don’t need it, when there are so many underfunded public schools?

Ask the Republican party. Ask Betsy DeVos. Ask Arne Duncan. Ask Corey Booker. Ask Hakeem Jeffries.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Los Angeles: LAUSD Cries Wolf. Board Has More Than Enough Reserves to Cover Teachers’ Needs

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2019 //
18

Bill Raden of California-based Capital & Main reports that the L.A.school district hasample reserves to meet teachers’s needs.

LAUSD is not infinancial distress, as superintendent Austin Beutner claims. It does not need to cram 40-47 students in a classroom.it can afford full-nurses, librarians, and counselors.

“Capital & Main’s own analysis of the LAUSD budget finds that funding exists that would more than cover UTLA’s core demands without touching the district’s surplus. Our research also raises questions over how much of LAUSD’s budget projections are more of a creative art than a hard-nosed science.

“There is a history of the district crying wolf over negative balances two years out that then never seem to arrive,” agreed former Board District 5 member David Tokofsky. “If the budget were a basketball game, LAUSD would see a 20 point, final quarter lead by the Clippers as too close to call…

“The unresolved issues include contract demands for lowered class sizes, additional nurses, librarians, counselors and social workers. The union also insists that the district commit a significant chunk of a contested, nearly $2 billion budget surplus to increases to bilingual and adult education, and to making major investments in community schooling. The union has also been advocating for curriculum reforms that include a teacher say in achievement testing (UTLA wants less testing) and ethnic studies at every school.

“Class-size reduction is a basic sticking point in the negotiations.
If there has been a single deal-breaker on the table, it is the district’s lack of movement on “Section 1.5” — a contractual holdover from the Great Recession unique to LAUSD and anathema to UTLA because it allows the district to unilaterally raise class sizes. The union wants it gone; the district wants it replace with “Section 1.8,” which would raise some class sizes beyond the current memorandum of understanding that Section 1.5 has nullified.

“Class size is the fundamental issue that we’ve got to deal with,” argued UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl at the January 11 news conference. “Their [insistence] of continuing to . . . be an outlier in the state of California is unacceptable.”

“LAUSD’s last known offer (both sides have agreed to a media blackout during the current round of bargaining) hadn’t budged from its position that the union’s demand for a 6.5 percent pay raise be contingent on cannibalizing the retirement security of future teachers to fund it. What was new on Friday, January 11, was the district’s modest offer to add 200 new hires — or 1,200 in all — for class-size reduction, nurses, librarians and counselors. But for the nation’s second-largest school district, this represented a $130 million drop in a 900-campus bucket — and the lowered levels would expire after one year.

“The offer was extraordinary both for its timing and its explanation of how LAUSD would fund the classroom reductions. The $25 million increase to the $105 million it had previously offered, a district press statement said, would include a recent $10 million pledge by Los Angeles County. It also kicked in $15 million from what LAUSD had estimated would be the $40 million in savings from $3 billion in pay-downs of rate increases and pension liability for CalSTRS, California’s giant teachers’ pension fund, that Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled January 10 in his first state budget.

“UTLA immediately challenged the district’s $40 million windfall estimate, claiming that its own call to the state Department of Finance turned up an additional $100 million in ongoing revenue. By Wednesday, LAUSD had clarified that the $40 million figure merely represented the district’s share from Newsom’s recalculation of this year’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) cost of living adjustment increase, which was revised upward from the November’s projected 2.57 percent to 3.46 percent. (The actual gain, which represents an additional $120 per student for L.A. Unified’s non-charter enrollment, should bring the district closer to $49.2 million).

“The school district didn’t allow Governor Newsom’s recent good financial news to dispel its fiscal gloom.

“The district estimated its takeaway from Newsom’s $700 million contribution rate buy-downs at $60 million over the next three years. But there will also be ongoing cash savings from lowered liability that should be dramatic. (Some have estimated that the buy-downs could be worth as much as $200 million to the district.)

“Newsom’s budget had other good news for LAUSD. It included an extra $576 million to school districts in special education funding, which would be worth roughly $75 million to LAUSD. The biggest windfall, earmarked for early education, should net Los Angeles roughly $180 million as its share of $1.8 billion for expanded kindergarten and preschool and childcare infrastructure (using a longstanding ballpark calculation that LAUSD claims roughly 10 percent of many statewide education appropriations).”

Read it all.

Bottom line: LAUSD can fund all the teachers need and demand.

The district leadership is trying to starve the district of needed resources.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Los Angeles

What I Said at UTLA Rally on January 16 at Alexander Hamilton High School

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2019 //
14

This is a video of my brief remarks at the UTLA rally at Alexander Hamilton High School in Los Angeles on January 16. Hundreds of teachers, parents, students, and supporters picketed that morning in support of UTLA’s just demands for smaller classes and additional resources for nurses, counselors and other staff. The rally also spoke out against the proliferation of charter schools andprivatization. Teachers and students alike tied the diminishing resources in public schools to the expansion of charters and thepoerful, billionaire-funded California Charter School Association. The day before, on January 15, 50,000 people rallied against charters in front of the CCSA headquarters.

This is my summary of yesterday’s stirring rally. The spirit of the Resistance is strong!

UTLA is making history!

The fight goes on.

The whole world is watching.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization

Chicago Teachers Union Blasts Duncan for His Criticism of UTLA

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2019 //
27

This statement was released today by the Chicago Teachers Unuon, the pioneers of #RedForEd in 2012.

Now is a good time to remember CTU President Karen Lewis and her inspirational leadership of the 2012 strike.


Duncan take on LA educators’ strike shows he knows nothing of real student needs

CTU blasts former U.S. education secretary for arguing Los Angeles teachers’ should back off demands in face of ‘lack of resources’ in state with fifth largest economy in the world.

CHICAGO, January 15, 2019—

Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey issued the following statement today in response to public pronouncements – including in The Hill – by former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Los Angeles educators, who began a strike on Monday.

“Arne Duncan has never taught a day in his life. He sent his children to an elite private school with small class sizes and great resources. He landed his job as CEO of Chicago Public Schools through insider ties – where he pushed policies that hurt our public school students’ access to the very same resources his own children had. He’s pushed endlessly for school privatization, and he’s been a national proponent of the teacher blame game as a way to dodge the real need for more resources for public education. Now he wants to silence Los Angeles teachers who are demanding the very supports for their students that Duncan’s children received. That’s the height of hypocrisy.

“LA teachers know what their students need: smaller class sizes, more staff for special education and bilingual education, and the resources and wrap-around supports that allow low-income students of color to thrive as life-long learners and productive adults. Duncan has instead promoted the opposite, by starving neighborhood public schools, promoting privatization and austerity, and purging Black educators from our classrooms. Public education is a right. Duncan has treated it like an afterthought, and has zero credibility with the parents, educators and community residents who care about equity for ALL public students.

“When he’s shilling for management, nowhere does Duncan mention the toxic impact of right wing tax policy on Los Angeles’ Black and Latinx students. He conveniently fails to mention Eli Broad or the Broad Foundation and their scheme to orchestrate the mass privatization of Los Angeles public schools. Instead, Duncan says the union should ‘cooperate’ more with the very management that is seeking to undercut public schools through mass charter expansion. That mirrors his statement almost a decade ago that the devastation of Hurricane Katrina was the ‘best thing’ to happen to New Orleans’ public schools, because it opened the ground for mass charter privatization. As in Chicago under Duncan and his successors, privatization in New Orleans has slashed the number of Black teachers, and more than ten years on, New Orleans’ Black working class parents, students and residents charge that the experiment has failed them. Duncan’s policies profit private operators – and undermine parent voice, public accountability and the educational needs of students.

“Just as Duncan regularly shortchanged CPS by refusing to identify and raise progressive sources of revenue that our schools need, he massively expanded selective enrollment schools for well-off white students. He continued those policies as education czar, to the detriment of school districts across the nation.

“The educational policies he put in motion in Chicago and pushed in Washington have helped drive out thousands of Black families from Chicago, families who struggled to find stable schools for their children at the same time they confronted racist, classist city policies in housing, policing and economic development. As a principal architect of Chicago’s disastrous school closure experiment, Duncan was CEO during the first wave of massive charter expansion in Chicago – forcing neighborhood public schools that had been under-resourced for decades into brutal educational hunger games that have left neighborhood schools starved for resources. As US Education Secretary, he promoted the misnamed ‘Race to the Top’, publicly blaming teachers for the dire consequences of racist school funding practices and endless austerity. He’s dismissed class size as an issue – an excuse to purge thousands of Black public educators in Chicago, at a time when a growing body of research shows that our schoolchildren need more, not fewer, educators of color.

“We need the opposite of what Duncan brought to the table in Chicago and what he proposes in LA. We need smaller class sizes, respect for veteran teachers of color, progressive forms of revenue to adequately support public school students, adequate staffing for special education and bilingual education, and a school nurse in every school. We need an end to the failed school privatization experiment. And we need respect for the voices of parents and educators who are sick of being shortchanged by the political elites that Duncan serves. Instead of asking Los Angeles teachers to shut up and accept less for their students, Duncan should be denouncing the very policies he implemented that have so profoundly harmed public education across the nation.”

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Class size, Duncan, Arne, Funding, Los Angeles, Unions
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