LA Teachers to Protest today
Judge allows L.A. teachers to protest California education budget. The school district loses a bid to block the demonstration. Teachers can skip the first hour of class while aides and administrators monitor students.
From LA Times, posted at Norm's Notes
Showing posts with label LA Union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LA Union. Show all posts
Friday, June 6, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
LA Teachers Vote- 79% Don't Vote
It's a Duffy Landslide!
The United Teachers Los Angeles vote is in. The union sent out 42,952 ballots. Here are the results:
A.J. Duffy - 5,242 (12.2%)
Linda Guthrie - 2,112 (4.9%)
Becki Robinson - 1,468 (3.4%)
Barbara Eisen-Herman - 103 (0.2%)
Don't Give a Crap - 34,027 (79.2%)
A.J. Duffy - 5,242 (12.2%)
Linda Guthrie - 2,112 (4.9%)
Becki Robinson - 1,468 (3.4%)
Barbara Eisen-Herman - 103 (0.2%)
Don't Give a Crap - 34,027 (79.2%)
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
LA Teachers Want More Control
This is a very interesting article posted by John Lawhead on ICE-mail and contrasts markedly in the way the LA union approaches things with the UFT approach, which has always been geared to a highly centralized system. There is also a difference between growing the power of a centralized union vs empowering teachers at the school level, something the UFT has done very little.
With governance on the table here, I think there are some very pertinent ideas.
I'll comment with more later with an update, but in the meantime, read this and draw your own conclusions.
From the Los Angeles Times
Teachers draft reform plan
latimes.com
Union's proposal calls for local, grass roots control over schools and gives instructors more breathing room to formulate curricula.
By Howard Blume
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 3, 2007
In this education nirvana, teachers would decide what to teach and when. Teachers and parents would hire and fire principals. No supervisors from downtown would tell anyone -- neither teachers nor students -- what to wear.
These are among the ideas a delegation of teachers and their union officers are urging L.A. schools Supt. David L. Brewer to include in the school reform plan he will present to the school board Tuesday.
If Brewer passes on the delegation's proposals, the union can go directly to the seven-member Board of Education. Employee unions recently have had success in getting the board to overrule the superintendent on health benefits for some part-time workers and on school staffing.
At stake now is the Los Angeles Unified School District's effort to turn around its 34 most troubled middle and high schools. The data suggests the urgency: As many as three-quarters of the students in these "high priority schools" scored well below grade level across multiple subjects on last year's California Standards Tests.
Whatever remedy emerges is likely to become a blueprint for widespread reform efforts. Brewer and his team are working on their 11th draft; the drafts have evolved significantly since September because of resistance inside and outside the school system.
At a meeting Friday between the district and the delegation from the United Teachers Los Angeles, union leaders were pointedly clear about what they want -- local, grass roots control over schools.
"This is what we think makes for a good education," said Joel Jordan, the union's director of special projects, who took part in the meeting. "We don't want to continue what hasn't worked and has demoralized teachers and students."
Rhetorically, Brewer has endorsed local control, but elements of his proposal cut both ways.
The separate plans of the union and the superintendent, as well as a "Schoolhouse" framework offered in January by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, all cobble together widely accepted strategies, such as smaller classes and schools, and better teacher training.
But union leaders said they felt compelled to take on some elements in Brewer's plan. One sticking point is Brewer's intention to use, in upper grades, an approach to instruction similar to the one used for teaching reading to 6-year-olds: emphasizing a unified, paced curriculum that includes periodic tests to make sure students are learning. The goal is to give all students exposure to rigorous academics.
With that approach, under previous Supt. Roy Romer, elementary test scores soared in most schools. But across the district, many English learners and African American students still struggled.
From Brewer's perspective, the problem at middle and high schools is that curriculum directives haven't been consistently followed. To the teacher delegation, the directives themselves are the problem.
"Narrowing the curriculum, top-down management, teaching to the test, expanding pacing plans and periodic assessments -- we think that has been a detriment to education," Jordan said. "The idea of uniformity when trying to meet the needs of individual students is a contradiction."
The union acknowledges that instructors must teach the skills and facts the state requires. But they believe a school's staff and individual teachers should decide how to accomplish that.
The district's view is that its curriculum guides specify "what is to be taught versus how it is to be taught," leaving ample room for teacher creativity, said Michelle King, interim chief instructional officer for secondary schools.
The union's ethos of local control extends to hiring and firing principals, which the union wants handled by a school site council made up of parents, teachers and older students.
Brewer's plan doesn't speak to hiring principals, which is currently the purview of the regional senior administrator.
As for dress codes, the union's six-page treatise states: "There is no research that indicates that teacher attire has any effect on student learning or respect for adults," and "uniforms for students should not be required but decided upon by the school's governing bodies with input from each constituency."
Participants from both sides said they expect no brutal fight over dress codes, but key differences remain over who controls what happens at schools.
Brewer has had difficulty developing a plan with broad support. This fall, he backed away entirely from placing the lowest-performing schools into a separate, mini-school system. That plan was opposed by the union and also encountered resistance from top administrators and from schools principals, who felt their campuses were being labeled "failed" schools.
The superintendent's reform effort was treated dismissively last week by Villaraigosa, who was addressing a faculty gathering at Roosevelt High School on the Eastside. Villaraigosa was urging staff to vote to enter his reform "partnership," which, he said, would be under his stewardship but led by teachers and parents. The lesser alternative, he said, was Brewer's plan.
"In the high-priority program, you're not going to have a say," he told the teachers. "It will be status quo."
Brewer, for his part, has embraced the mayor's partnership as an element in a package of reforms.
Sitting near the mayor at Roosevelt was school board president Monica Garcia, a Villaraigosa ally who, with the other board members, will have ultimate say over Brewer's approach.
In an interview, Garcia suggested that the mayor's statement was not intended to be derogatory: "If by status quo, he means that the provider of the reform is the district, that description is fair."
Garcia said she needed to see more details on how Brewer would find and use money for his reforms. She also said that no single reform style would fit every school.
Local control takes vastly different forms in different places, said UCLA professor Bill Ouchi, a school-reform researcher and management expert who has examined the issue for decades. Ouchi favors the system being tried in New York City, which gives principals near total say over their budgets. These principals sign a five-year performance agreement, on which they must deliver to keep their jobs.
"In none of these schools is there a required school site council," Ouchi said. "A principal might establish an advisory council but it has no governance or negotiating powers." And, he added, there's good reason why: "There's no practical way to hold parents or community members accountable. And there is no way outside of the teachers contract to hold teachers accountable."
Yet Ouchi doesn't fault teachers for wanting control: "They've observed for 30 years the failure of the management of the LAUSD. You can understand why the teachers say, 'Those people have amply demonstrated that they are incapable of running a school, so let us run it.' "
howard.blume@latimes.com
With governance on the table here, I think there are some very pertinent ideas.
I'll comment with more later with an update, but in the meantime, read this and draw your own conclusions.
From the Los Angeles Times
Teachers draft reform plan
latimes.com
Union's proposal calls for local, grass roots control over schools and gives instructors more breathing room to formulate curricula.
By Howard Blume
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 3, 2007
In this education nirvana, teachers would decide what to teach and when. Teachers and parents would hire and fire principals. No supervisors from downtown would tell anyone -- neither teachers nor students -- what to wear.
These are among the ideas a delegation of teachers and their union officers are urging L.A. schools Supt. David L. Brewer to include in the school reform plan he will present to the school board Tuesday.
If Brewer passes on the delegation's proposals, the union can go directly to the seven-member Board of Education. Employee unions recently have had success in getting the board to overrule the superintendent on health benefits for some part-time workers and on school staffing.
At stake now is the Los Angeles Unified School District's effort to turn around its 34 most troubled middle and high schools. The data suggests the urgency: As many as three-quarters of the students in these "high priority schools" scored well below grade level across multiple subjects on last year's California Standards Tests.
Whatever remedy emerges is likely to become a blueprint for widespread reform efforts. Brewer and his team are working on their 11th draft; the drafts have evolved significantly since September because of resistance inside and outside the school system.
At a meeting Friday between the district and the delegation from the United Teachers Los Angeles, union leaders were pointedly clear about what they want -- local, grass roots control over schools.
"This is what we think makes for a good education," said Joel Jordan, the union's director of special projects, who took part in the meeting. "We don't want to continue what hasn't worked and has demoralized teachers and students."
Rhetorically, Brewer has endorsed local control, but elements of his proposal cut both ways.
The separate plans of the union and the superintendent, as well as a "Schoolhouse" framework offered in January by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, all cobble together widely accepted strategies, such as smaller classes and schools, and better teacher training.
But union leaders said they felt compelled to take on some elements in Brewer's plan. One sticking point is Brewer's intention to use, in upper grades, an approach to instruction similar to the one used for teaching reading to 6-year-olds: emphasizing a unified, paced curriculum that includes periodic tests to make sure students are learning. The goal is to give all students exposure to rigorous academics.
With that approach, under previous Supt. Roy Romer, elementary test scores soared in most schools. But across the district, many English learners and African American students still struggled.
From Brewer's perspective, the problem at middle and high schools is that curriculum directives haven't been consistently followed. To the teacher delegation, the directives themselves are the problem.
"Narrowing the curriculum, top-down management, teaching to the test, expanding pacing plans and periodic assessments -- we think that has been a detriment to education," Jordan said. "The idea of uniformity when trying to meet the needs of individual students is a contradiction."
The union acknowledges that instructors must teach the skills and facts the state requires. But they believe a school's staff and individual teachers should decide how to accomplish that.
The district's view is that its curriculum guides specify "what is to be taught versus how it is to be taught," leaving ample room for teacher creativity, said Michelle King, interim chief instructional officer for secondary schools.
The union's ethos of local control extends to hiring and firing principals, which the union wants handled by a school site council made up of parents, teachers and older students.
Brewer's plan doesn't speak to hiring principals, which is currently the purview of the regional senior administrator.
As for dress codes, the union's six-page treatise states: "There is no research that indicates that teacher attire has any effect on student learning or respect for adults," and "uniforms for students should not be required but decided upon by the school's governing bodies with input from each constituency."
Participants from both sides said they expect no brutal fight over dress codes, but key differences remain over who controls what happens at schools.
Brewer has had difficulty developing a plan with broad support. This fall, he backed away entirely from placing the lowest-performing schools into a separate, mini-school system. That plan was opposed by the union and also encountered resistance from top administrators and from schools principals, who felt their campuses were being labeled "failed" schools.
The superintendent's reform effort was treated dismissively last week by Villaraigosa, who was addressing a faculty gathering at Roosevelt High School on the Eastside. Villaraigosa was urging staff to vote to enter his reform "partnership," which, he said, would be under his stewardship but led by teachers and parents. The lesser alternative, he said, was Brewer's plan.
"In the high-priority program, you're not going to have a say," he told the teachers. "It will be status quo."
Brewer, for his part, has embraced the mayor's partnership as an element in a package of reforms.
Sitting near the mayor at Roosevelt was school board president Monica Garcia, a Villaraigosa ally who, with the other board members, will have ultimate say over Brewer's approach.
In an interview, Garcia suggested that the mayor's statement was not intended to be derogatory: "If by status quo, he means that the provider of the reform is the district, that description is fair."
Garcia said she needed to see more details on how Brewer would find and use money for his reforms. She also said that no single reform style would fit every school.
Local control takes vastly different forms in different places, said UCLA professor Bill Ouchi, a school-reform researcher and management expert who has examined the issue for decades. Ouchi favors the system being tried in New York City, which gives principals near total say over their budgets. These principals sign a five-year performance agreement, on which they must deliver to keep their jobs.
"In none of these schools is there a required school site council," Ouchi said. "A principal might establish an advisory council but it has no governance or negotiating powers." And, he added, there's good reason why: "There's no practical way to hold parents or community members accountable. And there is no way outside of the teachers contract to hold teachers accountable."
Yet Ouchi doesn't fault teachers for wanting control: "They've observed for 30 years the failure of the management of the LAUSD. You can understand why the teachers say, 'Those people have amply demonstrated that they are incapable of running a school, so let us run it.' "
howard.blume@latimes.com
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
LA Dreamin' Part 2
We've been tracking information on the LA teacher union as a basis of comparison to our friends and neighbors in Unity Caucus here in NYC. Note the call to teachers to boycott required after-school faculty meetings and the emphasis on class size as part of contract negotiations, the kinds of actions some teachers in NYC were hoping to see from the UFT. It's hard to make judgements from a distance so if anyone has information pro and con, let it fly.
Labor Notes May 2007: http://www.labornotes.org/
How Los Angeles Teachers Won a Year-Long Contract Campaign
by Joshua Pechthalt and Julie Washington
[Editor’s Note: Labor activists seldom get a chance to reflect on campaigns in the heat of the moment. In this issue we print the reflections of leaders of the Los Angeles teachers union on their recent contract campaign.]
Members of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the union representing Los Angeles public school teachers, ratified a three-year agreement with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on March 14 by a 90 percent margin. The vote ended a year-long campaign that won gains for Los Angeles teachers and demonstrated the effectiveness of broad, rank-and-file based organizing combined with member mobilization.
The new contract gives UTLA members an across-the-board six percent salary raise for the first year with re-openers for the second and third years. (In a separate agreement a few months earlier, UTLA and the other unions representing classified employees, building trades, and others, were able to maintain health care benefits at their current levels.)
UTLA also won a first-ever class size reduction and a cap on class sizes. Since the early 1990s, the district had unilaterally increased class size during recessions when the district claimed it was in a fiscal crisis.
In addition, the local won protection for union activists by requiring the district to mediate before administrative transfers can take place.
YEAR-LONG CAMPAIGN
The contract campaign was as unconventional as the contract itself. Beginning last March, UTLA leaders rolled out a campaign to involve the members in choosing and prioritizing their concerns.
Typically, UTLA’s 25 or so standing committees put forward bargaining proposals to the UTLA House of Representatives, which then adopts the bargaining package.
This year, UTLA school chapters were asked to meet and discuss which issues they thought were most important. Then, the union rep at each school fed that information into a central data-base set up through the UTLA website.
Almost 300 schools participated and developed a list of priority issues. Each UTLA area (UTLA is divided into eight geographic areas averaging about 5,000 members each) then used that information to develop the contract demands at their monthly area meetings, the Board of Directors, and finally at the House of Representatives.
An issue developed regarding the salary demand, however, that created problems for the union leadership. While the language in the bargaining proposal stated that the union would wait until after the state budget was adopted before making a salary demand, the proposal also mentioned that it would take a 14 percent pay increase to raise member salaries to be among the highest in the county.
The press jumped all over this, charging UTLA with making an unreasonable demand, while many members thought this really was the demand and were delighted. When the House of Reps eventually adopted an initial nine percent salary demand, some members were ticked off that it had been unilaterally “lowered.”
Lesson? The only figure to put out is the actual demand, not a longer-term goal.
ESCALATING STRATEGY
Contract negotiations lagged during the summer and didn’t pick up in the fall, except for the agreement on health care benefits in October. The union and the district accused each other of not taking negotiations seriously.
In response, the union adopted an escalating strategy, starting with weekly Red Shirt Tuesdays, a Class Size Caravan in November, and a mass demonstration at district headquarters in December.
Red Shirt Tuesdays were solidarity-building activities in which all UTLA members at a school would wear UTLA t-shirts and send in a group picture to the union’s monthly newspaper.
The Class Size Caravan, while not a mass mobilization, was an attempt to draw attention to the outrageous class sizes in Los Angeles. With much press fanfare, UTLA rented a school bus to go to different school campuses around the district where teachers met the bus to deliver information on excessive class sizes at their school.
With negotiations making little progress, the stage was set for the December 6 mass demonstration. Up until that time, UTLA leadership had yet to prove to the district that the members were ready to fight.
December 6 proved it and then some, as over 10,000 UTLA members poured into the streets at district headquarters in downtown Los Angeles and at another site in the San Fernando Valley. These were among the largest demonstrations in UTLA history, comparable only to those around the 1989 strike.
The success of December 6 was fueled by the intense anger teachers felt about the increasing stress in their jobs and the lack of respect they felt from the district. But some novel organizing strategies also helped.
Two weeks before the demonstration, UTLA released all of its 150 area “cluster leaders,” who volunteer to make contact with the 700 UTLA chapter leaders, for a day-long meeting. But this was not one of those top-down affairs in which the union leadership gives orders from on high.
Instead, the cluster leaders from each area made their own plans about mobilizing their areas for December 6 and even brought in their own ideas for the demonstration. One area leader suggested that UTLA ask members to bring their flashlights to LAUSD headquarters in order to “shine a light” on the huge district bureaucracy. UTLA accepted this proposal and at the demonstration thousands of UTLA members, on cue, shined their flash-lights on the 29-story district-owned Beaudry building, along with a search light rented by the union.
STRIKE VOTE
By the beginning of January, however, an agreement was still a long way off. UTLA called on teachers to boycott required after-school faculty meetings. This scared the district so much that it called off faculty meetings for the three weeks the boycott was in force.
UTLA then called for a day of informational picketing, leading up to a strike authorization vote in February. Furthermore, UTLA conducted a massive radio ad campaign emphasizing the broader benefits of the union’s demands for students and their communities, in particular lower class size and local control of the schools.
By now, the district was taking negotiations seriously and called for nearly daily discussions. District officials were convinced that UTLA members were ready to strike and they wanted to avoid this at all costs. The radio campaign helped solidify public support for the teachers, who were championing the needs of students, not just themselves.
This situation led to what UTLA leaders called “the settlement moment” just as UTLA began taking the strike vote on February 12. In the course of a week, the district withdrew all of its concessionary proposals and gave ground on nearly all of the union’s priority issues.
The lessons of this contract fight are clear. UTLA leadership led a campaign based on the wishes and activity of the members and posed the issues in terms of school reform, not just “bread and butter.” This campaign led not only to a far better contract than previous ones, but also created organizing opportunities for the future.
[Joshua Pechthalt serves as UTLA/AFT Vice-President. Julie Washington is UTLA Elementary Vice President.]
Labor Notes May 2007: http://www.labornotes.org/
How Los Angeles Teachers Won a Year-Long Contract Campaign
by Joshua Pechthalt and Julie Washington
[Editor’s Note: Labor activists seldom get a chance to reflect on campaigns in the heat of the moment. In this issue we print the reflections of leaders of the Los Angeles teachers union on their recent contract campaign.]
Members of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the union representing Los Angeles public school teachers, ratified a three-year agreement with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on March 14 by a 90 percent margin. The vote ended a year-long campaign that won gains for Los Angeles teachers and demonstrated the effectiveness of broad, rank-and-file based organizing combined with member mobilization.
The new contract gives UTLA members an across-the-board six percent salary raise for the first year with re-openers for the second and third years. (In a separate agreement a few months earlier, UTLA and the other unions representing classified employees, building trades, and others, were able to maintain health care benefits at their current levels.)
UTLA also won a first-ever class size reduction and a cap on class sizes. Since the early 1990s, the district had unilaterally increased class size during recessions when the district claimed it was in a fiscal crisis.
In addition, the local won protection for union activists by requiring the district to mediate before administrative transfers can take place.
YEAR-LONG CAMPAIGN
The contract campaign was as unconventional as the contract itself. Beginning last March, UTLA leaders rolled out a campaign to involve the members in choosing and prioritizing their concerns.
Typically, UTLA’s 25 or so standing committees put forward bargaining proposals to the UTLA House of Representatives, which then adopts the bargaining package.
This year, UTLA school chapters were asked to meet and discuss which issues they thought were most important. Then, the union rep at each school fed that information into a central data-base set up through the UTLA website.
Almost 300 schools participated and developed a list of priority issues. Each UTLA area (UTLA is divided into eight geographic areas averaging about 5,000 members each) then used that information to develop the contract demands at their monthly area meetings, the Board of Directors, and finally at the House of Representatives.
An issue developed regarding the salary demand, however, that created problems for the union leadership. While the language in the bargaining proposal stated that the union would wait until after the state budget was adopted before making a salary demand, the proposal also mentioned that it would take a 14 percent pay increase to raise member salaries to be among the highest in the county.
The press jumped all over this, charging UTLA with making an unreasonable demand, while many members thought this really was the demand and were delighted. When the House of Reps eventually adopted an initial nine percent salary demand, some members were ticked off that it had been unilaterally “lowered.”
Lesson? The only figure to put out is the actual demand, not a longer-term goal.
ESCALATING STRATEGY
Contract negotiations lagged during the summer and didn’t pick up in the fall, except for the agreement on health care benefits in October. The union and the district accused each other of not taking negotiations seriously.
In response, the union adopted an escalating strategy, starting with weekly Red Shirt Tuesdays, a Class Size Caravan in November, and a mass demonstration at district headquarters in December.
Red Shirt Tuesdays were solidarity-building activities in which all UTLA members at a school would wear UTLA t-shirts and send in a group picture to the union’s monthly newspaper.
The Class Size Caravan, while not a mass mobilization, was an attempt to draw attention to the outrageous class sizes in Los Angeles. With much press fanfare, UTLA rented a school bus to go to different school campuses around the district where teachers met the bus to deliver information on excessive class sizes at their school.
With negotiations making little progress, the stage was set for the December 6 mass demonstration. Up until that time, UTLA leadership had yet to prove to the district that the members were ready to fight.
December 6 proved it and then some, as over 10,000 UTLA members poured into the streets at district headquarters in downtown Los Angeles and at another site in the San Fernando Valley. These were among the largest demonstrations in UTLA history, comparable only to those around the 1989 strike.
The success of December 6 was fueled by the intense anger teachers felt about the increasing stress in their jobs and the lack of respect they felt from the district. But some novel organizing strategies also helped.
Two weeks before the demonstration, UTLA released all of its 150 area “cluster leaders,” who volunteer to make contact with the 700 UTLA chapter leaders, for a day-long meeting. But this was not one of those top-down affairs in which the union leadership gives orders from on high.
Instead, the cluster leaders from each area made their own plans about mobilizing their areas for December 6 and even brought in their own ideas for the demonstration. One area leader suggested that UTLA ask members to bring their flashlights to LAUSD headquarters in order to “shine a light” on the huge district bureaucracy. UTLA accepted this proposal and at the demonstration thousands of UTLA members, on cue, shined their flash-lights on the 29-story district-owned Beaudry building, along with a search light rented by the union.
STRIKE VOTE
By the beginning of January, however, an agreement was still a long way off. UTLA called on teachers to boycott required after-school faculty meetings. This scared the district so much that it called off faculty meetings for the three weeks the boycott was in force.
UTLA then called for a day of informational picketing, leading up to a strike authorization vote in February. Furthermore, UTLA conducted a massive radio ad campaign emphasizing the broader benefits of the union’s demands for students and their communities, in particular lower class size and local control of the schools.
By now, the district was taking negotiations seriously and called for nearly daily discussions. District officials were convinced that UTLA members were ready to strike and they wanted to avoid this at all costs. The radio campaign helped solidify public support for the teachers, who were championing the needs of students, not just themselves.
This situation led to what UTLA leaders called “the settlement moment” just as UTLA began taking the strike vote on February 12. In the course of a week, the district withdrew all of its concessionary proposals and gave ground on nearly all of the union’s priority issues.
The lessons of this contract fight are clear. UTLA leadership led a campaign based on the wishes and activity of the members and posed the issues in terms of school reform, not just “bread and butter.” This campaign led not only to a far better contract than previous ones, but also created organizing opportunities for the future.
[Joshua Pechthalt serves as UTLA/AFT Vice-President. Julie Washington is UTLA Elementary Vice President.]
Sunday, June 10, 2007
LA Dreamin'
Some very instructive points in this article and George Schmidt's comment comparing the reactions of teacher unions in LA, Chicago and New York. Debbie Lynch won election originally with what seemed to be a reform agenda over the Chicago equivalent of Randi Weingarten's Unity Caucus, though Debbie also had long-time ties to Al Shanker.
AJ Duffy in LA also won election with a slate of various caucuses that defeated an incumbent leadership that could be viewed as a Unity Caucus equivalent. But Duffy and his team have very different political points of view than the leadership in NYC and have a long-term strategy as opposed to the very short-term goals of the UFT which always looks for the quick PR value and then runs on to the next big thing. And there's got to be a different mind set between dealing with a mayor in LA who was a teacher union organizer and Bloomberg. But the problem with handing over control of schools to a mayor is that you never know who you might end up with. That is why any governance plan requires some serious level of oversight.
From almost the day I started teaching I thought the school system (and the UFT) was in serious need of reform. To see the reform movement captured by the likes of BloomKlein and their allies like Eli Broad nationwide is due to a great extent to the collaboration people like Randi Weingarten and other union leaders who are always defensive about protecting teacher rights because they have no vision for how a school system should look and seem more intent on impressing the powers that be and the press as to how "cooperative" they can be.
Actually, I believe they are way more in line with the BloomKleins of this world than they are with the rank and file teachers. Look at the connections with the Clintons who have played a role in these "reform" movements that end up with teacher bashing. And follow the line to Clinton billionaire buddy Ron Burkle who tried to buy the Tribune newspaper chain with Eli Broad, who has so much praise for both BloomKlein and Weingarten (he gave the UFT charter schools $1 million.)
Some of our colleagues in TJC have contacts in LA and we will monitor what is happening out there.
George comments: 6/10/07
The reason Debbie Lynch was ousted was that she didn't heed the voices of the "rank and file" against these bullshit corporate "reforms." And she just lost her bid to get back into office by a huge margin because her opponents (the Chicago version of Unity) successfully portrayed her as having sold out the membership during her brief three years in office (2001 -2004). The fact it, the "mayoral control" model of corporate school reform that the newspapers all back was in place in Chicago for six years (1995-2001) under Chicago's version of Unity before Debbie ousted them by opposing their sellouts. The exciting thing in Los Angeles is that the leadership of UTLA can't fall prey to this phony fascist version of "reform" despite what all the New Democrats" and their media are saying if the membership remains active. As we know in Chicago and you've also learned in New York City, mayoral control is not in the interest of teachers, children, or democratic public schools. No matter how big the opening bribes are. Hopefully, the Los Angeles union will reverse its support based on how much we've learned already in Chicago and New York (and Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and now New Orleans... among others).
George N. Schmidt Editor, Substance Chicago www.substancenews.com
Union leaders in a bind
Reform-minded UTLA chiefs struggle to win over teachers
BY NAUSH BOGHOSSIAN, Staff Writer
With momentum growing for drastic reform at Los Angeles public schools driven by the superintendent and mayor, the politically powerful teachers union finds itself on the front lines of a potentially divisive battle.
United Teachers Los Angeles' own crew of reform leaders is walking a tightrope between privately backing reform efforts it has long sought, while publicly defending the rights of a rank-and-file that is being described as staunchly rigid and unaccepting of change.
Led by President A.J. Duffy, the small team of advisers is keenly aware that it must quickly and smoothly work to engender the support of its membership or risk jeopardizing the unprecedented alignment of leaders to spark a revolution at the beleaguered school district.
After decades of failed reforms, achievement scores lagging well behind the state averages and dropout rates estimated between 24 percent and 50 percent, the lives of more than 708,000 students and teachers hang in the balance - and with that, the health of the city itself.
"I don't think it's the union leadership any longer. It's a battle between the leadership being more reform-minded than the membership and the membership dragging down what the leadership wants to do in political and classroom advances," said Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.
"It's a tussle with the staunchly rigid rank-and-file where the reformers are on top, but they're being held back by a fear of change in the predominant majority of members."
Los Angeles teachers, who have been on the receiving end of countless promises while little has resulted from previous reform efforts, have become mistrustful of the district even as they have wielded considerable clout in district politics.
The divide is deep, especially in the wake of the backroom deal struck by the mayor with the union leadership to create Assembly Bill 1381, which would have given the mayor a substantial role in the school district.
Maclay Middle School algebra teacher Tim Henricks, who considers himself new to the profession with seven years experience, said what he sees is a membership divided, particularly between newer teachers and their more senior colleagues.
Younger teachers seem more receptive to ideas like charter schools or getting charter-like freedoms, while those who have been in the Los Angeles Unified School District system far longer may be more complacent.
"With charters, there's more freedom to do what you want without the LAUSD breathing down your neck. But the major concern is, what happens after five years and the issue (arises) of getting rid of teachers with just cause?
"It's the parents and the teachers - nothing really gets done without that, anything that's productive anyway, that moves in the right direction. Without our support, it's going to go nowhere."
Suspicious of reform
At Cleveland Humanities Magnet High, teachers have a long record of classroom success by working together closely to help students do well in core classes.
But they said that despite getting 40 percent of their graduates last year into University of California schools, they are facing increasing pressure to follow a standardized approach.
"Teachers are skeptical of the reforms that would seemingly help them because of all the strings attached," said Gabriel Lemmon, a 10th-grade philosophy teacher in the magnet program.
"Bureaucracy should fit itself around good teaching. Teaching should not fit itself around a bureaucracy."
For Duffy, the key to winning broad support for reform is local control.
"I've seen this district reorganize every 2 years for a new reform, and teachers are tired of putting their time and energy, their hearts and their souls into reforms that are not going to bring better student outcomes and more support for teachers in the classrooms and health and human service professionals at the school sites."
Mindful of election
With a union election coming next February, Duffy and his team will likely be treading carefully, especially with the district facing a deficit that might jeopardize its ability to win further increases on top of the 6 percent raise won this year.
"The union's leaders are not strongly moving forward with any reform agenda because it's a very fine line with the upcoming election," Regalado said.
And although AB 1381 is dead - defeated in the courts, with the mayor announcing he won't pursue appeals after he secured a majority on the school board - the sentiment of a "hostile takeover" is very much alive among the members who were split down the middle on support for the legislation.
As school board officials and the Mayor's Office are working quietly to develop a plan for Villaraigosa to oversee a "demonstration project" of low-performing schools, the union has sent a clear message to them: Let the schools come to you with the overwhelming consensus of teachers or we will be forced to oppose the move.
"The mayor has a nasty habit of jumping too quickly," said one official, who asked for anonymity. "What we're trying to get him to understand through back channels and get him to do is not move so quickly."
At a recent news conference announcing the mayor's decision to give up the legal fight for AB 1381, Deputy Mayor Ray Cortines emphasized that the mayor's team will not actively "pick" schools. Rather, it will look to schools that ask for the office's involvement.
Allaying fears
The mayor, a former UTLA organizer and committed union liberal, has insisted his agenda puts teachers first. He has formed an alliance with new Superintendent David Brewer III, won majority control of the school board control and embraced union leaders. But it will take all his powers of persuasion to assuage fears of the rank-and-file.
"The public schools in Los Angeles are not going to be able to change unless you have buy-in on the part of the teachers, administrators, and parents," said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center.
"The fact that the mayor came out of the teachers union, and the fact that he's a very persuasive, charismatic leader, the potential still exists for the mayor to play an important role in shaping the discussion on how to best improve the schools in Los Angeles and getting buy-in from the teachers to make that happen."
Villaraigosa said he believes any reform effort has to come from the "ground up, not from the top down," and that the union is "key to any effort to reform our schools." He admitted there will be challenges with the union, but he repeatedly emphasized one point: his long-standing relationship with the powerful organization.
"I've got a long history with them and we go way back, and my expectation is that we'll be able to work just fine," he said. "Challenges are opportunities and I can't tell you that there won't be some challenges, but I can tell you that I've got a long history with them, a very, very long history, and I think it's one that will provide the foundation for a successful partnership."
Need for change
Brewer insists he wants to work with the union but also made clear he means those who share the reform vision.
"Believe it or not, there are people inside the union that really understand that they need to change, and we just have to work with those people," he said.
What the mayor, Brewer and the union are seeking to achieve are the same core reform concepts: Small schools, greater local autonomy with teachers and principals having more control over budget and curriculum, and streamlining the bureaucracy to redirect those funds to classrooms.
Few can deny that teachers would embrace all those ideas, but the key to getting their support will likely come down to the process and showing teachers they are valued as professionals who have something to say about the reform proposals.
Wong said with public education on the forefront of public discourse, teachers feel under attack.
"There is a concern on the part of many teachers that their input is not being fully appreciated, so they resent it when people use the discussion about school reform as an opportunity to make disparaging remarks about teachers, that it's their fault," Wong said.
Union leaders believe their fatal political misstep was the decision to strike the backroom deal on AB 1381 with the mayor without involving UTLA's governing bodies.
Now they are working hard to educate teachers about the different reform options and what they would mean to them.
"These changes cause so much uncertainty for many teachers - we're not the most revolutionary of folk - and uncertainty causes folks to get very conservative in their thinking," Cleveland High's Magnet Program coordinator Lemmon said.
"So I don't know. I hope that we do something, but it seems that bottom-up or top-down, at the end of the day, it all seems about the same."
naush.boghossian@dailynews.com
(818) 713-3722
Thursday, February 15, 2007
LA Lessons for Teacher Union Dissidents?
The excerpts below are from an article in the LA Times about the dissident movement that took over the LA teachers union in the Feb. 2005 elections. The United Action slate did not have to face a massive machine-like Unity but still, their election was a surprise. Union rules were apparently democratic enough so that they could challenge for control of the Exec. Bd.
Unity makes sure that they can control the board through at-large voting where the entire union votes including retirees for Ex bd at large (43), functional chapter (14) plus the 11 officers that are members of the Exec. Bd. That's 68 out of 89 leaving the opposition only a chance to win the elem (11) ms (5) and hs (6) EB positions. A very long shot to win all of these though New Action won the MS & HS in the early 90's. If the day comes that these 22 positions are won by the opposition, meaning serious outreach to elementary schools, it would be a sign of significant change in that these 22 positions represent the 80,000 active teachers. But it shows you how even if the opposition won the overwhelming support of the majority of teachers, they would only control 1/4 of the Executive Board.
Unity democracy inaction.
One of the interesting points about the featured activists is that one or both of them have political ties to some people in our local TJC and one of them was once in a teamsters group in California called Teamsters for a Just Contract.
Another is the dicotomy in activist groups over the strict trade union (attention only to meat and potato issues) vs. the social justice questions. We have had that debate in ICE and things flared at one point on the blogs with UTP over the emphasis on some of these issues. The debate is ongoing, one of the best things about being involved in democratic groups, as opposed to being in Unity where your lips are sealed. And all too often, your mind.
The full article is posted on my other blog, Norm's Notes
A radical change for two union militants
The former dissidents, now powerful insiders, shaped the tough tactics that got L.A. teachers more than just a raise.
the deal's details — particularly its mandate for class size reduction and new job protections for union activists — reflect the long-standing emphasis by Pechthalt, Jordan and their allies on broadening UTLA's advocacy beyond salary and benefits.
UTLA's more aggressive stance is personified by A.J. Duffy, the dapper, occasionally bombastic union president who communicates with the membership and tussles with the press. But according to people both inside and outside UTLA, the strategy has been shaped by the little-known Jordan and Pechthalt, self-described "union militants" who now hold key leadership posts.
Jordan, a top staffer, and Pechthalt, a vice president, have long ties to activist politics and to Villaraigosa, a former UTLA staffer who once represented Pechthalt in a grievance against the Los Angeles Unified School District. Along with Duffy and two other allies, Pechthalt and Jordan were unexpectedly swept into power in elections two years ago by a membership frustrated at stalled contract talks.
Their dissident status had been cemented over two decades. They staged demonstrations without the approval of union leadership. They supported bilingual education when California voters didn't, opposed standardized testing as it became popular and questioned whether homework was necessary. They published a newsletter criticizing the labor movement and their own union, particularly its focus on electing school board members to secure power and good contracts.
Instead, they said, UTLA should reinvent itself as the base for a social movement that would engage in aggressive organizing of parents and communities, confront even friendly politicians and use militant tactics rarely employed by staid public employee unions.
"UTLA has never realized its full potential, which is to organize at schools, with teachers, parents and the community," Pechthalt said. "We need to create a broader movement for public education."
But this approach has caused alarm among some in the union and in political circles. Rank-and-file teachers and even other UTLA officers suggest that in their zeal to change the organization, the new union leaders have neglected some of the nuts and bolts of unionism.
"UTLA is a labor union and has the structure and mechanisms and funding and politics of a labor union," said Warren Fletcher, a union chairman at City of Angels School downtown, who has been both ally and critic of Pechthalt and Jordan. "I'm concerned that we're approaching things from the perspective of some sort of grand movement."
We both developed the same sort of emphasis, a first principle that the activity and organizing of the membership of a union, rather than the leadership, is the key to power," Brenner said.
"Joel and I developed a critique of the narrow trade union perspective," Pechthalt said. "With the tightening of the economic pie, the only way to challenge that was to build a broad-based social movement for public education."
During UTLA's last strike, a nine-day walkout in 1989, Pechthalt and Jordan organized a rally in Exposition Park with Villaraigosa's help. In 1992, Pechthalt led a one-hour wildcat strike at Manual Arts High School, which included 30 teachers and 1,500 students, to protest cuts. The district tried to discipline Pechthalt; Villaraigosa guided his successful grievance.
About the same time, Pechthalt and Jordan began publishing A Second Opinion, a newsletter that frequently criticized UTLA. Among their contributors were other dissidents, including Julie Washington, now a vice president, and David Goldberg, now union treasurer.
"We need to once more begin transforming the image of teachers as friendly Caspar Milquetoast do-gooders into a unified, mobilized and proud bunch of unionists," Pechthalt and Jordan wrote in August 2004.
By then, Jordan was running a campaign to take over the board of directors and three officer positions with a slate of dissidents called United Action. The slate did not field a presidential candidate, and did not think Duffy, the only challenger to incumbent John Perez, stood a chance.
Though campaigning for the union presidency on his own, Duffy found he agreed with Pechthalt and Jordan on the need for militancy; United Action endorsed Duffy, and vice versa.
Their timing was good. In February 2005, the frustrated membership elected the entire slate, including Duffy.
Unity makes sure that they can control the board through at-large voting where the entire union votes including retirees for Ex bd at large (43), functional chapter (14) plus the 11 officers that are members of the Exec. Bd. That's 68 out of 89 leaving the opposition only a chance to win the elem (11) ms (5) and hs (6) EB positions. A very long shot to win all of these though New Action won the MS & HS in the early 90's. If the day comes that these 22 positions are won by the opposition, meaning serious outreach to elementary schools, it would be a sign of significant change in that these 22 positions represent the 80,000 active teachers. But it shows you how even if the opposition won the overwhelming support of the majority of teachers, they would only control 1/4 of the Executive Board.
Unity democracy inaction.
One of the interesting points about the featured activists is that one or both of them have political ties to some people in our local TJC and one of them was once in a teamsters group in California called Teamsters for a Just Contract.
Another is the dicotomy in activist groups over the strict trade union (attention only to meat and potato issues) vs. the social justice questions. We have had that debate in ICE and things flared at one point on the blogs with UTP over the emphasis on some of these issues. The debate is ongoing, one of the best things about being involved in democratic groups, as opposed to being in Unity where your lips are sealed. And all too often, your mind.
The full article is posted on my other blog, Norm's Notes
A radical change for two union militants
The former dissidents, now powerful insiders, shaped the tough tactics that got L.A. teachers more than just a raise.
the deal's details — particularly its mandate for class size reduction and new job protections for union activists — reflect the long-standing emphasis by Pechthalt, Jordan and their allies on broadening UTLA's advocacy beyond salary and benefits.
UTLA's more aggressive stance is personified by A.J. Duffy, the dapper, occasionally bombastic union president who communicates with the membership and tussles with the press. But according to people both inside and outside UTLA, the strategy has been shaped by the little-known Jordan and Pechthalt, self-described "union militants" who now hold key leadership posts.
Jordan, a top staffer, and Pechthalt, a vice president, have long ties to activist politics and to Villaraigosa, a former UTLA staffer who once represented Pechthalt in a grievance against the Los Angeles Unified School District. Along with Duffy and two other allies, Pechthalt and Jordan were unexpectedly swept into power in elections two years ago by a membership frustrated at stalled contract talks.
Their dissident status had been cemented over two decades. They staged demonstrations without the approval of union leadership. They supported bilingual education when California voters didn't, opposed standardized testing as it became popular and questioned whether homework was necessary. They published a newsletter criticizing the labor movement and their own union, particularly its focus on electing school board members to secure power and good contracts.
Instead, they said, UTLA should reinvent itself as the base for a social movement that would engage in aggressive organizing of parents and communities, confront even friendly politicians and use militant tactics rarely employed by staid public employee unions.
"UTLA has never realized its full potential, which is to organize at schools, with teachers, parents and the community," Pechthalt said. "We need to create a broader movement for public education."
But this approach has caused alarm among some in the union and in political circles. Rank-and-file teachers and even other UTLA officers suggest that in their zeal to change the organization, the new union leaders have neglected some of the nuts and bolts of unionism.
"UTLA is a labor union and has the structure and mechanisms and funding and politics of a labor union," said Warren Fletcher, a union chairman at City of Angels School downtown, who has been both ally and critic of Pechthalt and Jordan. "I'm concerned that we're approaching things from the perspective of some sort of grand movement."
We both developed the same sort of emphasis, a first principle that the activity and organizing of the membership of a union, rather than the leadership, is the key to power," Brenner said.
"Joel and I developed a critique of the narrow trade union perspective," Pechthalt said. "With the tightening of the economic pie, the only way to challenge that was to build a broad-based social movement for public education."
During UTLA's last strike, a nine-day walkout in 1989, Pechthalt and Jordan organized a rally in Exposition Park with Villaraigosa's help. In 1992, Pechthalt led a one-hour wildcat strike at Manual Arts High School, which included 30 teachers and 1,500 students, to protest cuts. The district tried to discipline Pechthalt; Villaraigosa guided his successful grievance.
About the same time, Pechthalt and Jordan began publishing A Second Opinion, a newsletter that frequently criticized UTLA. Among their contributors were other dissidents, including Julie Washington, now a vice president, and David Goldberg, now union treasurer.
"We need to once more begin transforming the image of teachers as friendly Caspar Milquetoast do-gooders into a unified, mobilized and proud bunch of unionists," Pechthalt and Jordan wrote in August 2004.
By then, Jordan was running a campaign to take over the board of directors and three officer positions with a slate of dissidents called United Action. The slate did not field a presidential candidate, and did not think Duffy, the only challenger to incumbent John Perez, stood a chance.
Though campaigning for the union presidency on his own, Duffy found he agreed with Pechthalt and Jordan on the need for militancy; United Action endorsed Duffy, and vice versa.
Their timing was good. In February 2005, the frustrated membership elected the entire slate, including Duffy.
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