UTLA rally at James Monroe High School in November 2014.

Members of the LA teachers union, UTLA, will be out in the streets Thursday as part of a “Day of Action” that is planned in conjunction with 200 other cities. Union members will be visiting homes in the areas near LA Unified schools for planned “neighborhood walks” where they will ask residents what they want to see in their schools and express support for Propositions 55 and 58, two measures on the November ballot.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl mentioned the day of action as part of his state of the union speech in July and said the event will be in coordination with the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, a national group of parent, youth and community organizations and labor groups whose stated goal is “fighting for educational justice and equity in access to school resources and opportunities.” UTLA participated in several Alliance national events last school year, including “walk-ins” in February and May.

According to UTLA’s newspaper, as of Sept. 16, at least 140 schools have signed up to participate in the day of action. The event will begin at 3:30 p.m. after school is out, with parents, students, teachers and community supporters meeting outside schools for a brief training session on the “nuts and bolts of going door-to-door,” according to a UTLA flyer on the event. From 4 to 5 participants will walk in pairs and visit homes in the area then meet back at the schools from 5 to 5:30 for a debrief.

Prop. 55 is an extension of taxes on high-income earners. Prop. 58 would allow public schools to decide how to teach English language learners, removing restrictions from a referendum passed 18 years ago that required students be taught almost exclusively in English.

“At stake is whether California’s highest income earners will continue to pay a particular stream of taxes to support the state’s schools and social programs, or whether they will be given a tax break amidst growing poverty and inequality,” Caputo-Pearl said about Prop. 55 during his state of the union speech. “At stake is over $700 million annually for Los Angeles. We will be involved in massive precinct-walking and phone-banking as we build to the November election.” Caputo-Pearl did not return a message seeking comment.

Students at Alliance Margaret M. Bloomfield High School in Huntington Park.

Alliance College-Ready Public Schools is the largest independent charter network in LA Unified, with 28 middle and high schools serving over 12,500 students. Ninety-four percent of Alliance’s students come from poverty, yet the charter management organization has a proven track record of outperforming the district and state schools when it comes to key factors like graduation rates and standardized test performance.

But how scalable is the Alliance model and that of other CMOs like it? Are there answers inside their halls to the big questions that have dogged the district for years? Or are charters actually the problem, not the solution, when it comes to the district’s woes, as some detractors like the LA teachers union, UTLA, have charged.

• Read more about charters: How charters went from a ‘novelty’ to dominate the conversation of LAUSD, and 9 questions and answers about LA’s charters.

These questions were raised to new levels of importance about a year ago when an early draft of what was to become the Great Public Schools Now funding plan for Los Angeles schools was leaked to the press and sent shockwaves through the educational world. The plan called for expanding independent charter schools at LA Unified to serve half of all its students.

The plan received significant backlash and has since been modified to include all kinds of successful models, including traditional district schools, but the early draft raised an interesting question: Could charter schools be scaled to size to overtake district schools?

Independent charters already serve 107,000 of the district’s 665,000 students, but there has yet to be a charter management organization that has proven ready and willing to declare itself a scalable, cookie cutter model that could replace district schools.

Alliance is certainly not ready to declare itself that. In fact, Alliance has no plans to add any new schools over the next four years, according to Dan Katzir, Alliance’s president and CEO, who has been in his role since March 2015. Katzir said in his interview for the job he floated the idea of pausing on adding new schools.

“The fact of the matter is even if we stop growing for four years, we need to catch up with our growth from a systems perspective, an infrastructure perspective and a behavior and cultural perspective,” Katzir said.

Katzir also added that even if Alliance doesn’t add new schools, it will continue to grow because six schools in the network are still adding grades in the coming years.

However, despite the pause on growth, Alliance does believe its model is replicable. On its About Us webpage, the title reads, “Proving exceptional at scale is possible.” And Katzir said, “We can scale. We are bigger than 75 percent of other districts in the state, so we can scale.”

ALLIANCE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

Ninety-eight percent of Alliance students are African-American or Latino, 94 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, 9 percent have special needs and 17 percent are English learners. The district as a whole during the 2015-16 school year was 82 percent Latino and African-American, 77 percent qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch, 12 percent have special needs and 22 percent are English learners.

In the 2014-15 school year, 95 percent of Alliance seniors graduated high school, compared to 72 percent at district schools. On the 2015 Smarter Balanced standardized tests, 57 percent of Alliance juniors met or exceeded the English language arts standards, compared to 48 percent for juniors at district schools, and 28 percent met or exceeded the math standards, compared to 20 percent at district schools. On the 2016 tests, 68 percent of Alliance juniors met or exceeded the ELA standard, compared to 54 percent of LA Unified juniors, and 31 percent of Alliance juniors met or exceeded the math standard, compared to 25 percent for the district. Alliance schools stack up even better compared to neighborhood schools located near them on the 2016 tests. According to Alliance data, its schools performed 82 percent higher in math and 48 percent higher in ELA than neighboring district schools.

Alliance also says that 95 percent of its seniors are accepted into college and 100 percent graduate with the requirements to apply to UC and CSU colleges — known as the A-G standards. During the 2013-14 school year, 28 percent of district seniors graduated having completed all A-G courses, although that number is set to significantly jump this year due to a $15-million credit recovery program.

A MODEL THAT VALUES AUTONOMY

One thing that Alliance leaders stress is that their model isn’t really an exact model, because autonomy and freedom to innovate form a cornerstone of the belief system. Each Alliance principal has the power to hire and fire the staff and has full control over the school’s budget. Katzir said 90 percent of every dollar Alliance receives goes directly to the school, and the home office takes 10 percent for administrative costs.

“What’s happening at one school is different than what is happening at another. So the school has some autonomy to figure out how to hit their markers, and we are trying to figure out what the trends are that can support the most number of people,” said Alliance Chief Development and Communications Officer Catherine Suitor. “There’s a level of autonomy at the school so the school can turn, and the teachers have a level of autonomy, so it goes all the way down. It’s like, how to do you make decisions close to students and look at students? I really would say that is probably the biggest difference.”

The Alliance home office sets the bar for achievement, the overall Alliance values, training and educational approach, but principals are given significant freedom in how they run the school day-to-day. Alliance leaders also credit the small size of their schools as key to their success. The average Alliance grade has around 150 students. The smaller scale allows for each student to receive personalized attention.

“There are small classrooms here. I know all the students, I know all the parents by name. I can tell you a story about every single child in this building,” said Ani Meymarian, principal of Alliance Margaret M. Bloomfield High School in Huntington Park.

Jennifer Dzul, a recent graduate of Alliance Dr. Olga Mohan High School, transferred to an Alliance middle school after going to a large LA Unified elementary school and said the small environment was key to her success. She is set to begin as a freshman at Brown University this month.

“It was very different in that I got to know everybody on a personal basis. The school was so small I was really able to get everybody’s name and learn where they came from, versus elementary school where I have my group of friends and that’s it,” Dzul said. “The academics were a little harder, but because the classes were so small, the teachers noticed when you didn’t do the homework or when you were struggling because they didn’t have to worry about a lot of people.”

Martin Alcarez recently graduated from Alliance Marc and Eva Stern Math Science High School and is off to Stanford this month. His older brother also attended the school, and although he was more interested in attending the larger Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet, his mother convinced him to go to Alliance.

“At Alliance, not only were the teachers communicating with the students, but they were communicating with the parents, and not just about bad things. Because oftentimes at other big high schools, teachers only communicate for bad things,” Alcarez said. “At Alliance, my mom noticed that they really cared for students. Oftentimes teachers would call and say, ‘Oh, your son is doing really well in school and we are giving him an award.’ All those things that don’t seem significant, but they played a huge part in my mom making me go to Alliance.”

Diana Tejeda, a Spanish teacher at Bloomfied, also said the small environment has helped her grow.

“My friends at other schools that are not specifically charters, they feel like there is no room for growth. ‘No one comes to visit my classroom very often. I don’t know who to ask for help, it’s just like a stagnant situation. I go to work, I do my work and I teach.’ Whereas here I receive constant visits from the counselor, from the principal, from the vice principals and from other students that tend to come and walk in,” she said.

CONTROVERSY IN BATTLE WITH UTLA

As the largest charter network in LA UnifIed, and as the issue of how big and how fast charters should grow has come to dominate much of the conversation around the district, Alliance has found itself a target of UTLA. In March 2015 a unionization effort was launched and Alliance has found itself embroiled in a legal battle.

UTLA took a number of complaints to the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB), claiming that Alliance leaders were illegally blocking unionization efforts, at Alliance has lost some rulings before PERB and a state judge, who issued a temporary restraining order against Alliance. State lawmakers also recently approved an audit of Alliance’s finances to see if it was using public funds in its battle with UTLA. For more, see these stories:

• UTLA files complaint against Alliance charters over unionization
• State lawmakers approve audit of Alliance schools’ use of funds in battle with UTLA
• JUST IN: Judge issues restraining order against Alliance in union battle

The situation is still playing out in the courts. Along with the significant backlash that the early draft of what became the Great Public Schools Now plan received, it proves that no charter network, regardless of how successful their students become, is going to quietly grow without finding itself embroiled in political controversy surrounding charters.

“This isn’t just any union. This is UTLA, which is on the record as wanting to destroy charter schools,” said Katzir when asked why Alliance leaders are opposed to unionizing. “And so if you, a parent who is a plumber and a union member, believe that you have made a choice to be here, we believe that one of our elements of success is the relationship between the administrators and the teachers, and the flexibility to be innovative and customize the work for the kids and communities that we serve. Given what we have seen from UTLA, we think a lot of what we have at Alliance would be at risk here.”

Carol Burris

Note: This post originally appeared on Education Post.

By Caroline Bermudez

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes about “a never-ending stream of charter scandals coming from California” in Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet, a blog more slanted than the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

But as is typically true with Burris, her writing is long on bloviation and short on accuracy and reason. It seems as if she’s setting the stage for a report on charter schools her organization, the Network for Public Education, will publish next spring.

She mentions a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Advocates contending 253 charter schools in the state, or approximately 20 percent, have illegal admissions policies.

Since the report’s release, Southern California Public Radio reported more than 50 charter schools have been removed from the list. A number of the violations were the result of poorly worded language or outdated documents posted on schools’ websites, hardly nefarious orchestrations.

An ACLU attorney, Victor Leung, said, in the same SCPR article, “the vast majority of schools contacting us have been in a really constructive way.” He added, “Most of these schools were quite concerned they had bad policies posted on their websites and they all wanted to change them pretty quickly.”

Contrary to Burris’ assertion that they shun accountability, charter school officials have called for better oversight instead of the hodgepodge system in place whereby 324 local, county and state agencies act as authorizers.

Jed Wallace, CEO of the California Charter Schools Association (a group that draws Burris’ particular ire), has written about the need to close failing charter schools. Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, penned a recent op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, explaining how the current system of oversight falls short:

Charter schools are not the primary focus of any of these agencies. Instead, school districts and county education offices were mandated to oversee charter schools by the state Legislature and they are now stuck with a complex task many never wanted to begin with.

School districts in particular, working within tight budgets, often don’t have the capacity or staffing to deal effectively with charter schools. Most districts must direct the majority of their time and energy into operating traditional public schools.

Much of the targets of Burris’ criticism are virtual charter schools, which many charter school advocates do not support because of their abysmal performance. Burris may believe she’s done some substantive sleuthing here, but charter advocates beat her to the punch in reporting the failures of virtual charter schools some time ago.

ABOUT THAT TEACHERS UNION ‘STUDY’

Burris’ shoddy attempts at commentary don’t end there. She cites a report funded by United Teachers Los Angeles alleging charter schools have drained the Los Angeles Unified School District of $500 million. Aside from the teachers union’s obvious agenda behind the report, the findings bear further scrutiny—even the district has disputed them.

LAUSD has lost money for students it no longer serves; this is neither money promised to the district nor money taken away by charter schools. The district still receives the same dollar amount per pupil, yet while student enrollment has declined, the number of full-time staff at LAUSD has increased, according to a report commissioned by the district.

The dip in students is also not entirely attributable to charter schools. The same report found that half of the loss is due to a decrease in the birth rate and students transferring to other school districts. Furthermore, LAUSD students attend school less often than the statewide average, resulting in daily losses of revenue.

The report never blames charter schools for the loss of revenue. Instead, it advises LAUSD to study why families leave traditional public schools for charter schools.

Burris wades into money and paints a grossly imbalanced picture of charter schools with coffers padded by billionaires all the while neglecting to mention that the most powerful and largest political war chest in California belongs to the California Teachers Association, which outspends large corporations such as AT&T and Chevron.

From 2000-2009, the union dispersed more than $211 million in political contributions and lobbying expenses.

Pot, meet kettle.

Half of the top 10 high schools in California are charter schools. In LAUSD, charter schools are outperforming traditional public schools (but not magnet schools because charter schools don’t cherry pick as they do).

Hillary Rodham Clinton voiced her support for charter schools—at an event held by the National Education Association, no less.

You didn’t read any of these facts in Burris’ post because they don’t fit her conveniently concocted narrative of charter schools undermining public education.

My only hope is that those who benefit the most from charters—low-income families of color—don’t buy into these falsehoods and lose an opportunity to get off the waiting lists and find a better school for their children.

Caroline Bermudez is senior writer at Education Post. Before that she was a staff editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy, covering the nonprofit world, with a particular focus on foundations and high net-worth giving.

UTLA began a media campaign this week. (Courtesy: UTLA)

Look around at billboards, bus benches and online and you’re likely to spot a message from UTLA about students, teachers and parents telling their stories about their experience with the LA Unified school system.

These positive stories about traditional district schools are part of an unprecedented media campaign launched this week by United Teachers Los Angeles, the second-largest teachers union in the country, which also plans coordinated demonstrations at schools this fall.

“We are public school educators who are telling our stories,” said Betty Forrester, a UTLA and AFT vice president who has started her 43rd year at the district and whose daughter went to district schools.

“We are continuing our actions with national labor alliances to reclaim our schools and stop those who interfere with access and equity in our public schools,” said Cecily Myart-Cruz, another union representative. “We are a public school alliance who wants to reclaim our schools.”

Myart-Cruz said that on Oct. 6 the district plans to join with 200 cities for a walk-in with the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools.

Teachers across the district plan to show support by walking into class together that day, and some schools will host speakers before the school day begins. A similar demonstration in February involved 40 U.S. cities and 170 LA Unified school campuses, according to UTLA, which has bolstered its spending power with a recent dues increase that boosted member dues by a third, bringing in an additional $8 million for the 35,000-member union.

The NEA-affiliated California Teachers Association also launched a similar radio campaign this week.

• Read more: UTLA president’s aggressive 10-point plan for upcoming battles

Performing arts teacher Sue Freitag of El Camino Real Charter High School.

A $1,139 dinner at a steakhouse. A $95 bottle of fine Syrah wine. A $73 bill for flowers.

Those charges and others made by staff of a successful charter school were cited this week at an LA Unified School Board meeting and led the district to take the first steps to revoking the school’s charter.

El Camino Real Charter High School, which educates 3,600 students in the west San Fernando Valley, was given a Notice of Violations Tuesday that they must answer by Sept. 23, or the district could hold a public hearing to decide whether to revoke the school’s charter and return it to traditional district school status.

On Friday morning, all of the correspondence between the district and the school that was provided to the school board members was made public as per a request by board member Monica Ratliff.

While some of the school board members seemed outraged about the charges against the charter school in more than an hour of debate Tuesday, many teachers who spoke in support of the school said they felt that the district was being too harsh on the school. Some of them supported the expenses on lavish dinners, even though the district rules wouldn’t allow such practices for their own traditional schools.

“There are some things that need to be negotiated, and that may mean taking you out to dinner,” said teacher Sue Freitag. “I think the district is being unreasonable. Once again, it’s a huge bureaucracy trying to tell us all what to do. Charters are supposed to be independent.”

Marshall Mayotte, El Camino Real chief business officer

Freitag taught at the school for 14 years when it was a district school and after it became an independent charter school. She is also a member of the teachers union, UTLA, and notes that she is making 7 percent more than she did as a traditional school teacher. She said she has been part of the school family for 32 years, going back to being a student there.

“This school has had a pristine reputation in academics and the arts and it hurts me personally to see our reputation under scrutiny,” Freitag testified to the school board on Tuesday. “I question the charter school division as to why these issues were not brought up prior to the school year?” Freitag, who also is in charge of the theater program at the school, said, “I’m here for students, they deserve a safe school environment free of political interference.”

The teachers at El Camino Real will be meeting after school on Friday with UTLA members to discuss the issues with the school. The teachers have a separately negotiated UTLA contract that is different than the one for the overall district.

At Tuesday’s meeting, school board member Richard Vladovic said he sifted through the thousand of expenses of El Camino and asked, “Is it common to ask school funds to pay for a corkage fee? Can you use money meant for the students to pay the price of a bottle of wine? Can they purchase alcohol with school money? … If an LA principal did that, what would probably happen?”

Schools have done that, but they are told it’s against district policy, school officials said. Superintendent Michelle King shook her head and said, “There would be an investigation, and appropriate action would follow. No, we wouldn’t say it’s OK.”

Vladovic added that the school was asked months ago about the charges of “significant meals at restaurants and who attended the meetings and what they were for, and they did not respond.”

Jose Cole-Gutierrez, director of the district’s Charter Schools Division that brought the vote for the Notice of Violations to the school board, said his office noted the “seemingly exorbitant personal and improper expenses” including first-class travel and other expenses into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He said the school has “the opportunity to remedy concerns noted” including charges on credit cards charged to the school that includes unauthorized travel expense. Although charter schools run independently, they must still follow some overall district rules and procedures, and their charters are renewed by the school board every five years but can be revoked at any time.

“We noted credit card activity that is still problematic,” Cole-Gutierrez said. “It does not prohibit the use of personal expenses. It discourages it, but does not prohibit it.” He said the district’s charter division asked for clarifications for the past two years.

School board President Steve Zimmer noted that the Notices to Cure from the charter division are common requests, and that the school board doesn’t plan to revoke the school’s charter immediately. Other school board members expressed serious concerns.

“This does not reflect on a great school, I have major concerns,” Vladovic concluded. “Do we treat schools that are still LAUSD property, as opposed to charter schools on independent sites, differently? No, so they are all treated the same.”

Board member Scott Schmerelson, who represents the district where El Camino is located, pointed out that each of the teachers speaking for the school was passionate and said “the charter school is excellent and used to have a stellar reputation.” Schmerelson noted a media interview with a school representative who said there was a lot of money in the school’s treasury and the expenses weren’t of concern.

“You can’t use public money like that,” Schmerelson said. “What bothers me the most is the arrogance, the arrogance, on the news, as if we’re the bad guys. We like the school, I don’t want to revoke the charter, I think it’s a great school. But you have to play fair and have to be fair with public money.”

Schmerelson said he received many emails from faculty members who said they were happy with the school, but unhappy with the administrators who created these problems. “The great majority of the emails I received were for the school, but against the deeds that were done,” Schmerelson said.

El Camino attorney Janelle Ruley

In the charter school’s own by-laws, it notes that purchases for staff meals must be pre-approved and “each department has a budget of $50/employee/year for meals.”

Janelle Ruley, a charter rights attorney of Young, Minney & Corr representing the school’s governing board, said the school district’s recent action “feels like a bait-and-switch sucker punch.” She said the school board’s actions are unproductive and said the school answered all the questions in a timely manner and changed some school policies.

“Like Charlie Brown kicking a football, charter schools are set up to make compliance mistakes and they’re heavily penalized when they actually do,” Ruley said. She added that the school board action “will expose the district to liability.” Ruley said the school plans to answer all the questions within the deadline, but that didn’t stop the teachers and families from being angry.

Teacher Gail Turner-Graham

Teacher Gail Turner-Graham pointed out that “El Camino takes care of its teachers” with an average salary scale of $90,000 per teacher last year. She said the school increased classes, clubs and extracurricular activities by more than 15 percent and two college counselors are dedicated specifically for college planning and helping students with credit recovery. She said the school has a waiting list of 1,000 students and has “established a lean operating system,” and support staff increased by more than 40 percent.

Softball coach and teacher Lori Chandler said she had taught at the school since 1985 and when they first talked about going charter. “At the time the faculty lacked confidence and a majority was not in favor, but five years ago was very different and the faculty fully supported it,” said Chandler who also graduated from the high school. “That was the very best thing that happened to El Camino Real. Being a charter school means decisions are made at the school level.”

Chandler pointed out the school won 97 awards in the past five years in athletics. She suggested that the district wanted to take back the school because it was thriving so well and had several million dollars in their coffers for retiree benefits. “Perhaps that’s the problem, we are thriving too much,” said Chandler, who devoted 33 years to the school.

Lori Chandler, teacher and alum at El Camino Real.

District officials said they first notified the school of concerns last year, on Sept. 29, 2015 and issued a “Notice to Cure” to explain the irregularities by Oct. 30, 2015.

But the faculty and students didn’t know of the issues at the school until the first week of school this year, according to a science teacher at the school for the past 14 years, Dean Sodek. He said the faculty and parents were surprised and it was like “having a kitchen sink lobbed at us” by the district.

Sodek said the district paid a total of $1.2 million in oversight fees over the past five years to the district. He said the district charter office should offer more assistance to the school. He and other staff members said the district’s actions have shaken up the school.

“Please try to understand our frustration,” said the school’s ‎director of marketing, Melanie Horton. She said the district’s actions were “distracting and scaring our students and staff.”

Dermot Givens, an El Camino parent.

Parent Dermot Givens, an attorney whose son Damian got into the school through open enrollment, pointed out that his is one of the 8 percent of African-American families at the school. “It is not an all-white upper-class population,” Givens said, adding that his son is fluent in French, learning Mandarin Chinese and a member of the basketball team.

Marshall Mayotte, the school’s chief business officer, said the district’s report was a result of “sloppy work and false statements.” He pointed out that his name was mentioned 11 times for charges made on an employee business card and he was not at the restaurants that were named.

After the district voted to approve the latest notice to the school, Mayotte said, “We were caught off guard.” He said he didn’t have time to answer the summary of facts before the district made them public. The Los Angeles Daily News conducted an in-depth investigation of the school finances in May that also detailed expenses.

Tensions during the school board meeting grew so tense that board member Monica Garcia ordered: “OK, everybody breathe! Everybody breathe! There is a lot of tension and anxiety out there. What I hear is there is a lot people who support their school and want to see a solution and concern about some behavior came to light at some point. …  What I’m interested in hearing is a conversation of how to fix the issues.”

Scott Silverstein, a newly elected member of the El Camino school board and the parent of a recent graduate of the school, said, “We are more than happy to make the necessary changes.”

By Caroline Bermudez

Nearly two years ago, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez posed a question in an op-ed worth revisiting.

“Is the L.A. teachers union tone deaf?”

Based on a recent speech given by Alex Caputo-Pearl, the head of United Teachers Los Angeles, the answer is a definitive yes.

The juvenile world of heroes and villains Caputo-Pearl described, one where evil corporations and billionaires look to profit from public education while scrappy, earnest underdogs try to stop them, bears no semblance to reality.

Teachers unions in California comprise one of the most powerful political forces in the state.

Rather than admit this, Caputo-Pearl issued a battle cry worthy of a Bugs Bunny cartoon in his speech given at the UTLA Leadership Conference:

“With our contract expiring in June 2017, the likely attack on our health benefits in the fall of 2017, the race for Governor heating up in 2018, and the unequivocal need for state legislation that addresses inadequate funding and increased regulation of charters, with all of these things, the next year-and-a-half must be founded upon building our capacity to strike, and our capacity to create a state crisis, in early 2018. There simply may be no other way to protect our health benefits and to shock the system into investing in the civic institution of public education.”

What is glaring in Caputo-Pearl’s speech is that aside from mentioning his own two children, the word “children” was said only once. This speaks volumes as to the rationale behind his leadership, a role serving the interests of adults before those of students. Threatening to strike should be an absolute last resort, not the first order of action.

It calls to mind a classic paradox.

Unstoppable force, meet immovable object.

The unstoppable force is the rising cost of health care and pensions in this nation. As a result of these sharply increasing costs, LAUSD faces a staggering amount of debt, to the tune of more than $11 billion, that threatens to cripple the entire system because the district is on the hook, per demands made by UTLA, to provide lifetime health benefits and retirement pensions to its employees.

According to a report written by an independent financial review panel that was commissioned by LAUSD, the district owes more than $20,000 per student for unfunded liabilities (see page 44) although per pupil expenditure in California is less than $10,000 per student. Placed in further context, the liability for retirement benefits LAUSD is obligated to pay for is four times that of other large urban school districts. Twenty-seven percent of state funding LAUSD receives goes to paying pension and health care costs before factoring in teacher salaries, school supplies and textbooks.

To fully fund health care benefits, LAUSD would have to pay $868 million every year for 30 years—and it is not alone. Seventy percent of school districts in California provide some variety of lifetime health benefits to retired employees.

The pain will not be felt by Los Angeles alone.

The immovable object is the UTLA, which Lopez wrote, “has shown little flexibility: not on salary negotiations, tenure, student testing, teacher evaluations or anything else.” The district is standing on the edge of a fiscal cliff, yet Caputo-Pearl ignored the findings of the report.

• Enrollment at LAUSD schools has declined by 100,000 students, half of the loss is due to a dip in the birth rate and students transferring to other school districts. The other half has gone to charter schools, but the report’s authors take a neutral stance when it comes to charter schools. They advised the district to study why families decamped for these schools in the hopes of gathering insight.

• Although enrollment has dropped dramatically, the number of full-time staff at LAUSD increased, which the report’s authors wrote merited rethinking.

• Students in the district attend school less often than the statewide average resulting in daily losses of revenue.

• Only 75 percent of LAUSD teachers have a strong attendance rate (defined as attending work at least 96 percent of the time), leading the district to spend $15 million it can ill afford to lose paying for substitute teachers.

These findings paint a more complicated picture than Caputo-Pearl was willing to acknowledge. Instead, he resorted to megalomania. He stated, “We are going to need to build as much power as possible to shift the political dynamics not just in Los Angeles, but in California.”

Except teachers unions have already done just that and have been for years. A Los Angeles Times article stated the California Teachers Association, which UTLA is a part of, is one of the biggest political players in the state with the money to back it up:

“It outpaced all other special interests, including corporate players such as telecommunications giant AT&T and the Chevron oil company, from 2000 through 2009, according to a state study. In that decade, the labor group shelled out more than $211 million in political contributions and lobbying expenses — roughly twice that of the next largest spender, the Service Employees International Union.

“Since then it has spent nearly $40 million more, including $4.7 million to help Brown become governor, according to the union’s filings with the secretary of state.”

We are not talking about some cash-strapped upstart, but a well-oiled political machine, a group that will fight tooth and nail to preserve its own interests even if it means bringing about financial ruin.

Caputo-Pearl should not aim to create a state crisis, but to try to prevent one from happening. But when someone delivers a speech about education and the word “children” is barely uttered, holding such a hope is magical thinking. If UTLA doesn’t embrace some measure of compromise with the district, the immovable object will have nothing to meet it.

Caroline Bermudez is a senior writer at Education Post and former reporter at Chronicle of Philanthropy.

A recent UTLA demonstration. (Photo: UTLA website)

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl welcomed teachers to the new school year and urged them to get involved in a media campaign for late August, according to a recorded robo-call that went out last night.

In the recorded message by Caputo-Pearl sent out Sunday night before teachers return to school, he complimented teachers for the “amazing people and work in our public schools” throughout the district.

He also said union chapter meetings will be held starting the second week of school that will discuss the unprecedented media campaign and call for possible demonstrations later in the school year. The school district may be involved with a nationwide “walk-in” in October as they did last year.

• Read more: UTLA president’s aggressive 10-point plan for upcoming battles

The UTLA president also repeated his call that “billionaires should not be driving the public school agenda,” talking about wealthy Californians who the union says undermine public schools.

The robo-call is meant for the 31,000 teachers represented in district schools and some charter schools at LA Unified.

Starting late August and running through the month of September, the UTLA public relations campaign will include billboards, posters and online messages that will feature union members, students and parents from the district.

Their social media campaign will use #wearepublicschools. The plan for the campaign is to create a “positive public narrative around the great things happening in our district public schools, featuring educators, students and parents, while beating back the corporate charter narrative and to share our vision for fully funded neighborhood community schools.”

Alex Caputo-Pearl

Alex Caputo-Pearl is the president of United Teachers Los Angeles, a union that has a long and storied history of discarding presidents elected as firebrands but who reign as defenders of the status quo. Caputo-Pearl seems determined to end that cycle and bring teacher union militancy to the entire state of California.

In a July 29 speech to at the UTLA Leadership Conference, Caputo-Pearl outlined the union’s plans as it readies for the expiration of its contract next year and a gubernatorial election in 2018.

“The next year-and-a-half must be founded upon building our capacity to strike, and our capacity to create a state crisis, in early 2018,” Caputo-Pearl told an audience of 800 activists. “There simply may be no other way to protect our health benefits and to shock the system into investing in the civic institution of public education.”

While it’s not clear what form a “state crisis” would take, Caputo-Pearl described a series of actions the union will undertake in coming months, beginning with a paid media campaign denouncing “billionaires … driving the public school agenda” and a “massive” political mobilization to ensure the November passage of Proposition 55, which would extend a 2012 measure that raised taxes on high-earning residents to fund schools.

UTLA will then set its sights on the next Los Angeles Unified School District board elections.

“We must face off against the billionaires again in the School Board elections of 2017, and WE MUST WIN,” Caputo-Pearl said, explaining that the next board would vote on a new contract. The union needed to help elect a board that would resist a “vigorous campaign to cut our benefits” by district leaders, he suggested.

But Caputo-Pearl isn’t content to shape LAUSD’s agenda. He hopes to organize the entire state.

“All of the unions representing LAUSD workers and the teachers unions in San Diego, San Bernardino, Oakland and San Francisco share our June 2017 contract expiration date,” he said. “We have an historic opportunity to lead a coordinated bargaining effort across the state.

“Coordinated action could dramatically increase pressure on the legislature and fundamentally shape the debate in the 2018 Governor’s race.”

Caputo-Pearl stopped short of calling for a multi-city teacher strike, but pointing to a common contract expiration date that enabled “coordinated action” put it on the table.

The UTLA president had another white whale to harpoon: Proposition 13, the state’s iconic 1978 initiative that capped property tax rates. Caputo-Pearl said he wanted to revive the union-backed “Make It Fair” campaign that sought to hike taxes on commercial property.

UTLA is in position to pursue an aggressive agenda because of its successful internal campaign to raise dues by 33 percent earlier this year and new joint affiliation with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Now the union will launch an internal campaign to solicit more money from members in the form of PAC contributions, Caputo-Pearl said. Currently only about 20 percent of UTLA members donate to its PAC.

There will of course be organized opposition to Caputo-Pearl’s vision for the future, and some of it may come from his own parent unions. While UTLA is by far the largest local of both the state NEA and AFT branches — the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers, respectively — these unions have their own officers and elected bodies that represent members throughout the state. Even if they agree with most of Caputo-Pearl’s agenda, they may be wary of his ambition. Their leaders might remember that former UTLA President Wayne Johnson rode a 1989 teacher strike all the way to the presidency of CTA.

Caputo-Pearl’s broad themes were underscored by a guest speaker: Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and idol of advocates for more muscular union activism. She argued that teachers need to organize across district, state and even union boundaries, telling conference attendees, “We cannot do this work alone, and we cannot do this work in isolation from one another.”

If UTLA’s agenda becomes the agenda of all California teachers unions and is ultimately successful, the union militancy train will leave the West Coast and travel through many other states. Union leaders comfortably situated in the status quo will have to jump aboard or get run over.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org, where Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears Wednesdays.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl

The president of the LA teachers union, UTLA, outlined an aggressive plan for the coming year during a speech on July 29 at the 2016 UTLA Leadership Conference at the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles.

Predicting that LA Unified will look to cut UTLA’s health benefits in 2017, along with other coming battles, Alex Caputo-Pearl said that “the next year-and-a-half must be founded upon building our capacity to strike, and our capacity to create a state crisis, in early 2018.”

Caputo-Pearl then walked through a 10-point action plan aimed at achieving strike readiness and advancing the union’s agenda between now and early 2018:

1. Media campaign — UTLA plans on launching its first paid media campaign in years starting this month. The campaign will use billboards, signs, bus benches and more aimed at pressing an anti-charter school agenda. “This is a major intervention in shaping the public narrative, and there will be a key role for you in amplifying the media campaign through social media,” Caputo-Pearl told the crowd.
2. Prop. 30 extension — The union will organize to help pass an extension of Proposition 30, now called Proposition 55, which seeks to extend the temporary personal income tax increases approved in 2012 on incomes over $250,000 for 12 years to be used for education and healthcare funding.
3. Contract preparations — Caputo-Pearl said in preparations for the 2016-17 contract re-openers, UTLA leaders will engage hundreds of members in school-site dialogues about what priorities the union should have in the talks. He said some issues, like class size and salary, are already on the agenda, but other issues like the district’s ability to reconstitute schools, standardized testing and restorative justice implementation could also be prioritized.
4. Anti-charter agenda — The UTLA president also outlined an agenda aimed at taking on independent charter schools in the district and the state. “This fall, we will build a community forum here in Los Angeles with Senator Ricardo Lara, chair of the Senate Appropriations committee,” he said. “The hearing will look specifically at the fiscal report on the impact of charters on LAUSD. It will look at changes to state law that will be necessary if we want to protect the civic institution of public education from insolvency.” He also talked of a plan to coordinate efforts with other teachers unions in the state that will also be entering contract negotiations soon.
5. Organizing — UTLA will be launching a coalition in the fall with the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, the LA Alliance for a New Economy, and the Schools LA Students Deserve Grassroots Coalition to “bring parents, youth, clergy and community into efforts to push for community schools, public school accountability and educator unionization,” Caputo-Pearl said.
6. Contract priorities — In the winter, Caputo-Pearl said UTLA “will initiate a systematic process to identify priorities for our full contract bargaining in 2017-18, through school site chapter meetings and collective surveys, and through input from committees. We will sunshine demands and plan for escalating actions as we head towards the expiration of our contract,” as well as develop coordinated bargaining for UTLA-represented charter schools.
7. Training — Caputo-Pearl said UTLA “will continue our tradition of providing trainings and ongoing support for school site organizing and contract enforcement, from taking on bad principals, to organizing for effective school discipline programs, to holding administrators accountable to the contract, and more.” He added that additional money from a recent dues increase has been used to hire more staff to help achieve this.
8. Social justice — As a way to stand for racial and social justice, Caputo-Pearl said UTLA will be “organizing for infusions of resources into our highest-needs schools. In a time of unprecedented wealth inequality, this is the right thing to do. It is also the strategically smart thing to do, because in the absence of a pro-active approach to these school communities, Broad-Walmart will target these schools for privatization, leading to a further undermining of the entire system.”
9. Board elections — Caputo-Pearl said UTLA is already endorsing LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer for reelection, as he faces off against Nick Melvoin and any other challengers that may enter the race. “We expect the billionaires to come hard after Zimmer again and we have to be ready. On top of this, the composition of the school board will be up for grabs as board districts 2 and 6 also have elections,” Caputo-Pearl said.
10. More money for political action — Caputo-Pearl said UTLA will encourage its members to invest in its political action fund, PACE, in preparation to fight the Great Public School Now plan — which he calls the Broad-Walmart plan due to it being funded partially by the Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation — and to fund school board candidates UTLA endorses.

In response to Caputo-Pearl’s comments on charter schools, Jason Mandell, communications director for the California Charter Schools Association, said, “For a teacher, Caputo-Pearl talks very little about teaching. Reading his plan, it’s clear he hates charter schools. What’s not clear is how his relentless complaining about charters is going to help educate L.A.’s students. If he thinks that putting a stop to charter schools is going to magically improve district schools, he’s been sipping too much of his own Kool-Aid.”

In response to Caputo-Pearl’s desire to change state law regulating charter schools, Mandell said, “If he’s interested in helping the district address its financial challenges, Caputo-Pearl should start by reading the independent report commissioned by the district. That report, which was written by financial experts without any allegiance to any interest group, said the district’s enrollment would continue to decline even if LAUSD had no more new charter schools.” The experts are clear that if the district wants to ward off a financial crisis, it needs to address its $13 billion in unfunded post-retirement liabilities. It’s a sensitive and difficult subject for sure, but if UTLA cares about the district’s financial future, it shouldn’t just ignore it entirely.”

UTLA released its study on the fiscal impact of charter schools on May 10.

Six weeks ago LA teachers union officials told the LA Unified school board that independent charter schools were costing the district about $500 million each year.

School board member Monica Ratliff called on Superintendent Michelle King to provide the board an analysis of the union-funded study on independent charter schools from which the figure was derived. But the board has met as a full body at least four times since the report was released and has yet to discuss the report publicly. The board meets again today.

A district spokeswoman has been unable to say when the board will discuss the report.

An internal district document obtained by LA School Report shows that district officials have disputed some of the findings of the union’s study.

The union’s report was immediately criticized by district staff and others, as both inaccurate and an attempt to divert attention from far larger drains on the district’s finances. District officials were directed to refrain from commenting officially.

After LA School Report obtained the interoffice correspondence, King released a statement. The interoffice letter, dated June 14, was written by the district’s Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly, Associate Superintendent Sharyn Howell, who oversees special education, and Jose Cole-Gutierrez, director of the district’s Charter Schools Division.

“The information that both our labor and charter partners have brought to the forefront regarding our financial situation is informative, valuable and appreciated,” King’s statement reads in part. “Our team will continue to scrutinize these reports as we create strategies for a successful future and the growth of a variety of high-achieving schools.”

The California Charter Schools Association issued a 10-page response to the UTLA study a week after it was released and sent it to King and members of the school board. The group called the union’s report “riddled with inaccuracies.”

“It draws sweeping and often irresponsible conclusions based on limited information and obsolete data,” the CCSA said.

An initial analysis by the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), the district’s bargaining unit for middle managers, also found inaccuracies in the report.

UTLA said in a statement in the days after the report was released that it stood by its data used in the study and said the information was provided by the district.

The 46-page UTLA study was conducted by MGT America in December and January following the release of a report by the Independent Financial Review Panel in November.

The Independent Financial Review Panel projected that the district would face a $450 million deficit in three years, driven primarily by pension and healthcare costs.

In the 14-page interoffice letter, titled “Preliminary Review of UTLA MGT Report: Fiscal Impact of Charter Schools on LAUSD,” the district responds to each of the 12 findings in the UTLA report.

The first finding from the UTLA report is that the annual oversight revenue collected from independent charter schools does not cover the annual budget of the district’s Charter Schools Division, which is responsible for overseeing charter schools.

The district responded that the oversight fees generated this year will reach $9.4 million, while the Charter Schools Division expenditures are projected to be $8.3 million.

Days after the UTLA study was released LA School Report reported a similar finding that when the Charter Schools Division presented its budget in January, it showed that the department was collecting about $500,000 more from charter schools than it spends.

The union’s study included the cost of the office space that the Charter Schools Division occupies in the district’s headquarters at the Beaudry building as a cost that the revenue from oversight fees does not cover.

“Currently, no division is charged for the costs associated with facility use of the Beaudry building,” the memo says. “Staff will explore the possibility of charging a pro rata share of debt service costs for occupancy of this space.”

The study claimed that funds for oversight action by other departments within the district were not paid for through the oversight fees collected from charter schools, but the district response showed that nearly $1.4 million from the Charter Schools Division budget is allocated to the Office of the General Counsel, Data and Accountability, Accounting and Attendance and Enrollment for those departments’ costs.

One highly contested issue addressed in the report involved whether the district can charge a 3 percent oversight fee to the 56 charter schools that operate in district facilities.

State law limits the amount of money the district can charge an independent charter school for oversight fees to 1 percent of the school’s revenues. If the school receives “substantially rent free facilities” from the district, the district can charge a 3 percent oversight fee.

The district charges all charter schools a 1 percent oversight fee regardless of whether the schools are located in buildings owned by the district. It also charges charter schools located in district buildings a “pro rata share” of facilities costs.

LA Unified officials said the district collected $8.1 million during the last school year from the 1 percent oversight fee and the pro rata share. If the district were to collect 3 percent without the pro rata share, it would receive $4.6 million, according to the letter.

CCSA said in its response to the study that because the district charges a pro rata share, the facilities are not substantially rent free and the district cannot charge a 3 percent oversight fee.

The study pointed out that there are indirect costs to the district for independent charter school operations. The study estimates those costs reach $13 million.

“Staff will explore the feasibility of conducting a cost analysis to review indirect cost allocations,” the letter says.

The district did agree with some of the UTLA study findings, many of which were state funding issues. For example, the district agreed that it has a significantly higher proportion of special education students compared to independent charter schools.

CCSA contested this finding.

“The report uses a number of outdated and erroneous statistics that paint a misleading picture of both the proportion of students with disabilities in charters schools and the fiscal impact on the district,” CCSA wrote in its letter.

LA Unified has more charter students than any other district in the country, with 101,000 students in 221 schools, making up 16 percent of the district enrollment. Over the last decade, the number of charter schools has more than tripled.

The union report assumed that all students who attend independent charter schools would have attended LA Unified schools. However, a charter school can attract students from other districts, and some LA charter school students could have otherwise attended private schools or moved to another district.

The Independent Financial Review Panel’s report attributed half of LA Unified’s enrollment decline to charter schools. The rest of the decline was caused by demographic changes such as the drop in the number of children born in LA, it stated.

“Even if LAUSD had no more new charter schools, its enrollment would continue to decline due to demographic factors, factors that are not within its control, and that are unlikely to reverse in the coming years,” the panel concluded.

Marguerite Roza, a research professor at Georgetown University and director of the Edunomics Lab, wrote an op-ed in the LA Times following the release of the union’s study that advocated for districts to build their budgets based on the number of students it serves so that budgeting would be “inherently responsive to enrollment changes.”

“It’s hard for a district to shrink,” Roza said in an interview. “It doesn’t have much trouble growing. It’s harder to take away staff or contract.”

GPSN says it will fund the expansion and replication of successful schools in 10 high-needs neighborhoods, including charter schools, magnet schools, pilot schools and Partnership for Los Angeles Schools — and not solely charters, as a controversial early draft plan stated.

Reaction has come in across a wide range of viewpoints. Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of the LA teachers union, offered up the harshest criticism of the new plan so far.

Here are reactions from some key education leaders in California and Los Angeles:

“This new plan is a public relations move meant to distract from the original proposal, which was greeted with widespread condemnation. It’s clear by the group’s new pro-charter board of directors that the goal remains the same—to rapidly expand unregulated charter schools at the expense of neighborhood schools. It is deeply irresponsible for this group to continue to pursue its agenda in light of the recent report that showed the unchecked growth of charter schools is having a devastating impact on funding for the schools that most LA students attend. We can’t let the majority of our schools starve so that a few privately run schools can do well.

“Instead of defunding and deregulating our neighborhood schools, we must invest in sustainable community schools that support student learning and address issues of access and equity. UTLA is working with parents and community members to fight for investment in schools. Our recent contract agreement makes significant strides for our students and our classrooms, sets a foundation for more improvements to public education in Los Angeles, and addresses equity for our highest-needs students.” — Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of UTLA 

 “As a product of the Los Angeles Public Schools, I was able to get a strong college preparatory education, attend college at 16 and graduate in four years. Today, with a college education more important than ever, every Los Angeles student deserves the same opportunity that I had. But not every school gives students the preparation they need for college admission and graduation that affords them the opportunities that a college education provides. That is why UNCF (the United Negro College Fund) supports Great Public Schools Now’s commitment to finding what works in public education and ensuring that college is attainable for every child in every neighborhood—not just some children in some neighborhoods. Because, as we say at UNCF, ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste.’” — Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund

“My take is that if it’s sincere, if they’re genuine about this collaboration, it’s definitely a step forward. I think the real question is going to be how it’s presented to the district, in the spirit of collaboration with the district rather than done to the district…. (Facilities is) where it gets really delicate because LA Unified has the buildings. What we need is a way to reasonably and equitably share facilities. Again, that requires a lot of sensitivity to how that’s done on both parts, both on the district’s part and whoever is leading this effort. Right now we have underutilized schools in many communities and charters in inadequate facilities.” — Pedro Noguera, professor of education at UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

“I don’t think that this is the plan. I think that it’s sort of a scaffolding and design. And I think that’s fine. I guess it’s reasonable for folks to kind of pull back and take time to develop a plan — what it will actually be and what it will actually look like. So I don’t feel that I can react to what was released today as if it were really a plan. I don’t think is. There was a moment in which I thought that this project really might be or could be kind of an all kids project or an all students project in Los Angeles. The scaffolding that was released today doesn’t have those indicators. And while it is not a charter exclusive plan, it raises a lot of concern about who will be included and who will be left out.” — LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer 

“Inspiring opportunity to increase achievement, opportunity and learning for students and the adults who build support and services for them. Accelerating achievement is a goal very much aligned with LAUSD families and leadership. I very much appreciate GPSN leadership and experience in serving youth and transforming systems. GPSN is strengthened by champions for children and high commitment individuals who have been partners in the work of LA for several decades. Lastly, when talent, resources and urgency comes to assist LAUSD in addressing unmet need in extremely challenging environments, I am grateful that Superintendent King and so many leaders are embracing the opportunity to build the bridges towards success that lift our students out of poverty, marginalization and into their rightful place in creating solutions for our communities. The quest for educational justice has been a challenge since Mendez vs. Westminster in 1947. We have much work to do.” — LA Unified school board member Monica Garcia

“United Way of Greater LA looks forward to reading the full GPSN plan and identifying areas of alignment that grow successful education models within LAUSD. We believe external resources are vital to ameliorate the fiscal challenges facing the District and we continue to advocate for the equitable distribution of internal and external resources.” — Elmer Roldan, director of Education Programs and Policy at United Way of Greater Los Angeles

“I appreciated the plan’s recognition of the value of teachers and principals and the recognition that enrollment in teacher preparation programs is ‘rapidly declining.’ As I attended graduations over the last two weeks, I was struck by the hundreds of students crossing the stage due to their hard work and dedication and the hard work and dedication of their teachers and school staff. Teachers, principals, and school staff dedicate their professional lives to making the dreams of our youth a reality. They educate our children so that our children can live their dreams as writers, artists, doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists, etc. But something is clearly going wrong when people no longer want to be teachers and ’50 percent of new principals are not retained beyond their third year of leading.’

“I hope that GPSN’s efforts will focus not only on teacher and principal preparation but also getting our society to recognize the value of teachers and principals professionally and economically.

“As the School Board representative for both Pacoima and Panorama City, I welcome any efforts to truly acknowledge and assist the schools, students, parents, and communities in those areas. I suggest that GPSN transparently and openly reach out to the Neighborhood Councils and many highly active CBO’s in the areas and get to know what the community really wants via open and widely-publicized public forums.” — LA Unified school board member Monica Ratliff

“The charter community wants one thing above all else: high quality public schools. We support any effort to identify great schools, whether they are charter, magnet, pilot or any other type of public school, and help them flourish and expand in the neighborhoods that need them most.” — California Charter Schools Association

“Well, as your article noted, it has a dearth of details. Reading it from a philanthropic perspective, however, they telegraph pretty clearly who’ll be receiving funds. I gather that will be officially revealed on Thursday. I wish they’d shared what portion would likely go to each of their four categories. Any of the four could easily absorb the entire budget.

“I also hope that the open invitation to LAUSD by GPSN to collaborate isn’t met with a cold shoulder, because that’s not what would be best for children.” — Jim Blew, director of StudentsFirst California

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl

*UPDATED

A California Administrative Law judge has issued a number of rulings in the year-plus legal battle between Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and the LA teachers union, UTLA.

Friday’s rulings on several complaints that were brought to the California Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) were mixed, with some in favor of the independent charter school operator and some in favor of the union.

In a sign of how contentious the struggle between the two organizations has been, both issued news releases claiming victory. Alliance called the rulings a “major win,” and UTLA said the rulings showed Alliance “repeatedly and illegally violated teachers’ rights.”

Alliance operates 27 independent charters in LA Unified, and Alliance’s management has for more than a year been resisting an attempt by UTLA to unionize its teachers.

Judge Kent Morizawa‘s rulings dismissed a number of complaints that UTLA had brought accusing Alliance officials of making coercive and threatening statements to its employees in a series of official communications. But he also found that Alliance officials had unlawfully denied UTLA organizers proper access to two schools and unlawfully denied UTLA access to its email system when it redirected a union email to teachers’ spam folders. He also found that an Alliance official made a coercive statement to a teacher by implying that the teacher’s views on unionization could impact her official evaluation.

“The email and campus access have long been a non-issue. UTLA has had access to Alliance emails for more than a year and has access to Alliance campuses,” Alliance Chief Development and Communications Officer Catherine Suitor said.

She added, “We admitted the singular statement of one principal was ill-advised – and not a reflection of Alliance policy in any way. The principal is no longer at the school. We agree with judge that no one should feel coerced or intimidated.”

The rulings order Alliance to cease and desist from blocking emails or UTLA access to its schools. A news release from Alliance focused on the rulings in its favor, including that official communications from Alliance leaders to its employees about UTLA were not coercive.

“In a major win for Alliance College Ready Public Schools, Judge Morizawa with Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) rejected UTLA’s claims of coercion and dismissed the union’s attempt to block the Alliance’s First Amendment rights to communicate with their employees,” the release stated. “This important decision has deemed that Alliance has, in fact, acted in good faith and lawfully during the prolonged unionization effort. After reviewing Alliance’s communications with its schools and staff—the Judge shared an opinion that Alliance has been sharing accurate information that is within its legal boundaries.”

UTLA focused its release on the rulings in its favor.

“Alliance has been ordered to ‘cease and desist’ its illegal behavior,” said UTLA attorney Jesus Quinonez in a statement. “That’s not a ‘major win,’ as Alliance management tried to claim in an internal communication to employees. It is a finding of fact that the executives of this company have violated the law by interfering with the rights of teachers and school employees.”

UTLA represents the teachers at a number of independent charter schools, but the majority of the district’s charters, including Alliance’s, remain non-union. After UTLA started trying to organize the Alliance staff, it filed a number of complaints with PERB claiming Alliance leaders were illegally blocking unionization efforts.

Alliance leaders have continuously denied the claims. In December, PERB received a temporary injunction against Alliance on behalf of UTLA regarding the complaints, and Alliance was ordered to cease a number of activities, including maintaining or sponsoring petitions on its website soliciting employee signatures that affirm opposition to unionization, polling certified employees about their positions on unionization, denying UTLA representatives access to school sites after-hours and blocking UTLA emails to Alliance employees.

Suitor said that Friday’s rulings were the first two of five complaints UTLA has filed with PERB and said she expects positive rulings on the remaining three.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl praised the PERB rulings as a victory for UTLA.

“The educators at Alliance involved in the organizing campaign are dedicated to their students and their profession; they want to work together through a union to improve education for students and improve retention of teaching staff, but rather than being heard they were harassed,” Caputo-Pearl said in a statement. “This court ruling sends a strong message that the rights of teachers should be honored and that union activity in public charter schools is a protected right.”

The battle between the two organizations has also reached Sacramento, as the California Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted in May to audit Alliance to find out if it was improperly using funds in its public campaign against Alliance.

*This article has been updated to add two statements from Alliance’s Catherine Suitor.

For more on the legal conflicts, read these previous stories:

• Judge grants injunction against big LAUSD charter in battle with UTLA
• Judge issues restraining order against Alliance in union battle
• Alliance charters says some of its teachers ‘feel harassed’ by UTLA 

California Senator Tony Mendoza

The California Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted Wednesday to audit Alliance College-Ready Public Schools over the charter management organization’s use of funds in its unionization conflict with the LA teachers union, UTLA.

Alliance operates 27 independent charter schools in LA Unified. The organization’s management has for more than a year been resisting an attempt by UTLA to unionize its teachers.

The audit was requested by state Sen. Tony Mendoza, who wrote in a letter to the committee that he wants to determine if the public funds Alliance receives were used to “advance student achievement and improve the quality of educational programs” and were not used to resist unionization, which Alliance would have to use privately raised funds for.”

“Alliance schools are publicly funded,” Mendoza said in a statement. “The purpose of those funds is to educate children inside the classroom – not to intimidate teachers and parents.”

The audit also will look into matters beyond Alliance’s finances, including if information about Alliance parents, students and alumni was shared in conflict with confidentiality laws.

An Alliance press release characterizing the audit as politically motivated pointed out that Mendoza does not have any Alliance schools in his district and also is a former board member of UTLA. Mendoza represents District 32 in the eastern area of Los Angeles County.

LA Unified school board members Monica Garcia and Scott Schmerelson

By Peter Cunningham

Across America, parents are demanding more and better educational options for their children while teachers unions and bureaucrats desperately fight to retain their monopoly over public school students.

The latest front in the war against charter schools is in Los Angeles, where a study funded by United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) tallied up the financial impact of the district’s 221 charter schools.

The union’s analysis concluded that charter schools cost the district more than half a billion dollars—but nearly all of it was the per-pupil money that followed 100,000 students to their chosen independent charter school.

Notably, the analysis did not include the 53 unionized charter schools in Los Angeles, suggesting that the real motivation behind the study is to protect unionized jobs, at the expense of the education of the children of Los Angeles. UTLA has embraced the findings of the study and is urging the school board to consider the financial impact on the district before granting any more non-union charters.

The essential problem with the UTLA study is that it is designed to bolster a false argument—that charter schools are siphoning money from traditional public schools. Charter schools are public schools, serving the same students with the same tax dollars and they are held accountable to the same—and often tougher—performance standards. Arguing that public charter schools take money from traditional public schools is like arguing that a younger child deprives an older child of parental attention.

• Read more: Contrary to UTLA study, LAUSD makes money from charters

In Los Angeles, parents aren’t interested in protecting a bloated bureaucracy or preserving a steady flow of union dues. They want schools that prepare their children for success, and they are voting with their feet. LA Unified has more charter students than any other district in the country, making up 16 percent of the district enrollment. Over the last decade, the number of LA charter schools has more than tripled.

The same holds true for parents nationwide. A 2015 poll of 1,000 public school parents conducted by Education Post found that 65 percent agreed that, “Public charter schools offer parents in low-income communities options for quality schools that would otherwise be inaccessible to them.”

Only 35 percent of parents agreed with the union’s argument that, “Public charter schools take resources and high achieving students away from traditional public schools.” The pro-charter numbers were even higher among African-American and Latino families, who overwhelmingly make up the Los Angeles student population.

Meanwhile, the parents of nearly 10 million school children across America have opted out of the traditional public school system in favor of private schools, charter schools or homeschooling.

The fact is, after decades of monopoly control of public schools, teachers unions and their enabling bureaucracies are facing an existential crisis. As kids leave the system so does the money, along with the union dues. Today, charter schools enroll more than 30 percent of the kids in 14 cities in America and more than 10 percent in more than 160 districts.

The best of them are getting eye-popping results and closing achievement gaps as well as the highest-performing suburban schools. They are also graduating students from high school and enrolling them in college at much higher rates than traditional urban public schools.

At the same time, more than 30 states have passed laws authorizing the use of public dollars in private schools either through vouchers or education savings accounts, so the days of monopoly are coming to an end.

There’s a reason why every single Democratic and Republican candidate for president in the last 25 years supports public charter schools. Strong charter schools dispel the myth that poor kids can’t achieve at high levels.

Parents are fed up with divisive arguments like the ones advanced by this study. They want results and they want their kids to be prepared to compete in the new economy.

Apparently teachers do as well. A 2014 Education Next poll found that 34 percent of teachers chose charters, private schools or home-schooling for their own children—a higher percentage than the general public as a whole.

When even teachers are rejecting the schools that their own unions seek to protect from choice, you have to wonder what is going on. One can only imagine how many inner-city teachers choose to live outside the communities where they teach to access better public schools for their own kids.

If teachers unions really want to protect their unionized jobs, their best strategy is to help do a better job educating kids and trust that parents will find their way back to the traditional public schools they are roundly rejecting.

Peter Cunningham is the Executive Director of Education Post, a Chicago-based non-profit communications organization supporting efforts to improve public education. He recently served as Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama Administration’s first term.

This article was published in partnership with Education Post.

Tuesday’s school board meeting while the union report was delivered.

* UPDATED May 13

As district officials and other analysts pick apart the UTLA-funded study released Tuesday that claims that independent charter schools drain half a billion dollars from LA Unified, the district’s own numbers show LA Unified actually makes money from charters.

The first finding of the 42-page union-funded Cost of Charter Schools report states that the revenue collected from charter schools does not cover the annual budget of the district’s Charter Schools Division.

But that’s not what the district’s own numbers reveal.

In January when the Charter Schools Division presented its budget, it showed that the district receives half a million dollars more than they need to pay for the division. That report, presented to the Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee by Charters Division Director Jose Cole-Gutierrez, showed that the 1 percent oversight fee collected from charter schools brings in $8.89 million while the annual expenses of the division’s 47 employees including their benefits total $8.37 million.

The UTLA report puts the indirect administrative costs of the division at $13.8 million, including the cost of the square footage of space used in the Beaudry headquarters by the staff, janitorial costs and time managing and investigating charters that could be spent on traditional schools. These costs, it states, are not supported by the 1 percent oversight fee collected from charters that is used to fund the district’s charter schools division.

The UTLA study notes the district doesn’t charge the charter schools the full 3 percent it says they could charge for the 56 schools that are located on district sites. That could result in an increase of $2 million for the district, it says. School board member Monica Ratliff pointed out at Tuesday’s board meeting that many of her constituents ask why the full amount is not collected from the charter schools.

The report was immediately criticized by district staff and others, as both inaccurate and an attempt to divert attention from far larger drains on the district’s finances. District officials have been directed to refrain from commenting officially, but they are planning to respond to the report as early as a special school board meeting planned for Tuesday to discuss the budget.

An initial analysis by the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), the district’s bargaining unit for middle managers, also noted that the district’s own figures for its charters division contradicted those in the UTLA report. AALA reported that a district official said the number of charters contracting outside the district for special education — and the ensuing financial impact — was vastly misrepresented in the UTLA report. And it questioned whether UTLA was reading the regulations on charter fees correctly and whether the district could charge charters a full 3 percent.

“The report is full of glaring inaccuracies,” the California Charter Schools Association stated in a email. “It mischaracterizes how special education is funded, it ignores millions of dollars that charters pay to the district for facilities, and it guesstimates the staff time of hundreds of district employees, among many other distortions and false conclusions. We’re encouraged that the district will be scrutinizing the report to assess its accuracy. But what’s especially frustrating is that this report totally ignores the most important part of public education: student learning.”

It added, “When it comes to the district’s finances, the elephant in the room is the $13 billion in unfunded post-employment benefit liabilities that places LAUSD in the unenviable position of having to make very hard decisions in the months and years to come. It’s of course no surprise that UTLA’s report made no mention of that issue; they’d rather blame everyone else than offer real solutions for the district’s complex financial problems.”

The UTLA report comes as the district is facing a potential $450 million deficit within three years due to declining enrollment and increasing fixed costs, including pension costs, legal liability and other post-employment benefits.

The report was but together by a Florida-based consulting company, MGT of America, and Susan Zoller, a former teacher and administrator who compiled the report, presented it to the school board on Tuesday.

UTLA spokesperson Anna Bakalis said in a statement, “The data used in the MGT report came directly from the district. We stand behind the figures as given to MGT. We are glad this financial impact report has sparked a dialogue about these issues, and look forward to finding out more ways to address the findings that were laid out in this report.”

Unfunded pensions, which currently top $13 billion and have more than doubled since 2005, make LA Unified the only school district on a list of top 10 government entities across the country that can’t afford their pensions — the top spot going to the city of Detroit.

In January, a company that has performed independent audits of LA Unified for seven years told a school board committee that the district had gone into the red for the first time, with liabilities outstripping assets by $4.2 billion, in large part because of having to report $5.2 billion in retiree pension liabilities.

Another drain on the district is chronic absenteeism which results in an annual loss of $139 million in revenue. Increasing attendance in schools by only one percent — which would make it equal to the average in the state — that could bring in $45 million a year, according to district figures.

And a sweeping report of the Independent Financial Review Panel last fall found that while the district has lost 100,000 students over the past six years, it has actually increased full-time staff. The report, commissioned by former LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines, added, “Given the significantly smaller population of students, these staffing levels need to be reexamined.”

UTLA itself is facing financial trouble. This year’s UTLA operating deficit was estimated at $1.5 million, fueled in large part by increased costs for staff retiree health benefits.

In a financial overview to members last May, the union treasurer, Arlene Inouye, wrote that the union has been operating at a deficit for seven of the last 10 years, partly due to a drop in membership of 10,000 members since 2007. In the last three years alone, she wrote, the union lost “more than $2.5 million.”

To address the losses, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl this year called for and won a $19 per month dues increase.

“Of course UTLA is exaggerating the financial burden of charter schools,” said Jim Blew, director of StudentsFirst California, a nonprofit group working to ensure that every California child has great teachers and great schools. “This is all designed to distract from the real issues: the need for LAUSD to create schools that families would choose voluntarily and to get its finances in order. They simply can’t blame charters for their problems when they offer weak school options and have ballooning staff during shrinking enrollment and out-of-control pension and healthcare costs.”

The Independent Financial Review Panel last fall also stated that enrollment declines were all but inevitable and charters were not the issue.

“Even if LAUSD had no more new charter schools, its enrollment would continue to decline due to demographic factors, factors that are not within its control, and that are unlikely to reverse in the coming years. All district departments must properly plan for the continued and possibly accelerated decline of student enrollment, and the board must act accordingly.”

By Michael Vaughn

The Los Angeles teachers union just spent $82,000 on a report that concludes that the thousands of Los Angeles families who are choosing to send their children to charter schools are costing the LA school district a half-billion dollars annually.

The report “doesn’t fault charters,” according to the LA Times, “saying that the problems have more to do with state and federal policies as well as district decisions.”

The union’s “analysis” of the report, not surprisingly, does blame charters: “Unmitigated charter school growth limits educational opportunities for the more than 542,000 students who continue to attend schools run by the district, and … further imperils the financial stability of LAUSD as an institution.”

So, let’s get this straight. Report concludes: Bureaucratic system is broken. Union’s analysis and solution: Charters are messing with our system! No more charters!
The union really likes that word—“unmitigated”—when talking about charter growth, which has quite a Princess Bride ring to it.

• Read more: Contrary to UTLA study, LAUSD makes money from charters

Charter growth in California is mitigated by a long, onerous application and approval process. It’s mitigated by performance contracts—the “charter” agreements—that must be approved before a charter school can open and that need to be re-approved every five years. But more importantly, charter growth is mitigated by families and their choices. If families don’t choose to send their children to a charter school, it is quite neatly mitigated away. Charter schools need people to sign up for them, or they don’t exist. It’s quite an efficient system of mitigation.

The problem that charters are presenting to the union is that lots of families in Los Angeles are signing up for charter schools, which generally are not unionized.

So LA families are seeking out charters in droves because they clearly found a charter school that is providing a better public service than what they were getting in the traditional LA school system. The LA union pays $82,000 to learn, allegedly, how that system is inefficient in funding schools. And instead of then analyzing the report and focusing on ways to mitigate the system’s inefficiencies and improve service, the union screams that we must mitigate parents’ choices to protect the system.

It’s prioritizing the system over service to families. And it’s a slap in the face to the families who are choosing charter schools, as LA parent Leticia Chavez-Garcia writes about here.

Of course charter schools are not immune from “system-itis.” Some charters create enrollment systems that have short application windows and favor “plugged-in” families. Some create systems that limit access to students with special needs or students with discipline issues. Some say their system doesn’t allow for students to enroll in their school in the middle of the school year.

So if charter schools want an airtight case for a fair share of the public dollars that go to schools, they need to make sure they’re also focusing more on serving the public—all of the public—than on their systems.

Public schools belong to the people who pay for them—the public. They don’t belong to any “system” or any “institution,” as the union likes to glorify.

And when that public wants more of any type of school that is providing them with good service—whether it’s a system-run school or a charter—the public should get them. The service is what needs to be protected and glorified and funded, not the institution.

We’ve seen what protecting the system looks like in urban public education. It went on for decades. And for millions of kids, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Michael Vaughn is director of communications for Education Post. He spent 18 years in urban public education, working in communications for the Chicago and Denver school districts.

This article was published in partnership with Education Post. 

Parents, students and teachers rallied Wednesday at Castelar Street Elementary School in Chinatown.

About 200 parents, students and teachers rallied Wednesday morning outside Castelar Street Elementary School in Chinatown as part of a “walk-in” calling for lower class sizes at LA Unified, increased staffing and more accountability for Prop. 39, the law that gives charter schools the right to use empty class space at district schools through a process called “co-location.”

Several TV news crews were on hand for the demonstration, which saw parents, teachers and students march around the block hoisting banners and chanting before walking into the school. There were no speeches or news conference.

The choice of Castelar as a focus for media attention was no coincidence, as parent leaders at the school recently stopped a planned co-location of a charter school there.

“With the threat, the defunding of public education and then also the co-location effort, with Metro Charter School wanting to take over so-called extra space, this community was in an uproar, the parents were in an uproar. And it doesn’t make any sense to them,” Arlene Inouye, who is treasurer for UTLA, told LA School Report. “So they rallied together and have been front and center in protesting the ability of the charter schools to do that.”

The walk-in was part of a national effort organized by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, with protests and rallies going on in cities around the country. UTLA took part in a similar national walk-in day on Feb. 17. The Alliance said rallies were planned in 80 cities Wednesday as part of the Reclaim Our Schools protest.

According to Inouye, there were rallies planned at 150 LA Unified schools Wednesday, although it is unclear how many schools were the site of rallies. Because a focus was on co-locations, more than 500 charter parents signed a letter addressed to UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl asking him to stop the event out of concern for protests happening in front of students. “We will be shouted at, maligned and disrespected, our children will ask us what they’ve done wrong, and their teachers will, as always, be expected to rise above it all,” the letter said.

Caputo-Pearl was not present at the Castelar event. A UTLA notice did not specifically say that rallies were planned at co-locations, and according to the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), only one unidentified charter school was the site of a demonstration.

“So far, it looks like UTLA listened to the hundreds of charter families who urged them to let charter students learn in peace today,” said CCSA spokesman Jason Mandel in an email. “We’re aware of just one charter school where UTLA staged a demonstration. As charter families stepped off the sidewalk into the busy street to avoid the UTLA members shouting at them, a few charter students were heard asking their parents, ‘Why don’t they like us?’ If Alex Caputo-Pearl’s goal today was to make a few children feel demonized, he succeeded.”

LA Unified communications director Shannon Haber said the district did not have an official estimate as to how many schools were the site of rallies. It is common practice for the Los Angeles School Police Department to provide extra security at UTLA rallies, and in an email Haber said, “According to School Police, we did have more officers available if needed, but they were not needed.”

Although there were multiple stated reasons for the rally in the UTLA notice, co-location was on the mind of the parents LA School Report spoke to at Castelar. The school has 570 students and is at about 75 percent capacity, according to the district. In response to Metro’s plans to co-locate, parents at Castelar recently gathered more than 2,400 signatures in a petition and lobbied to keep those classrooms from being shared. Metro has since canceled its plans to move into the school.

Castelar has a reputation for high performance. LA School Report in September identified it as one of 16 schools with above average poverty for the district, an above average number of English learners and above average scores on the Smarter Balanced standardized tests. On the recent CORE accountability system, the school scored a 91 out of 100. The district average was 60.

“Earlier this year we successfully spoke out against co-location, and I think it’s great that we don’t have a charter school occupying classrooms that we use — arts, music, science, PE. I’m glad that our community resources aren’t being taken,” said Castelar parent Martin Wong. “But I recognize that it is gong to start all over again next year, because there are a lot of schools out there looking for free space. And I think it’s great, kids should come in and use it, but they should join our school. I don’t think it’s OK for another school to come in and take away space from a school that’s been successful for generations and decades helping inner-city kids score really well.”

Unlike many of the UTLA-led rallies over the last year, the Castelar rally featured far fewer teachers and far more more parents and students, and it was parents holding the bullhorns and leading the chants. One of those with a bullhorn was Jasmine Wang, whose child is in kindergarten at Castelar.

“According to Prop. 39 we have quote unquote empty classrooms, except we do use those classrooms, they just are not with full-time teachers,” Wang said.” And that really pushed a lot of us coming together — Spanish speakers, Cantonese-speaking parents and English-speaking parents — to say we don’t need another school in here, our school is great, come check out our programs.”

She added, “We are really hoping that our voices are heard, our students are heard, our parents and our community’s voices are heard that we need smaller class sizes and we need you all to prioritize your funding that exists to our kids.”

In her comments to LA School Report, Inouye referenced a larger battle her union is waging with the charter school movement as a nonprofit organization, Great Public Schools Now, finalizes plans to expand charter school access within the district. An early draft of the plan, which is backed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, stated a goal to enroll half of all of the district’s students in charter schools within eight years, though it has pulled back from that figure in recent months. UTLA leaders, looking to degrade the plan and erode public support for it, use their own terminology when discussing it.

“We have billionaires like the Broad-Walmart plan who have said they are going to take over our schools, take over half our district and turn them into unregulated charters. So this is a message to the charter schools, the California Charter Schools Association and everyone else that we want our public schools, and we will fight for them,” Inouye said.

In response to Inouye’s comments, CCSA provided the following statement from Gloria Rodriguez, a parent of a student at Aspire Pacific Academy.

“I’m one of more than 500 charter parents and supporters who signed a letter asking UTLA’s president, Alex Caputo-Pearl, not to disrupt charter school campuses today. I will continue to ask UTLA to stop spreading misinformation about charter schools and criticizing parents like me for seeking out the best possible education for my kids. It confuses me when they blame us and the choice we have made for our children rather than focusing their time and energy on making district schools better. Maybe if they did, parents would be lining up to get into the district schools just as they are lining up to get into my charter school,” Rodriguez said.

The charter parents’ letter set up in UTLA’s lobby. (Credit: CCSA)

UTLA is helping parents organize protests on May 4 at schools throughout the district, and in a letter more than 500 charter school parents are asking to stop it.

The Reclaim Our Schools protest is part of a nationally scheduled demonstration for Wednesday, and UTLA says 80 cities and counties have signed up to rally against a proliferation of charter schools.

The national group, Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, issued a statement explaining: “As public schools are increasingly threatened by a view of education that supports privatization, zero-tolerance discipline policies, less funding, and high-stakes standardized tests, AROS is fighting back with a broad vision of American public education that prioritizes racial justice, equity and well-resourced, world-class, public community schools.”

The national organization has schools from Pulaski County, Ark., to Tomahawk, Wis., ready to protest before school on Wednesday and then have the students and teachers walk in to the school to begin classes as scheduled. The organizers said they are objecting to “a national movement to Reclaim Our Schools from privatization efforts that will bankrupt public education, we will stand with Los Angeles parents, educators, students, administrators, and community members for fully funded public schools and call on corporate charter schools to pay their fair share to the district.”

Meanwhile, in front of the UTLA offices, an enlarged letter from charter school parents asked that the teachers union stop the protest. The letter was signed by 527 charter school parents and was put out for display at various entrances of the offices on Wilshire Boulevard.

“We are asking you to stop,” said the letter directed at UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl. “You plan to stage demonstrations at charter schools sharing campuses with district schools. If these actions are anything like the ones we’ve endured in the past, they will be threatening, disruptive and full of lies. We will be shouted at, maligned and disrespected, our children will ask us what they’ve done wrong, and their teachers will, as always, be expected to rise above it all.”

About 170 LA Unified schools and 20,000 people in 40 cities took part in a similar “walk-in” on Feb. 17 and did not disrupt the school day, according to Caputo-Pearl. The demonstrations took place well before school started and included speeches from students, teachers, politicians and community activists. At Hamilton High School, school board president Steve Zimmer spoke as well as Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.

Wednesday’s demonstration is designed o be very similar and include social media campaigns including #FightingForFunding #ReclaimOurSchoools and #TeachingNotTesting. In their information and instructions distributed by UTLA parent organizer Esperanza Martinez, the demonstrators suggest an open mic for people to speak, a march and a chant and even “tombstones with writing of programs/materials that the school needs or once had.” In the UTLA-distributed suggestions for a school demonstration, Martinez recommends one last chant go on at 7:45 a.m. and by 7:50 a.m., “Everyone goes to work!”

The protesters said that they want to focus “on the need for full staffing or stopping a potential co-location.” The co-location issue erupted recently at a school in Chinatown over a charter school asking to use rooms in the traditional school under the Prop. 39 state law.

With the letter they displayed at UTLA, families from the California Charter Schools Association tried a pre-emptive measure before the demonstrations begin. They wrote: “Once again, we are asking you to stop. On May 4, please allow our schools to remain peaceful and safe. Please do not harass us, our children, or the teachers we love. Instead of protesting us, please talk to us to find out for yourself why families choose charter schools and why we need them now more than ever.”

As part of demonstrations taking place at schools around LA Unified and in cities across the country, a group of roughly 100 protesters made up of parents, students, district leaders and politicians gathered outside Hamilton High School Wednesday morning to rally in support of public education.

“Every day at this school I’m exposed to someone with different experiences,” said senior class president Brittany Pedrosa. “The cultural diversity makes it so beautiful.”

Pedrosa’s fellow students talked about being at Hamilton with special needs, or in special programs like music, arts or Arabic language, with teachers and counselors who help them even after hours. They also talked about having class sizes of more than 40 students and not having enough resources. One student talked about coming over from Mexico at 6 years old with her sister.

Alex Caputo-Pearl

“I remember coming home from school with my sister surrounded by my uncles helping me with English homework. Those were the hardest years of my life,” said Jessica Garcia. “Now I will be the first in my family to go to college.”

Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the LA teachers union, UTLA, said that 40 cities throughout the country and 170 schools at LAUSD alone were participating in the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools demonstrations.

“I just got off the phone with the people in Chicago and this is happening all over the country where we are highlighting great programs in sustainable neighborhood community schools,” Caputo-Pearl said. “If billionaires want to be involved, they should not undermine programs, they should contribute their fair share in taxes.”

Caputo-Pearl was talking about the non-profit Great Public Schools Now program, which was started by the Broad Foundation and has announced a plan to expand the number of charter schools at LA Unified. Megan Baaske, representing Great Public Schools Now, was at Hamilton observing the event and handing media a statement saying, “Great Public Schools Now is an effort dedicated to expanding high-quality public schools, not privatizing them. We hope to work constructively with any group that shares our deep desire to improve education in Los Angeles, and we support all communities who are rallying for better schools.”

The statement added, “While we know that creating meaningful change for kids can be difficult, even controversial, we feel the urgency of bringing successful schools to neighborhoods still in need of better options. To accomplish that, we are looking forward to funding teachers and leaders to replicate what works and to support communities to demand that all schools move towards excellence. We are eager to have a thoughtful discussion about the future of education in Los Angeles without impugning the motives of those who disagree with us or resorting to ad hominem attacks.”

Pumping her first in the air and shouting, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she was angry because “I heard people say that public education is failing. If I sound angry it is because I am fighting for solving the problems. Every school in America should have the resources and create the climate for what we have on these stairs right now.”

LA Unified Superintendent Michelle King, who worked for a decade at Hamilton, stood in the background of all the activity. Although she was mentioned during the speeches, she did not speak herself.

“I’m here to celebrate Hamilton and the great work going on here. I’m here to see the kids and the faculty,” King told LA School Report.

After the walk-in King went to greet the school’s band teacher, Stephen McDonough, and also gave a hug to the only female drummer in the marching band. King told her, “You stick in there, girl. I’m proud of you.”

Councilman Paul Koretz went to school at Hamilton

Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz spoke at the rally and said a long-retired teacher at the school, Wayne Johnson, was responsible for sparking his interest in politics.

“If it wasn’t for what he taught me, I wouldn’t be in office now,” Koretz said. “But having over 40 kids in a classroom is a little difficult and it could be made better.”

LA Unified school board President Steve Zimmer led the procession into the school with a marching band and the charge: “We walk in!” School board member George McKenna and Juan Flecha, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, were also among those walking in at Hamilton.

“We walk in for the future of public education and we know that any plan, any strategy to change public education must be about all students, not some students,” Zimmer said.

He added, “We walk against the hate we see spewed in the debates and the rhetoric about the children you just heard about our schools, about our teachers, we can overcome this by linking arms together like we are about to do and seeing great things that are happening in our public schools. Their dreams are our dreams. Their schools are our schools. Their future is our future.”

With that, the marching band, teachers, parents and students walked into the foyer of the school and gathered around a marble life-sized statue of Alexander Hamilton, for whom the school is named.

Zimmer told LA School Report afterward, “It was great to see the students speak for themselves about what they are getting out of this school, and the programs they are involved in, but also the improvements they can make. I was very proud of them.”

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl

More than 20,000 parents, students and teachers in LA Unified are expected to stage a “Walk-In” before school on Wednesday orchestrated by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools to protest charter expansion and call for greater investment in public education.

“We have coordinated this with the school district and the superintendent’s office,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, which is leading the LA part of the nationwide protest.

In fact, Superintendent Michelle King will be attending one of the demonstrations at Hamilton High School in West Los Angeles along with school board president Steve Zimmer and vice president George McKenna as well as American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.

The purpose of the demonstration, they said, is “to fight back corporate privatization and stand up for fully-funded public education; to reclaim the promise of public education in LA.”

Specifically, their mission is to protest the proposed Greater Public Schools Now (GPS Now), which plans a major expansion of school funding and an increase in charter schools for the area. “We reject Broad-Walmart’s plan to undermine LAUSD,” according to the mission statement. “We call on Broad and the Waltons to pay their fair share in taxes to support quality schools that serve all students.”

King issued a statement saying, “Great progress is taking place in our classrooms and schools, thanks to the thousands of talented and dedicated teachers in LA Unified. The United Teachers Los Angeles ‘Walk-in’ will take place before the start of the school day on Feb. 17, allowing our employees to celebrate their success without disrupting the teaching and learning process. We are grateful to our teachers and join with them in recognizing their pride and enthusiasm for their work.”

UTLA’s website included a sign-up list and offered information tools and flyers to print out at the 70 school sites.

The flyers they plan to hand out to parents, staff and community members state, “We stand together—parents, educators, students, school staff and community organizations—to send a strong message to policymakers and billionaires like Eli Broad that public education is NOT for sale. We are reclaiming our school and committing to work in solidarity to ensure that our school serves the needs of its community.”

Maria Palma was incensed when her child brought home a flyer asking her to attend a meeting after the demonstration at the San Jose Elementary and Highly Gifted Magnet School in Mission Hills. She complained to her school principal and district representatives.

“The communication is disrespectful to families in our community since it does not clearly state the issues at stake or the political agenda that is behind the ‘Walk-In,'” Palma said in an email. “With the event framed as a school-sponsored activity, it creates a situation where children may feel marginalized if their families choose not to attend, or participate in opposition to the political messages behind the event. It is inappropriate for a public school to advocate a political agenda.”

Palma said she is not going to send her child to school on Wednesday because of the event.

The alliance of parents, youth, community organizations and labor groups said they would be holding demonstrations the same day in 19 other cities at school districts facing similar issues, including Chicago, Milwaukee, San Diego, Dallas and Baltimore.

The demonstration is expected to last 30 to 45 minutes and will end before school begins.

“Given the never-ending attacks on public education that many of our cities endure, this provides a positive action that says that these are our schools and our communities,” the “Walk-In” flyer states.