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Jesse Hagopian: What the Los Angeles Teachers Won

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2019 //
1

 

Jesse Hagopian, a teacher activist in Seattle, immersed himself in the UTLA Strike in Los Angeles to learn what teachers won. He interviewed Gillian Russom, a history teacher at Roosevelt High School and member of the United Teachers of Los Angeles Board of Directors, about how the strike was organized, the significant gains it made for students, and implications for the ongoing uprising of teachers around the country..

This is what he learned.  

The key lesson is that the model was the zchicago strike of 2012. Even though Karen Lewis stepped down due to her health issues, she and her vision continues to inspire teachers.

There’s been a long history around the country of progressive caucuses fighting for unions to be more active, and to have a broader vision and a broader set of alliances in our struggles. The Chicago 2012 strike and the work of CORE—Caucus of Rank and File Educators—leading up to that strike really helped to educate so many of us around the country and clarified our direction. I’ve been a teacher and union activist in Los Angeles for eighteen years and I studied what worked in Chicago and joined together with others to help bring those lessons here to LA.

In 2013, we pushed for a referendum within our union calling for a campaign for the “Schools LA Students Deserve.” This was modeled off of the Chicago teachers who based their strike around their own “schools our students deserve,” aiming to draw in parents, students, and the community.

Our agenda for union transformation basically came down to transforming the union from a top-down service model to an organizing model. We were crafting our agenda of union demands in conversation with community allies so that it would be an agenda that would draw the active participation of people beyond our own union membership. Up until 2014, we still had a model of one union rep for every school, including massive high schools of like 100 teachers.

 

 

Categories Chicago, Los Angeles, Resistance, Teachers, Unions

West Virginia Teachers Authorize a New Walkout If Legislature Passes Offfensive Bill

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2019 //
9

Teachers in West Virginia warned that they are still united and #55Strong and prepared to renew their walkout if the legislature passes a bill that contains obnoxious provisions that affect their working conditions and charter schools.

Last year every school in the state’s 55 counties closed down and teachers marched on the State Capitol to demand a 5% pay raise. The governor agreed he would not permit charter school legislation.

The legislature, however, passed a bill that authorized both charters and vouchers.

The announcement comes a day after the House Education Committee approved a stripped down strike-and-insert version of Senate Bill 451 — as compared to what was passed earlier this week in the Senate.

The House Education Committee’s version removes many of the provisions opposed by educators and the leaders of their unions, including provisions that would force members to sign off annually on the deduction of union dues, education savings accounts, and withholding pay during a strike. A non-severability clause — which would make the entire measure null and void should any of its provisions be struck down in a court challenge — was also pulled from the committee’s proposal.

Other provisions in the bill — including the establishment of charter schools — have been significantly altered through amendments in the committee.

While union leaders say they are happy with the bill being whittled away, nothing is final until the legislation is signed by Gov. Jim Justice. The House Education Committee’s strike-and-insert amendment is also merely formative until it is adopted on the chamber floor. If approved with any changes to the version passed by the Senate, the bill would be sent back to the upper chamber.

The teachers of West Virginia have the fighting spirit of the coal miners of that state.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Resistance, Teachers, Unions, Vouchers, West Virginia

Eric Blanc: Five Big Lessons from the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2019 //
14

Eric Blanc has covered the wave of teachers’ strikes that started in March 2018. He has been on the ground at everystrike, talking to the rank and file to get their perspectives as working teachers.

In this article, he describes the big lessons of the strike on Los Angeles.

He begins:

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this victory in the country’s second-largest school district. Against considerable odds, Los Angeles teachers have dealt a major blow against the forces of privatization in the city and nationwide. By taking on Democratic politicians in a deep-blue state, LA’s strike will certainly deepen the polarization within the Democratic Party over education reform and austerity. And by demonstrating the power of striking, LA educators have inspired educators nationwide to follow suit.

With new walkouts now looming in Denver, Oakland, Virginia, and beyond, it makes sense to reflect on the reasons why LA’s school workers came out on top—and what their struggle can teach people across the United States. Here are the five main takeaways.

Strikes Work: For decades, workers and the labor movement have been on the losing side of a one-sided class war. A major reason for this is that unions have largely abandoned the weapon of work stoppages, their most powerful point of leverage against employers. Rallies, marches, and civil disobedience are good, but they’re not enough.

Like the red state rebellions of 2018, the depth of the victory in Los Angeles underscores why the future of organized labor depends on reviving the strike. LA also shows that the most powerful strikes, particularly in the public sector, fight not only for the demands of union members, but on behalf of the broader community as well—an approach the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) calls “bargaining for the common good.”

The Status Quo Is Discredited: LA’s educator revolt is a particularly sharp expression of a nationwide rejection of decades of neoliberalism. Unlike many labor actions, this was not primarily a fight around wages—rather it was a political struggle against the billionaires and their proxies in government.

Like the electoral insurgencies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, the upsurge of Los Angeles rank-and-file teachers, and the overwhelming support they received from the parents of their students, shows that working people are looking for an alternative to business as usual. Work actions like LA’s will be an essential part of any movement capable of defeating Trump and the far right.

That’s only lesson number one and two.

Keep reading to learn the other lessons.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Resistance, Teacher Education, Teachers, Unions

Denver Teachers Vote to Strike!

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2019 //
12

The Teacher Revolt continues!

Fred Klonsky reports here that 93% of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association voted to strike.

Denver has been the epicenter of merit pay since 2005. It has confused and demoralized teachers.

The city school board is completely dominated and bought by reformers, who hold every seat, thanks to out-of-state money. The board has jumped on the portfolio model, closing public schools and opening charter schools. Typically the charters and other alternatives are non-union. Betsy DeVos has praised the Denver model, and hopes it will one day add vouchers.

Read Tom Ultican’s appraisal of the failure of Denver’s portfolio district.

Be it noted that Colorado just elected a Democratic Governor Jared Polis, who started two charter schools, and strongly supports school choice, not public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Denver, Education Industry, Education Reform, Merit pay, Portfolio District, Privatization, Teachers, Testing, Unions

Cory Booker Opens His Presidential Campaign in New Orleans

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2019 //
55

Cory Booker sent a complicated message at his campaign kickoff in New Orleans at Xavier University, where he was sponsored by charter chain and spoke to students.

He told the audience that the power of the people outweighs the power of money.

This is inspirational indeed. It says that those of us fighting the power of the Walton family, the Sackler family, the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the DeVos family, Paul Singer, and the many other billionaires attacking our public schools will WIN and the billionaires WILL LOSE.

We–the people–will defeat the powerful.

We will not let them close our public schools with their lies and propaganda. We will not let them turn other American cities into New Orleans.

We want every aspirant for the presidency in 2020–any party–to say where they stand on the issue of the future of public schools, the future of the teaching profession, and the future of collective bargaining.

Thanks, Cory, for reminding us that the power of the people can beat the billionaires and Wall Street, especially those privatizers and hedge funders now supporting your campaign. Itworked for Obama, but it won’t work for you. We know now about the privatization movement.

Tell us where you stand on privatization, the teaching profession, and unions. Or let us guess.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, Unions

Peter Greene: Charter Leader Jeanne Allen Says LA Should “Fire All the Teachers”

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2019 //
31

Talk about a hard line! Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform urges LAUSD to fire all the striking teachers!

PeterGreene writes about it here.

Jeanne Allen is a true rightwinger, out there on the edge.

She looks back nostalgically to 1981, when Ronald Reagan broke a strike by the air controllers union by threatening to fire them all if they didn’t return. To work at once.

Her advice to the LAUSD:

In a post-Janus world, teacher unions cannot exist and continue to gain members unless they demonstrate and prove their value. This strike, like others we’re seeing around the country, is a desperate attempt by the union to maintain relevance in a day and age where they can
no longer require teachers to join.

California needs to break the district up into 100 different pieces, have much smaller units, and allow for the freedom, flexibility, access and innovation that’s happening in charters. If it weren’t for charter schools, education in L.A. would be at the level of Mississippi. The UTLA sees charters
as such a threat to the status quo that it is willing want to hurt students kids even more to score a victory against charters.

My advice to the district: Hold strong. Replace them all. If they want a dramatic impact on education, fire the union and begin to repair the schools, just like Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.

Peter Greene says that Jeanne Allen makes no pretense of being benign and caring. She despises public schools and teachers unions. She has no mask. She believes in privatizing schools, period.

Peter takes her seriously and wonders where LA would find another 30,000 or so teachers to replace the current force.

That’s very kind of him but the reality is that California is a blue state, a state where union-busting is absurd. A new poll by the ABC local station found that the trachers’ Strike has overwhelming public support (about 2/3 support it) and in,y 15% oppose the teachers.

Ain’t gonna happen, Jeanne!

Here’s an idea: how about giving teachers in LA the same salary as Jeanne Allen and call it a day. They work harder and have jobs of far more social value than hers.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Unions

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

Rebecca Klein: The Los Angeles Strike Will Affect the Future of the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2019 //
48

Rebecca Klein, education editor at Huffington Post, predicts that the LA teachers strike will play a large role in the future of the Democratic Party.

Oneof the reasons for the strike is the LAUSD’s pro-charter majority, elected by the cash of billionaireswho want to eliminate public schools and unions. These billionaires, like Eli Broad and Reed Hastings, claim to be Democrats.

In Los Angeles, charter schools drain $600 million every year from public schools.

Real Democrats support public schools and unions, not private management of schools.

Real Democrats do not make alliances with the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and DeVos.

Every Democratic candidate for president in 2020 should join the UTLA picket line and show: Which side are you on?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Los Angeles, Privatization, Unions

Los Angeles: UTLA Sees Big Risks, Big Rewards by Standing Up for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2019 //
14

What is at stake in the looming teachers’ strike in Los Angeles?

This article in Capital & Main provides a good summary.

A teacher walkout would cast the strike as a challenge to the creeping absorption of public schools by charter management organizations.

If Los Angeles’ public school teachers go on strike Monday, they will face off against a school district headed by superintendent Austin Beutner, a multimillionaire investment banker and former L.A. Times publisher with no experience in education policy. Perhaps more important, this strike will play out on an education landscape that has radically changed since 1989, when the United Teachers Los Angeles union last walked out. Foremost has been the national rise of charter schools — which, in California, are tax-supported, nonprofit schools that operate within public school districts, yet with far less oversight and transparency than traditional schools. Only a fraction of charter schools are unionized, a situation preferred by the charters’ most influential supporters, who include some of California’s wealthiest philanthropists.

Read More About the Potential ‘Meta-Strike’

For 21 months negotiations have ground on between UTLA and the second-largest district in the nation. (The Los Angeles Unified School District enrolls 640,000 students.) The more nuts-and-bolts issues on the table include union demands for a 6.5 percent pay raise, a limit to class sizes (that can now hover around 38 pupils per classroom), and a push for more support staff such as nurses and librarians.

Kent Wong, executive director of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Labor Center, notes that UTLA’s demands have moved away from larger raises and toward more funding to alleviate the deep education cuts that have been made over the years.

“It is important to understand the bigger forces at work here,” said Wong, who added that the pro-charter forces have invested millions of dollars to elect a pro-charter majority on the Los Angeles school board to shift resources from public schools to charters.

To be clear, the union is fighting for the survival of public education and against the forces of privatization.

Now is the time for all those involved to decide: Which side are you on? The plutocrats or the working teachers and other educators in public schools?

Which side are YOU on?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Unions

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
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