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Alex Caputo-Pearl: Why LA Teachers May Be Forced to Strike

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2019 //
10

Alex Caputo-Pearl is president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles. He explains why teachers may strike.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-caputo-pearl-teachers-strike-20190106-story.html

He writes:

Teachers in Los Angeles may be forced to strike on Jan. 10.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a record-breaking reserve of nearly $2 billion that should be spent on its resource-starved students. Yet Supt. Austin Beutner, a multimillionaire with experience in corporate downsizing but none in education, argues that the reserve is already accounted for in future spending, and that cuts should be made. He simultaneously refuses to talk about charter school regulations, calling the issue a “shiny ball” that distracts from the real issues.

District officials have cast the impasse as a funding problem. But at its heart, the standoff between L.A. Unified and United Teachers Los Angeles is a struggle over the future of public education.

Consider the conditions within the district. Class sizes often exceed 45 students in secondary schools; 35 students in upper elementary grades; and 25 students in lower elementary grades.

The district does not have nearly enough counselors, psychologists or librarians to give students the support they need, and 80% of schools don’t even have full-time nurses. Unnecessary standardized testing is pushing the arts and ethnic studies out of the curriculum.

Parents have little say over how funding is spent at their schools. Charter schools, which are operated mostly by corporate chains, have expanded by 287% over the last 10 years, draining more than $600 million from non-charter schools every year. Salaries for educators are low compared to surrounding districts, a significant disadvantage as L.A. Unified tries to recruit and retain teachers during a national shortage.

With the vast majority of our students coming from low-income neighborhoods of color, there is no way to describe the persistence of such conditions other than racial discrimination.
Working together with parents, the teachers union has put forward proposals to address many of these issues. Over 20 months of negotiations, the district has responded with inadequate counter-proposals.

Meanwhile, Beutner has moved ahead with what we believe is his agenda to dismantle the district. Through an outside foundation, he has brought on firms that have led public school closures and charter expansion in some districts where they have worked, from New Orleans to Washington, D.C. This approach, drawn from Wall Street, is called the “portfolio” model, and it has been criticized for having a negative effect on student equity and parent inclusion.

It is for many of these reasons that 98% of L.A. Unified’s educators voted to authorize a strike. Parents are actively supporting the teachers. There were many parents among the estimated 50,000 people who attended the UTLA March for Public Education on Dec. 15.
Beutner has attempted to narrow the issues mainly to salary. Educators will not be bought off. We need a host of improvements for our students.

Beutner has also said that the district doesn’t have reserves that will last longer than two to three years. The reality is that L.A. Unified had a reserve of $1.86 billion at the end of the 2017-18 school year. Its latest budget documents show the reserve growing to $1.97 billion in the 2018-19 school year.
The district warns about a fiscal cliff, but its warnings ring hollow. Three years ago, district officials projected that the 2017-18 reserve would be $105 million. They were off by more than $1.7 billion.

L.A. Unified has also overestimated its spending on books and other supplies over the last five years to the tune of hundreds of millions, meaning more money is available. The district has also failed to collect the full amounts owed by charters that are located on its campuses.

My colleagues and I agree with Beutner on at least one thing: The real long-term solution is for Sacramento to increase statewide school funding. It is downright shameful that the richest state in the country ranks 43rd out of 50 when it comes to per-pupil spending.

We have been working to change this. Beutner should help by supporting legislation to close the carried interest loophole, which has allowed hedge fund managers to inappropriately classify income as capital gains. This could bring hundreds of millions to schools annually.

He should also build support among the wealthy for Schools and Communities First, which closes the corporate loophole in Proposition 13 and could bring up to $5 billion in new annual funding to public schools. This is on the 2020 ballot.

United Teachers Los Angeles’ struggle for a fair contract is just one part of a broader movement for students, families and schools. We will engage in whatever talks are possible before Jan. 10 to avert a strike. But for talks to be successful, the district needs to commit to improve public schools.

I have taught in Compton and at Crenshaw High School. I have been in my own children’s classrooms. And I have visited hundreds of other schools. There is wonderful promise in the students at all of our schools. But although they are surrounded by wealth, students across the city are not getting what they deserve

Enough is enough. Invest in our students now.

Categories Class size, Education Reform, Funding, Los Angeles, Teachers, Unions

Nancy Bailey: Arne Duncan Can’t Stop Peddling the Dangerous Corporate Reform Dogma

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2019 //
47

Nancy E. Bailey is turning into a superstar of education blogging. She is a retired teacher and she has a firm understanding of corporate reform and its dangers.

In this post, she reviews Arne Duncan’s stubborn embrace of dangerous corporate reform.

I will copy only a portion of the post. I urge you to read it all, because it is priceless as an evisceration of failed “reformer” ideas. You should also see her links, which are many.

She writes:

With Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, it might be tempting to see Arne Duncan as an educational expert, but Duncan has never formally studied education, or been a teacher. Duncan paved the way for DeVos.

EdSurge recently brought us Arne Duncan’s 6 lessons about education. They are nothing but the same old corporate reforms that have destroyed public schools and the futures of children for years.

The lessons are wrong.

Here are his claims and my anti-arguments.

He emphasizes early childhood education and the economy.

While there’s a school-to-work connection, especially with older students in high school, teaching young children should be about their development, not promoting the economy.

Too often this message results in pushing young children to work at a higher level than they’re capable.

The report of which Duncan refers is by James J. Heckman, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. It highlights the economy and the nation’s workforce.

Here are the subheadings of the article.

*Early childhood development drives success in school and life.
*Investing in early childhood education for at-risk children is an effective strategy for reducing social costs.
*Investing in early childhood education is a cost-effective strategy for promoting economic growth.
*Make greater investments in young children to see greater returns in education, health and productivity.

His thoughts about equity are misleading.

Duncan argues that poor children need something different than what wealthy students find in their schools.

But poor children deserve well-run schools, with resources and qualified teachers, not strict charter schools run by management companies and novices.

Most charter schools care more about their bottom line.

Feeding poor children and health screenings should be a part of every school plan.

If Duncan cared so much about grief and trauma in children, why didn’t we see an increase in counselors, school nurses, and school psychologists under his watch?

He claims class sizes don’t matter.

This has been the refrain by reformers like Bill Gates for years and it is false.

Here’s the STAR study as one example in favor of lowering class size.

Lowering class sizes would help teachers have better overall classroom management.

Students would be safer, and children would get a better grasp of reading and other subjects in the early years.

He says teachers matter more than class size.

Real teacher qualifications matter. But that’s not what Duncan is talking about.

He is promoting the faulty idea that a “good” teacher can manage huge class sizes. Of course, this makes no sense.

This is also connected in a roundabout way to replacing teachers with technology. Imagine one teacher teaching thousands online.

Duncan has always been on the side of Teach for America fast-track trained teachers. Consider that they will likely become charter school facilitators, babysitters, when students face screens for their schooling.

He uses teachers as the fix for poverty.

This is an old and dangerous refrain. This message drove No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. It made standardized testing and one-size-fits all common practice.

Teachers can help students, but economic forces are greater than anything a child can learn at school.

Blaming teachers for the problems in the economy, has always been about getting the public to take their eyes off the real culprit of economic woes, the greed of those who run corporations!

Please read on. This is a great post!

Categories Charter Schools, Childhood, Class size, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Economy, Education Industry, Poverty, Privatization, Teachers, Testing

Support Teachers Against Child Detention! Speak Out!

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2019 //
5

This is an important group. Join them.

Many “teachers of the year” have joined to speak out against child detention.

If you think that our government should not separate children from their parents and detain them in camps or cages, please speak up.

Support Teachers Against Child Detention!

Categories Cruelty, Teachers

Los Angeles Parents Supporting Teachers

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2018 //
6

Parents are preparing for the teachers’ strike on January 10 by creating a FB page to support their teachers.

Parent Jenna Schwartz started a FB Page called “Parents Supporting Teachers.”

If you live in LA, join them.

Categories Los Angeles, Parent Groups, Parents, Teachers

Los Angeles Hires Hundreds of Scabs to Replace Thousands of Teachers Who Are Likely to Strike

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2018 //
31

Los Angeles is about to try to prove that class size doesn’t matter. The district, on orders from investment banker Austin Beutner, has hired about 400 substitutes to fill in for thousands of teachers who are preparing to strike on January 10. Let’s see: 400 teachers for 600,000 students. Those are very large classes!

As leaders of Los Angeles Unified School District and United Teachers Los Angeles remain locked in an impasse over a new contract, the district has hired hundreds of substitute staffers to replace picketing educators in the event of a potential strike come Jan. 10. But the move has sparked outrage from the union.

The districts’ preliminary move, alongside the union’s strike preparations, is a sign of the increasing likelihood of a strike that would be LAUSD’s first since 1989 and stands to impact the daily operations of hundreds of schools in the country’s second largest district.

LA Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner said Thursday that the district remains “at the bargaining table” but is actively preparing for teachers’ absence by hiring approximately 400 substitute teachers and fallback instruction for students.

“We have hired substitutes, we have made plans as to alternate curriculums for days that there is a strike but our goal is to make sure schools are safe and open so kids continue to learn,” Beutner said on Thursday. “My concern first and foremost is the safety and well being of our students.”

The move to hire replacement staff drew a sharp rebuke from the union over the last two days.

“It is outrageously irresponsible for Supt. Austin Beutner to force this strike when the district holds $1.9 billion in reserves and it is even more irresponsible to think that 400 substitutes can educate more than 600,000 students,” UTLA said in a statement Friday. “We believe that it is illegal for the district to hire people outside our bargaining unit to teach in LAUSD classrooms.”

Categories Los Angeles, Teachers, Union

Peter Greene on Arizona’s Gag Law for Teachers

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2018 //
15

Peter Greene believes that Arizona’s proposed gag law is part of a national reaction to teacher activism. If you can’t beat ’em, silence them, is the mantra.

He traces the trend towards silencing teachers to legislators in Pennsylvania and Virgina, and then back to fringe-right agitator David Horowitz and rightwing corporate bill-mill ALEC.

Greene writes:

All of the rules make sense when one considers the source– a racist authoritarian xenophobic alt-right wingnut. This is not just about shutting down teachers (it really is bigger than being anti-#RedforEd) but about making sure that teachers cannot interfere with the imposition of a white supremacist alt-right dreamland.

The second thing we can say with certainty about this proposal is that Rep. Finchem [of Arizona] did not whip it up himself after some conversations with concerned parents. HB 2002 is part of a wider attempt to shut teachers up so that they can’t exercise First Amendment rights– particularly not in ways that would contradict white nationalists .

It’s a bill that deserves to die. And Rep. Finchem is a man who deserves some extra attention, to see just who feeds him these kinds of anti-American anti-freedom ideas for bills.

It is a fascinating and ugly trail and worth your while to follow it to see where it leads.

Don’t forget the First Amendment. It is not fake. It is real.

Categories Arizona, Freedom of Speech, Teachers

Fortune: America Is Losing Teachers at a Record Rate

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2018 //
30

Fortune magazine notes that teachers quitting their jobs at a record rate.

What kind of an education system will we have without teachers who are devoted to their profession, without teachers who are professionals?

What kind of a nation will we be?

Are the billionaires hoping to fill classrooms with computers that don’t expect pay or healthcare or pensions?

Frustrated by little pay and better opportunities elsewhere, public school teachers and education employees in the United States are quitting their jobs at the fastest rate on record.

During the first 10 months of the year, public educators, including teachers, community college faculty members, and school psychologists, quit their positions at a rate of 83 per 10,000, Labor Department figures obtained by The Wall Street Journal show. That’s the highest rate since the government started collecting the data in 2001. It’s also nearly double the 48 per 10,000 educators who quit their positions in 2009, the year with the lowest number of departures.

According to the report, teachers are leaving for a variety of reasons. Unemployment is low, which means there are other, potentially more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. Better pay, coupled with tight budgets and, in some cases, little support from communities could also push educators to other positions.

In third quarter, public education workers saw their pay rise 2.2% compared to the prior year. However, that was still below the 3.1% pay hike those who work in the private sector earned, according to the Journal report.

But despite the challenges teachers and other education employees face, they’re still more dedicated to their positions and their students than most. So far this year, American workers left their positions at a rate of 231 per 10,000, or nearly four-times the rate at which teachers left their positions.

Oh, well, there is some consolation in knowing that American workers are leaving their jobs too. This is the sound of a very unhappy nation with a depressed and unhappy workforce.

Categories Teacher Shortage, Teachers

Bill Raden from Los Angeles: Buckle Your Seat Belts, Strike Ahead!

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2018 //
3

Bill Raden, education writer for Capital & Main in California, writes about the looming teachers’ strike in Los Angeles.

Fasten your seatbelts Los Angeles, it’s going to be a bumpy strike. That was the subtext to a tumultuous week that saw over 50,000 L.A. teachers, students and families take to the streets Saturday to support a union faced with budgetary saber-rattling by Los Angeles Unified, and that climaxed on Wednesday with United Teachers Los Angeles president Alex Caputo-Pearl setting a January 10 walkout date — unless Los Angeles Unified negotiators meet key union demands for investments in the district’s highest-poverty students.

Caputo-Pearl’s announcement came a day after L.A. Unified superintendent Austin Beutner erroneously claimed that the union had accepted the district’s six percent pay raise offer, as recommended in Tuesday’s report by state-appointed fact-finders who also urged LAUSD to kick in the modest equivalent of a one to three percent salary increase for new hires to reduce class sizes, and for both sides to work together to lobby Sacramento for more state funding.

Fact-finding panel chairman David A. Weinberg mostly punted on 19 of 21 unresolved equity demands that form the heart of what UTLA has framed as a fight to save L.A.’s “civic institution of public education.” The union won some minor points, like the allowing of teacher input on charter co-locations, and on scrapping a district privilege to unilaterally lift class size caps during fiscal crunches. But by accepting at face value LAUSD’s latest claims of imminent bankruptcy, Weinberg left unanswered a critical question: How could LAUSD annually project catastrophic, three-year deficits and still have its unrestricted cash reserves balloon from $500 million to nearly $2 billion during the same five-year period?

“We have watched underfunding and actions of privatizers undermine our students and our schools for too long. No more,” Caputo-Pearl warned on Wednesday.

Categories Accountability, Class size, Funding, Los Angeles, Resistance, Teachers, Union

Eric Blanc: The Blue State Teachers’ Revolt Is On! L.A. Teachers Plan to Strike on January 10!

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2018 //
9

Eric Blanc has covered the teacher revolts in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, and every other state where teachers said “Enough is enough.”

He writes for Jacobin.

Now, he says, the Blue State Teachers’ Revolt is on!

It’s official: Los Angeles teachers just announced they are going to strike on January 10. They’re challenging not just public education privatizers, but the Democratic Party establishment.

After months of contract negotiations, Los Angeles teachers have announced that, unless the LA school district leadership gives a dramatic set of last-minute concessions, they will begin a strike on January 10. The stakes of the struggle could hardly be higher. In the second-largest school district in the country, educators have thrown down the gauntlet against the forces of big business, gentrification, and privatization — including those within the Democratic Party.

The teachers’ revolt sparked by West Virginia has now spread to the “bluest” state of them all, California. LA’s schools show why the crisis of public education can’t be blamed only on Republicans. Huge class sizes, low per-pupil funding, rampant charter schools, over-testing, a lack of counselors, nurses, and librarians — these are the fruit of years of Democratic rule in the city and the state capitol.

“Corporate Democrats are getting money from the same billionaires and corporations as the Republicans,” explains United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) Secretary Arlene Inouye, “so essentially all public educators in this country are targets.” In Los Angeles, deep-pocketed pro-charter ideologues recently installed Austin Beutner — a billionaire investment banker with zero educational experience — as superintendent. Their plan is straightforward: drastically downsize the school district to push students into privately run charter schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization, Teachers, Testing, Unions

Kentucky: The Fight for Teachers’ and Other Public Sector Pensions is Far from Over

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2018 //
14

Lessons from Kentucky: Stay informed, stay alert, keep your powder dry, and be prepared to protest again and again.

Last night, the Kentucky legislature adjourned a special session that was supposed to fix the state’s public sector pensions, because they were unable to untangle a complex problem on short notice.

But Randy Wieck warns that the fight is far from over.

Fred Klonsky explains here:

A week ago the Kentucky Supreme Court struck down a pension theft bill that was passed by the Kentucky legislature in the dark of night last March under false pretensions as a sewage bill and signed by Governor Matt Bevin.

Thousands of red-shirted Kentucky teachers hit the streets in protest.

The bill stripped all the ‘local provision of wastewater services’ language out of SB151 and replaced it with language cutting pension benefits and language that would essentially privatize an already massively underfunded pension system.

That bill, SB 151, was the bill that the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional last week.

No sooner had the Court ruled than I received word from pension activist Randy Wieck. Randy is a Kentucky teacher who has been fighting pension theft for years.

“This is a ruling merely on the method of passing reforms, not the madness of pension theft, ongoing for many years,” wrote Randy.

Randy was right.

Republican Governor Matt Bevin called a pre-Christmas special session of the state legislature on Monday in order to try again to cut public employee pensions.

Two bills were introduced by a GOP committee chair that constituted a revised version of the pension “reform” bill struck down by the Kentucky Supreme Court for violating transparency.

Read on.

Categories Kentucky, Pensions, Teachers
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