Showing posts with label Alex Caputo-Pearl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alex Caputo-Pearl. Show all posts

Monday, July 14, 2014

#AFT14 Video - LATU Caputo-Pearl Lays Out Vision of SJ Unionism - And it Includes the S and D Words

Unity Loyalty Oath Precludes use of S and D words
Taboo words in the UFT: Strike and Democracy

Newly Elected Los Angeles Teachers Union President Alex Caputo-Pearl lays out a vision for a social justice movement based union at AFT forum on Social Justice unionism as part of a panel with union presidents from NYC, Chicago, St. Paul, Houston and Philadelphia.

And holy crap - he actually utters the word "strike." And says there is no social justice unionism without a democratic union. I enjoyed watching the large number of Unity Caucus people's faces go blank.

(And oh when Karen Lewis followed up later talking about how the officers in the CTU took a big pay cut -- there must be a hundred Unity Caucus members who make more money than Karen.)

And lots of other stuff - with Mulgrew sitting 2 seats away. See if Mulgrew does any squirming while Alex speaks. I couldn't think of one thing the UFT does that matches what Alex says - Karen Lewis sits between them.

Their videos will be up in a few days - I'm sitting in the hotel bar with a few beers waiting for the shuttle to the airport and will be in no shape to edit videos.

http://youtu.be/SnUSbadLGws



Here's an article by Howard Blum on the forum and Alex' statement - and I saw stuff on the LA local news too. Way to get it going after 11 days in office.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-caputopearl-teachers-strike-20140713-story.html

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

LA Dreamin: Alex Caputo-Pearl Wins Run-Off for Presidency with 80% Over Incumbent Warren Fletcher

Breaking: Alex Caputo-Pearl, the Union Power candidate for UTLA President, just defeated Warren Fletcher, the incumbent UTLA President, in the run-off election, winning 80% of the vote, completing a Union Power sweep. Alex won just short of 50% in round 1.

Alex is well-known nationally:

...half the teachers at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles found out they had been dismissed from their jobs as part of a "conversion" process. Among them was Alex Caputo-Pearl, who I first met two years ago when I reported on Crenshaw. This isn't the first time the district has attempted to remove Caputo-Pearl, an outspoken activist, from Crenshaw. In 2006, as he was organizing neighborhood parents to fight for better school resources, such as up-to-date computers, he was forcibly transferred to a more affluent school across town. Parents complained and he was eventually reinstated. Caputo-Pearl is part of a dissident, left caucus within the L.A. teachers' union, and he has written in the New York Times about why he has become a critic of Teach for America. He opposes tying teacher evaluation and pay to student test scores, and is critical of the expansion of the charter school sector. 
---- Dana Goldstein"An Activist Teacher, a Struggling School, and the School Closure Movement: A Story from L.A.", May 2013
For those who say only a caucus with a bread and butter program can win, we give you the latest developments.

We expected Alex to win but this is overwhelming. Alex was in the first class of Teach for America over 20 years ago but never left the classroom. He did social justice work and was a target of administrators for his organizing ability.

Back in the summer of 2009 I went to LA with Megan Behrent and Sally Lee for meetings with unionists from Washington DC, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago and LA. We learned a hell of a lot. On my last day I had the wonderful experience of hanging out with the crew from CORE when they were invited over to Alex' house for breakfast. What deep education conversations took place, especially between Alex and CORE's Jackson Potter and Kritsine Mayle, both of whom were helping run the Chicago TU less than a year later.

The LA people had a share of power on the Exec Bd, went backwards in the next election but formed new coalitions with Alex leading the way.

The CORE crew from Chicago also had to take part in a runoff after getting about a third of the vote. In the runoff against the Unity Caucus-equivalent caucus in power, they captured over 60%. The broom sweeps clean.

One of our friends from DC who was at the 2009 event, Candi Peterson, is not VP of the Washington Teachers Union.

It is astounding that the ed press has such little recognition of this revolution going on in so many urban school systems, mostly from the impact of ed deform and the collaborative nature of the union leadership in power for so long. 

Of course MORE, in the belly of the beast, with a Unity Caucus still powerful and geared up to fight off any challenge from the school level up, has a long way to go.

Randi is smart enough to recognize this threat and she has been taking mildly stronger stances -- but always watch what she does, not what she says. Remember - she joined the original board of inBloom, now defunct and buried (by Leonie). Her instincts are ed deform, but she is no dummy - Alex's victory by such a large margin will get her attention.

Of course we will see the ultra left attack Alex for not being willing to drive the union off a cliff. And there will be attacks on Alex from the right and ed deform crew in general.

Below the jump are just a few links to EdNotes articles mentioning Alex - Or just use the search box.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

LA Teacher Union Election Wrinkle in Time

At the presidential forum...., where the issue was first made public, Caputo-Pearl defended his school site visits. “It’s a way to level the playing field [with Fletcher] who is allowed to be out there, talking to teachers everyday,” he said in an interview with LA School Report. He also said he made all necessary provisions to ensure his students would not be affected. Caputo-Pearl said the district has no right to prevent him from stumping. “Classroom teachers and health and human service workers are incensed that the District has attacked my contractual and legal right to take unpaid personal leave,” he told LA School Report. “When that is taken away by the District – this is classic management interference in a union election, and a glaring unfair labor practice, which we are pursuing filing.”... Alex Caputo-Pearl, LATU Presidential Candidate
Why do I report on union elections outside our city? Because there is so much to learn. What if Julie Cavanagh has been given time off to campaign to counter Mulgrew's full-time campaign? In the 2010 Chicago campaign Karen Lewis was given time to campaign - she even had someone booking her into schools. James Eterno informed me this not allowed in our union. I wonder if this is due to the DOE or the UFT/Unity Caucus influence, which clearly would not want to see this happen. But what if there were a rule here that for the 30 days before an election a presidential candidate could be given time off to make lunchtime appearances in schools for a certain amount of days?

This story below dug up by Francesco Portelos is about a month old but an interesting point given Alex Caputo-Pearl's 48% vote total while incumbent Warren Fletcher received less than half that total. As Alex points out, Fletcher could campaign full-time so the fact that Alex more than doubled his vote is a great sign that campaigning has an impact --- getting a candidate out there is crucial and here in NYC it is impossible for a challenger to Unity to make school visits. Ideally, an opposition would run someone on sabbatical or leave - and MORE for a while considered running Brian Jones for president since he is on study/child care leave and could make school appearances. Actually, he still could have done so and maybe we dropped the ball on not making better use of Brian during the election.

Even though the LA vote total was as bad as it was here in NYC, I believe Alex' victory (if he wins the run-off -- and anything is possible) means something. As I've been pointing out, the AFT convention in LA this summer may be interesting if a coalition forms between insurgents around the nation, including the split-off from statewide Unity in NYSUT. Randi will try to head off any national insurgency by telling everyone she agrees with them -- watch her run to hug Alex. She will sound more militant over the next 6 months. She knows she can count on the 800 Unity Caucus slugs to be there for her but one thing is emerging -- her presidency may be safe (the only one who could challenge her is Karen Lewis and I don't see that happening) but the Unity Caucus control over the national AFT convention will show some serious signs of slippage as battles emerge over control of the committees where a lot of the work takes place.

A MORE contingent hopes to be there to report.

Here are my last 2 reports on the LA elecion where I do some analysis:
LA Teacher Union Election: Union Power Slate Domin...

Insurgent Slate Wins Big in Leadership Race for L...

Older pieces on Alex can be found by using the ed notes search box.

Misunderstood election rules upsetting UTLA candidates

Alex Caputo-Pearl, far right, at UTLA Forum last week
Alex Caputo-Pearl, far right, at UTLA Forum last week

Recent campaign appearances by Alex Caputo-Pearl at schools around LA Unified have ignited a dispute among candidates for UTLA offices who say election rules — such as they are  – are being applied unfairly. The conflict has also brought into focus how misunderstood the rules seem to be.
The source of the infighting is what some candidates perceive as their right to campaign at school campuses during working hours.
The conflict arose last week after Caputo-Pearl, leader of the Union Power slate and one of the perceived front runners for UTLA president in unseating incumbent Warren Fletcher, said his principal at Frida Kahlo High School had granted him about 12 days of unpaid personal leave to visit 30 schools to campaign teachers to vote for him.
That prompted several of his opponents to raise the possibility that his actions were illegal by district election rules. They were, according to Leticia Figueroa, LA Unified’s director of employee performance accountability, who said a school principal has no say in the decision.
She told LA School Report that permission can only be granted by the district Human Resources department and “the employee did not follow district procedures in obtaining appropriate permission for an unpaid leave.”
“There is no paperwork on file with the district’s HR department,” she said. The “paperwork” is a district form that must be completed in requesting an unpaid leave. It lists 15 possible reasons, and none is for election campaigning although one is vague enough to provide a rationale for it — “Personal Leave, not for family illness.”
For its part, UTLA officials say that by union campaign rules Caputo-Pearl’s has done nothing wrong. The union’s labor agreement with the district lists seven reasons for unpaid leave, but none explicitly covers union campaigning.

In any event, the district put a stop to Caputo-Pearl’s school day campaigning.
At the presidential forum last week, where the issue was first made public, Caputo-Pearl defended his school site visits.
“It’s a way to level the playing field [with Fletcher] who is allowed to be out there, talking to teachers everyday,” he said in an interview with LA School Report.
He also said he made all necessary provisions to ensure his students would not be affected. Caputo-Pearl said the district has no right to prevent him from stumping.
“Classroom teachers and health and human service workers are incensed that the District has attacked my contractual and legal right to take unpaid personal leave,” he told LA School Report. “When that is taken away by the District – this is classic management interference in a union election, and a glaring unfair labor practice, which we are pursuing filing.”
Over the last few days, candidates have been raising questions to each other, union officials and the district about what the rules are and how they should be applied — under an apparent false assumption that the candidate’s principal can grant the leave.
Some are are demanding that the union election committee step in and disqualify Caputo-Pearl and other members of the Union Power slate who may have also campaigned during school hours.
And this is what has some candidates up in arms, the idea that if left to the discretion of an administrator, campaigning rules could be applied unevenly, impacting the outcome of a race.
As an example, Laura McCutcheon, a candidate for UTLA treasurer, heard about Caputo-Pearl’s lunch-time meetings with teachers and sought to do the same, according to a collection of emails sent to LA School Report, bearing the the names of UTLA candidates. But her request was apparently turned down by her school principal, according to her email.
It was McCutcheon who first alerted the UTLA elections committee about the apparent irregularities of the policy, setting off a chain of finger pointing and charges of discrimination. A union official confirmed the authenticity of her email.
In her email, McCutcheon referred to LA Unified’s downtown headquarters in messages to several other candidates: “Well, Beaudry deferred to my principal who defers to Beaudry who said no but said up to principal who will put nothing in writing but will not sign my [request]. Uhm.”
Figueroa said McCutcheon’s understanding of the process was incorrect.
The same collection of emails included messages that appear to have been sent by presidential candidate Marcos Ortega II and David Garcia to union officials, each expressing their displeasure over Caputo-Pearl’s actions and threatening to file complaints against the union.
But efforts to reach both of them to confirm the authenticity of the emails were unsuccessful.
Previous Posts: At a UTLA candidate forum, issues break out within the mudslingingIn forum, UTLA president candidates discuss big ideas — and a strike.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

[Teachersunite] Restorative Justice & Teacher Unions: Join us Feb 8th!

Featuring Alex Caputo-Pearl, candidate for President of the LA teachers union.


Restorative Justice and Teacher Unions: 
What are the connections?
 
How can organizing around restorative practices & social justice relate to union work at your school site?
 
A panel & discussion with Union Power Caucus of
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA)
 
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Noon-2pm EST
 
Teachers College
525 W. 120th Street, NYC
1 | A | B | C | D to 125th St.
 
Facilitated by Dr. Lois Weiner, author, The Future of our Schools  
with panelists via Skype:
Alex Caputo-Pearl, Union Power Caucus Candidate for UTLA President
&
Arlene Inouye, Union Power Caucus Candidate for UTLA Treasurer
 
Hosted by Teachers Unite and Endorsed by the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) and the Movement of Rank & File Educators (MORE)
 
And on Facebook


Anna Bean
Campaign Coordinator
90 John St., Suite 308
New York, NY 10038
Become a member of Teachers Unite! 
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
& Watch our new documentary Growing Fairness

Friday, October 4, 2013

Alex Caputo-Pearl Running for President of LA Teachers Union

Alex - 2nd from rght
Social justice-oriented caucuses like MORE and CORE are springing up all over the place. Whatever the result of the LA election in Feb. 2014 next summer's AFT convention in LA ought to be an event worth attending --- I'm hoping a strong MOREista crew goes.

The one in LA has been around for a while and even won a share of power in the last decade. Don't get scared now -- that a Teach for America alum is running for the president of the union in LA. He is an original corps member and has remained in the classroom. And unlike other TFAs has fought the long battle for social justice. He made news recently with his being forced out of his school (Dana Goldstein on LA Teacher Alex Caputo-Pearl ... - Ed Notes Online).

I first met Alex in the summer of 2009 at the conference we (Sally Lee and Megan Behrent) attended in LA with union members from 5 cities. That is where we met CORE people too and Alex invited them over to his house for breakfast on our last day -- I clung to the car so I could go. So there I am, a fly on the wall in Alex's kitchen with CORE's Jackson Potter, Kristine Mayle and Kenzo Shabata --- all major players now in the Chicago Teachers Union, soaking it all in and relishing the brilliant conversation about everything education. And the pancakes Alex made were damn good.

Alex was also at the big Chicago conf we attended this past summer with well over a hundred union members from many cities -- maybe one day a nascent alternative to the Weingarten/Unity AFT machine -- but that is a long way to go.

It will take money to get Alex elected and there are a whole lot of interests out there to try to stop him -- from all ends. (One interesting point is that he and others have found some of the LA E4E folks not quite as obnoxious and there is some dialogue going on with rank and file E4Eers.



Dear Friends,

I hope this letter finds you well. Please take a few minutes to read this, and I hope you'll be inspired to contribute.  In collaboration with a broad, diverse group of leaders, I've decided to run for president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), with the goal of helping to build the kind of movement for social justice we need.  I need your financial support and, in addition, I hope you will reach out to your networks for additional financial contributions.

As we know, public education is under attack.  Schools are more segregated by race and class than at any time since the late 1960s. Schools across the United States are chronically under-funded, with vital student programs, services, and personnel cut dramatically in the last 5 years.  The "run schools like businesses" approach is ascendant, even in the White House, with test scores being viewed as the bottom line.  Corporate-turnaround-style school restructurings proliferate even though they, and the dramatic over-reliance on testing, are not supported by research.    

With test scores treated like the bottom line, the arts, music, physical education, civic training, and cultural, ethnic, gender, and environmental studies are driven out of the curriculum, particularly in schools that serve students of color and low-income students.  As public schools are ravaged, many problematic charter schools exist as radically de-regulated schools - serving only some students while keeping higher-needs children out, operating under private management using public money, and destabilizing the educational climate with a revolving door of educators.  Despite the remarkable efforts of many people at school sites and in communities, far too many of our students are not getting what they need and deserve.

Amidst these attacks, most teacher unions have been, at best, ineffective in building a fight-back, and at worst, silent and complicit - despite courageous efforts on the parts of some leaders.  This failure has created fertile ground for a second, correlated attack to accelerate - the attack on unions.  Political forces that advocate market-driven approaches attack unions so that "things can run more efficiently," while they simultaneously call for broader cuts.  These forces know that teacher unions - as potentially progressive and influential entities - must be weakened in order for the market-driven agenda to move forward. 

As teacher unions have been weakened, quality of education for our students has suffered.  We are losing experienced career teachers, the folks who bring classrooms to life and mentor newer teachers. We see many educators fearful to advocate for their students, communities, and colleagues. We see fewer educators expecting to set down roots at schools, to build the kind of relationships with families and communities that are essential for real education to occur.

In Los Angeles, we are drawing a line in the sand.  We've been inspired by colleagues from Chicago, Milwaukee, Newark, and other places who have run for union office as parts of movements, and won - around a vision for quality public education and a strategy to build with parents and community to fight for that vision.

I am honored to be a part of a slate for office in United Teachers Los Angeles called Union Power.  I am running for UTLA president with a fantastic team of candidates for officer positions - a team that brings tremendous experience in sustainable school improvement, innovative curriculum and instruction, deep parent involvement, powerful community organizing, strategic labor contract campaigns, and more.  It is a team with representatives from across Los Angeles and across caucuses.  I am running with Cecily Myart-Cruz (candidate for NEA Vice President), Betty Forrester (current, and candidate for, AFT Vice President), Colleen Schwab (candidate for Secondary Vice President), Juan Ramirez (current, and candidate for, Elementary Vice President), Arlene Inouye (current, and candidate for, Treasurer), and Daniel Barnhart (candidate for Secretary).

Some key experiences have brought me to this place.  I started teaching through Teach for America - and am now in my 22nd year in the classroom.  I have been lucky enough to have been mentored by remarkable, experienced teachers - and I have many classroom teaching awards that recognize my commitment to social justice, and to teaching that is culturally-relevant, literacy-immersed, inter-disciplinary, and community-connected.  I have been lucky enough to have been mentored by powerful civil rights, labor, and community organizers - and have years of building organizations and being part of winning policy victories, with the Bus Riders Union, Coalition for Educational Justice, the Crenshaw Cougar Coalition, UTLA West Area, and more.  I have also been lucky enough to have worked with a broad group of parents, students, educators, union leaders, researchers, community organizers, and progressive foundations to build a nationally-recognized curriculum and instruction model at Crenshaw High School - the Extended Learning Cultural Model, which connects students' cultures and in-classroom learning to internships and leadership experiences in social justice, community business development, and environmental justice.

I've learned from these experiences that a teacher union, especially the second largest teacher union local in the country (UTLA), embedded within the second largest school district in the country (LAUSD), can be - and must be - an essential component of a social movement for educational justice, and can have significant ripple effects across the country.

Our Union Power slate is committed to:

·         Collectively developing, with educators, parents, youth, and community, a vision for the schools our students deserve;
·         Basing that vision on values that promote educational excellence, equity, access, civil rights, and public management - the values that market-based "reformers" contradict;
·         Transforming UTLA into an organizing union that works with parents and community to fight for this vision at the grassroots and in board rooms;
·         Reclaiming educators' role as curriculum and instruction experts, and leaders in sustainable school improvement;  
·         Winning more funding for schools to reduce class size, improve working and learning conditions, expand student programs and class offerings, and provide wrap-around counseling, emotional, and health support for students so that their needs are met in school, rather than students being suspended or expelled;
·         Fighting for pay and benefits that respect educators and encourage them to remain in the profession;
·         Developing a real, research-based teacher support and development program;
·         Becoming integrally involved in community-, parent-, and youth-led struggles that are inextricably linked to children's education, those around housing, environmental justice, access to healthy food, access to gardens and parks, living wage jobs, transportation, civil rights, humane urban development, immigrant rights, police accountability, etc.

The Union Power slate has the kind of broad-based support that gives us a real opportunity to win this election.  It is, however, going to take major funding to do it.  We need to raise close to $100,000 by January, well before the election in February.  Contributions will go toward city-wide mailings to 35,000 members, toward materials and food for regular city-wide campaign activist and leadership development meetings, toward publication and distribution of policy papers, towards visiting as many as possible of our over 650 schools in LAUSD, and toward logistical support for grassroots actions that we are building around a variety of issues that reflect our values, and more.

While many of you are not UTLA members, some of you don't live in LA, and some of you are enjoying retirement after years of teaching, we know that you are aware of how positive it would be - for public education, for the labor movement, for LA, and for the country beyond LA - to have UTLA under a progressive leadership.  We will be honored to receive any contribution from you, and we encourage you to think as generously as you possibly can.  Some individual donors, inside and outside UTLA and LA, give us $25.  Other individual donors, inside and outside UTLA and LA, have given us over $1,000. 

Still others have given us a few hundred dollars individually, with the promise to organize concretely to have several other individuals within their networks match those donations.  In this regard, please think about your networks carefully, and forward this letter as far as you would like - to teacher networks, union networks, community organizing networks, college networks, friend networks, TFA networks, family networks, whatever it is.  We would love for you to actively organize in that way. 

We will have a Pay Pal account up soon for this to be done over the internet, and we will be having local LA fundraising parties.  But, please don't wait for those.  Please give as soon as you can through the mail in response to this letter - the sooner we have a sense of what we're able to raise, which we think will be substantial, the better our strategy can roll out.  For the moment, you can send checks made out to "Union Power" to the following address -- Union Power, c/o David Rapkin, 837 W. 11th Street, San Pedro, CA 90731.

Of course, feel free to call or email with ideas and suggestions you have for this campaign.

A Union Power slate victory would represent a major step forward for the work that many of us have devoted our lives to, and that we all support deeply. Please support us as generously as you can, so together we can accomplish this goal.

Warmest regards, and thank you very much,

Alex Caputo-Pearl
Teacher, Frida Kahlo High School
Teacher Supporter of Student Organizations, Crenshaw High School
Board of Directors Member, UTLA West Area
Core Leader, Coalition for Educational Justice
Cell - 310-871-7348

For your reference, as you consider contributing to our union transformation work, here is the Union Power team's facebook page -- www.facebook.com/unionpowerforutla