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.

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.

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.”

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.

Alex Caputo-Pearl

Ballots were mailed on Jan. 15 and the counting begins on Feb. 10, with an announcement of the results expected shortly after.

The call to raise dues — by roughly 30 percent — was announced by Caputo-Pearl during his state of the union speech in August, and he has spent the last several months pushing hard on members by painting the struggles ahead as nothing less than a fight for UTLA’s existence.

“Our union is facing an unprecedented web of attacks that threaten the survival of public education and the educator union movement,” he wrote in the September issue of the union newsletter.

The threats Caputo-Pearl cites are coming from all directions — local, state and national.

Locally, LA Unified is threatening to slash health benefits to teachers as a means to deal with a coming budget deficit, while a massive charter expansion plan could also decimate UTLA’s membership.

Statewide, signatures are being gathered for a November ballot initiative that would eliminate defined benefit pensions for new public sector employee. This means new employees would contribute to 401(k) retirement accounts, which are “riskier,” according to UTLA. There is also the pending Vergara v. California appeal that, if upheld, essentially would make it easier to fire teachers and not require seniority to be considered during layoffs, among other blows to teacher job protections.

Nationally, the Friedrichs v. CTA, which was argued earlier this month before the U.S. Supreme Court, threatens public unions’ right to collect dues from nonmembers as part of their employment.

To make the case for the hike, Caputo-Pearl and his leadership team have pointed out that UTLA members pay low dues compared with other large teacher unions. According to the December issue of UTLA’s newsletter, members pay $63 per month, $41 less than New York City teaches pay and $40 less than nearby Pasadena teachers pay.

Jackie Goldberg declares war outside the school board meeting.

* UPDATED

The Broad Foundation plan to expand charter schools in LA Unified made an ominous debut before the LA Unified board yesterday as one opponent after another ripped into it as unwanted, unnecessary and destructive to the district and public education in general.

The widespread attack came in several forms after the board postponed voting on a resolution from Scott Schmerelson that would put the board on record as opposing the plan. The delay enabled the board to adjourn earlier so the members could reconvene their private discussions on finding a new superintendent.

“We have been here since 8 in the morning and will be meeting until about 11 tonight, not that I’m asking you to have sympathy,” said school board president Steve Zimmer, explaining to the audience why some resolutions were being delayed.

While no one from the Broad foundation or its offspring now developing the plan — Great Public Schools Now — was invited to speak, the effort was a target all day, illustrated in stark terms by former school board president Jackie Goldberg as she addressed a coalition of community organizations at an anti-charter rally outside district headquarters. “This is war! We need to do battle right now,” she said. “We don’t have the money, but we have the numbers, we have the people!”

Those remarks echoed much of what transpired inside the building, where one of the first orders of business was nine union leaders representing employees of the district, standing together and telling the board, “we affirm out commitment to the resolution,” as Juan Flecha, president the administrators union, put it. The group included Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the teachers union, UTLA, which has emerged as the staunchest opposition group to the GPSN plan.

Later, the board granted Schmerelson 10 minutes for a parade of supporters to speak, starting with several students from Roosevelt High School, who referred to the “Broad-Walmart plan,” a sure sign that their remarks were scripted by UTLA, the only group that consistently describes the effort in those terms.

The last of the speakers was Goldberg, who served eight years on the board through 1991, the last two as president. In a screeching lecture that went well beyond the three minutes the board generally allows each speaker, she blamed the “1 percenters for destroying public education in America as we know it.”

In a statement late this afternoon, GPSN said, “It is unfortunate that some would reflexively oppose the replication of high-quality schools without ever even seeing our plans to meet the needs of underserved students.  We remain focused on finalizing our plan, and determining how best to give students the education they deserve. Perhaps UTLA and others will have a more favorable outlook once they actually see our plan to achieve these goals.”

Speaking to LA School Report earlier today, Zimmer said the resolution supporters were allowed to address the board as a compromise because they were upset the resolution had been postponed.

“There are a number of very important issues that are important to many of our vital partners and constituency groups,” he said. “I was trying to hew a compromise where issues could be addressed but still maintain the focus the board needs.”

The compromise also served the board in another way: It limited discussion on what is perhaps the most volatile issue facing the district at a time it is moving closer to identifying finalists for the superintendent job — and sparing any of the candidates from seeing the divisiveness that awaits.

Left to defend the GPSN plan and charters, in general, was a group of parents and students who had gathered outside for a rally outside the district building to call attention to how they benefitted from charter schools. The pro-charter rally was organized by the California Charter Schools Association, which has received funding from the Broad Foundation.

Several other agenda items were postponed, including one from Mónica Ratliff that called for more transparency in the operations of charter schools. But they didn’t draw any objections.

Charter school supporters lined up four hours early for the school board meeting.

Somehow, the board found time to approve renewals for eight charter schools although Schmerelson opposed approval for Alliance schools over a recent court order instructing the chain to stop interfering with UTLA’s effort to unionize the teachers.

“I cannot support Alliance charters for five years,” Schmerelson said, suggesting that renewals could be granted for a shorter period. That notion was quickly shot down by a district lawyer who told him state law provides only for five-year renewals.

For all the theatrics of the on-going charter war and the evidence of battle lines drawn, state law precludes the board from doing much more than what the Schmerelson measure contemplates: a symbolic pronouncement. Charter petitions can be denied for many things, including questionable management and finances, but not for overall dislike.

* Updated to include statement from Great Public Schools Now.

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Leaders of LAUSD unions unite against charter plan

Leaders of the nine unions that represent teaches, administrators and other staffers at LAUSD stood before the district board today to express a united front against the Broad foundation plan to create more charter schools in the district.

Flanked at the podium by the union leaders, Juan Flecha, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), told the board, “All of us and our respective unions see this single passion for public education and commitment for the district.” He expressed disappointment that school board member Scott Schmerelson‘s proposal against the Broad plan had been postponed until January in deference to more time needed to continue the search for the new superintendent.

Flecha said the union leaders stand in “support of the motion and it is important for the incoming superintendent to know where we stand, and we look forward to have the board pass it.” He added that he saluted Schmerelson’s braveness to bring the issue before the board.

Schmerelson issued a statement only hours before the school board meeting saying that “I remain extremely concerned about the issues outlined in the revised resolution, Excellent Public Education for Every Student, and I am grateful for all the input I have received about the future of our public schools.”

Flecha also took the time to salute outgoing superintendent Ramon Cortines, saying, “I want to salute and thank Ramon Cortines and honor him. His efforts have been heroic and his ability to listen and act accordingly is admirable.”

UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl, who represents the teachers, also said he was disappointed that the Schmerelson proposal was delayed and suggested that it would be beneficial for the new superintendent to hear the debate. He called for teachers to write the school board members directly about successful programs and projects at their schools, and come to the meeting today to tell their stories.

“We don’t think the resolution had been a distraction; it would have provided a roadmap to the new superintendent.” he said. “We will remain resolute, we were disappointed about the delay.” He pointed out that they had a meeting with teachers yesterday to figure out how to highlight traditional public school’s successes.

The appearance of the union leaders represented another challenge to the Broad-affiliated group now spearheading the charter expansion, Great Public Schools Now. They provided the board additional political cover to oppose the plan, as Schmerelson’s resolution seeks. UTLA, in particular, has been especially aggressive in fighting the plan, even though the board has limited legal authority to deny viable charter applications.

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The union leaders, led by president Alex Caputo-Pearl, took turns encouraging teachers to remind the board that great things are happening all across the district, with Caputo-Pearl saying, “We’ve seen failures, and hundreds of successes that have not made the news.”

They cite the new effort by the Broad Foundation to expand charter schools in Los Angeles and, as one said, “Our enemies will take every chance they get to tell the world about our district’s shortcomings.”

The union leaders mention that the board will be deciding about “picking a fight” with the Broad plan, a reference to a resolution from Scott Schmerelson that urges the board to go on record opposing the charter plan.

The union leaders ask the teachers to stand up and briefly discuss “something you take pride in going on at your school, something that is right.”

For teachers can’t attend the board meeting, the union has posted on its website a section called “Stand Up for Our Schools,” where teachers can send photos and write stories about successes in math, science, family night events, cultural themed events and class projects.

At the bottom of the site, there’s a link that goes to the personal email of each board member and starts with: “Dear School Board Member, I am a teacher at (enter school name). Attached are some photos of the great things happening at our schools. I urge you to recognize, be proud of, invest in, and stand up for our school. None of these innovative programs were brought to you by billionaires.”

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UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl

Spending cuts. Layoffs. Early retirement packages. Reductions in benefits.

These needs, which were among recommendations made by LA Unified’s independent Financial Review Panel on Tuesday, are the kind that would make any union leader lose sleep. But three full days since the doom and gloom report was presented at the LA Unified school board meeting, with recommendations that would hit the district’s employees hard, the unions have had little if anything to say about it — even after several board members described the need for an all-hands-on-deck collaboration to forestall financial instability.

Messages seeking comment from three of the district’s largest unions —  those representing the teachers, administrators and staff workers — produced only a response from SEIU Local 99, a statement that does not suggest it agrees or disagrees with the financial panel’s conclusions.

The union leaders had an early opportunity to respond. After the presentation, board President Steve Zimmer invited the district’s labor leaders to make any comments. Only Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the teachers union, UTLA, accepted the offer, but he used the opportunity to attack the Broad Foundation‘s proposed charter school expansion plan due to the big impact it would have on district enrollment.

Declining enrollment is one of the reasons the panel foresees a loss of revenue in the coming years, and while the Broad plan would hit the district’s enrollment in an enormous way, the panel’s report does not take it into consideration. Even if the Broad plan were cancelled tomorrow, the panel’s dire financial predictions remain.

Among the predictions was a $600 million budget shortfall by 2019 if changes are not made. Among its recommendations that would hit LAUSD unions are:

• Reduce staff by 10,000 to accommodate decline of 100,000 students over the last six years.
• Offer early retirement packages to most senior staff.
• Encourage higher staff attendance to cut down on need for substitutes.
• Change ratio for benefit package to 90/10 (vs 100/0).
• Eliminate the teacher pool.
• Integrate pension entitlements with social security for those who have both.
• A new regulation to make staff pay for benefits extended to family.

When approached by LA School Report outside the Tuesday meeting to discuss the report, Caputo-Pearl doubled down on his Broad attacks.

“The most important finding that this panel came up with is that there needs to be an increase in enrollment, and the Broad plan does just the opposite,” Caputo-Pearl said.

Caputo-Pearl and Juan Flecha, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA) did not respond to messages yesterday, seeking comment about the specific cuts to jobs and benefits the panel recommends. Blanca Gallegos, spokeswoman for SEIU Local 99, which represents school cafeteria workers, custodians, special education assistants and other school workers, forwarded a statement from union Executive Director Max Arias that does not mention the potential layoffs or other recommendations from the panel,

“As LAUSD reviews the financial and operating issues raised by the panel’s report, we cannot forget that the District is, ultimately, charged with caring for the well-being and future of Los Angeles’ children,” the statement said. “Nearly half of SEIU Local 99’s members are parents of children attending LAUSD schools. Ensuring that working families in our communities have access to quality and affordable benefits has a direct impact on the safety and health of students.

“The reality is that LAUSD has vast purchasing power and needs to look at new and creative ways to leverage this power to ensure health care for all. This can include aligning with the City of Los Angeles to increase access to health care to more families, at a lower price. The challenges presented by this report require a continued partnership between the District and all stakeholders and SEIU Local 99 members are eager to have this conversation.”

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The front row are members of the Independent Financial Review Panel

An independent Financial Review Panel yesterday detailed drastic measures that LA Unified must take to remain afloat in what school board President Steve Zimmer calls a “perfect storm” of financial trouble for the district.

“There’s a fiscal cliff that is immediate if different decisions are not made,” warned Bill Lockyer, the former California attorney general and state treasurer and one of the all-volunteer panel that made the group’s presentation to a full house in the school board meeting on Tuesday.

“You will be out of $600 million by 2019,” said another member of the panel, Darline Robles, the former superintendent of the Los Angeles County Office of Education. “You will have to rein in certain expenditures.”

And Maria Anguiano, the vice chancellor for Business & Finance at University of California, Riverside, said the loss of 100,000 students over the past two years in the district means that the LAUSD staff should not be growing like it has, and that “10,000 lay-offs would be about level for the 100,000 loss of students.”

But the drama of the exchange was not so much the bad news the panel members were delivering, including strong recommendations to make across-the-board spending cuts — the board members were well aware it was coming. Rather, it was the board’s apparent sense of urgency to deal with it and the district’s labor partners utter silence when offered the opportunity to comment.

“Sacrifice will be much more important here than strategy,” said board vice president George McKenna. “What are we going to give up for the children?”

Mónica Ratliff, perhaps the board’s most strident budget hawk, said, “This is something that clearly needs to be done and it involves all our labor partners. This is very serious.”

Ref Rodriguez reiterated the point, saying some “hard conversations” await. “We’ve been putting this off too long,” he said.

Zimmer identified three factors pushing the district toward the financial abyss: the federal government’s reneging on promises of more money for special education students, creating a $200 million shortfall for the district; the state’s “extremely low” per-pupil funding level and the district’s steady decline in enrollment.

After Zimmer invited the district’s labor leaders to address the board with any comment, only Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of the teachers union, UTLA, stepped forward. But instead of acknowledging anything the financial panel members discussed, he invited forward a group of parents to bemoan the Broad Foundation‘s proposed charter school expansion plan. His rationale was charter schools draw students away from traditional schools, costing programs, money and jobs.

Later, outside the meeting room, Caputo-Pearl said any changes in staffing would have to be negotiated with his union and the others that serve LA Unified.

“This brings even more attention to the danger of the Broad-Walmart plan to create unregulated charter schools and hurt the public schools and the district with less money.” He added, “The most important finding that this panel came up with is that there needs to be an increase in enrollment, and the Broad plan does just the opposite.”

Among the financial panel’s suggestions to reduce the financial burdens are offering early retirement for those at the top of the pay grade, which would save a projected $400 million, and changing health care benefits, asking employees to foot part of the bill, a potential savings of $57 million. Absenteeism among the teachers could save $15 million a year alone, the report said.

Delaine Eastin, the former superintendent of Public Instruction and member of the California Assembly, suggested that the district loses too much money for lack of attendance. She said keeping students in school makes them less likely to join gangs or get pregnant, and “there are too many teachers out sick, too many are not showing up.”

Zimmer noted, “It’s an important time for the school district and we note the seriousness that this was laid out.”

Lockyear provided the ultimate warning for what lies ahead for the board and the new superintendent it expects to have in place by the first of the new year.

“Fate is the vengeance of unmade choices,” he said. “Good luck to all of you.”

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According to Caputo-Pearl, the union has not updated its dues structure since its inception 45 years ago, which now “literally threatens the future of UTLA.”

In the video, Caputo-Pearl points out that UTLA’s monthly fees are lower than other large teacher unions in the country and lower than most other teacher unions in the state.

The video also includes a humorous reference to former LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy, who resigned a year ago. Deasy and Caputo-Pearl locked horns frequently, but now Deasy is working at the Broad Center, and its affiliated Broad Foundation is currently developing a plan to expand charter schools in the district to include half of all students.

Caputo-Pearl claims in the video that UTLA has confirmed that Deasy is, in fact, the architect of the plan, which was outlined in a 48-page draft report. Caputo-Pearl calls this the “reanimation” of Deasy. Reanimation? Is that a reference to the 80s cult classic film, “Re-Animator“?

The film is about a doctor who discovers how to bring corpses back from the dead. Using the film as a metaphor, it certainly shows the ironic position Caputo-Pearl finds himself in. He helped chase Deasy out of the district, which he hailed as a “victory” for UTLA. But now Deasy is arguably in a much more powerful position as he allegedly orchestrates a plan that would wipe out half of the jobs of UTLA members.

As the trailer for the film says, “Once you wake up the dead, you’ve got a real mess on your hands.”

Check out the full UTLA video below.

A Call for a Californian 

LA Unified is currently in a hot search for a new superintendent and is already receiving applications and putting together a list of potential candidates. As the district contemplates what kind of superintendent it wants, the union that represents its principals, the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), has an interesting request: make sure he or she is from California.

The opening of AALA’s latest newsletter reads: “The time has come for the District’s next superintendent to be from California! The previous superintendents from Florida, Colorado, Virginia, and Prince George’s County [MD] have produced a mixed-bag of results for the District at best! Besides, the proof is in the pudding with Superintendent Cortines. This is his third tour of duty with the Los Angeles Unified School District and, by all accounts and Google searches, he is a Californian!”

Just simply finding any qualified candidate, let alone one with as specific a credential as where they grew up, has proven to be a challenge for LAUSD in the past. As one district staffer told LA School Report a year ago when Deasy stepped down, “The truth is there aren’t a lot of superintendents out there who have run any government agency of this size. That leaves LAUSD with a very short list of candidates with actual experience.”

Then there is Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, who said back then: “I don’t know a single person on earth who would want that terrible job. It won’t be a change agent. It will be a status quo candidate who will make life pleasant for himself by enjoying all the wrapping of the superintendency and being smart enough not to try and change a thing.”

Certainly there must be at least one Californian out there fitting that criteria.

Girls Build LA Initiative

About 7,000 high school girls from around Los Angeles County were invited this week to the West Coast premiere of a new documentary called “He Named Me Malala” at L.A. Live. The film is about the girl who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

The event was part of the LA Fund’s launch of the Girls Build LA Initiative, a program designed to” encourage girls to pursue their education and challenge them to be problem solvers in their schools and communities.”

The Girls Build LA Initiative will also award grants to 50 teams of eight to 10 girls around the county for designing projects that address problems affect their education and communities.

Aside from the movie, the girls at the screening were also treated to a message from First Lady Michelle Obama. See it below:

UTLA’s call for protest at Broad Museum

A few days after the posh parties with the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Orlando Bloom, Ed Ruscha and Frank Gehry to celebrate the opening of the new Broad Museum, the LA Unified teachers union, UTLA, is planning a protest at the museum on Sunday, aimed at its namesake: Eli Broad, one of LA’s leading philanthropists.

More specifically, the union is demonstrating against a plan by several foundations, including his, to create more charter schools in Los Angeles.

“We are protesting Broad’s plan to pull half the students out of public LAUSD schools and put them in unregulated schools that are not accountable to the public,” UTLA said in a press release. “The students left behind would suffer greatly. There simply would not be enough funding to go around.”

Broad has become a major target of teacher unions for his efforts nationwide to reform public schools through charters and an academy that trains executives to run them. The former LA Unified superintendent, John Deasy, was a Broad trainee.

The union also contends that Broad of “secretly funded groups” that tried to defeat Proposition 30, a state tax initiative that has generated millions of new tax dollars for California public schools.

“Broad and his billionaire pals wreaked havoc on public education in New Orleans,” UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl said in a statement. “His education ‘reform’ there resulted in massive inequities and civil rights violations for students. Segregation was reinforced and special education students were left behind.  We do not intend to stand by and let him do the same thing in Los Angeles.”

One speaker scheduled speaker at the protest, according to the union, is “a parent from New Orleans who knows firsthand how Broad and his billionaire pals can destroy a public school district because they did it in New Orleans.”

Whether Broad and other reformers involved in New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 “wreaked havoc” or “destroyed” the school district is a matter of perspective, according to at least one study.

After the storm, the public school system was effectively dissolved and control of most of the city’s schools was placed into a state agency. Under the new agency, all the teachers were fired — most of them were union members — and management of most schools was turned over to charter organizations. The Broad Academy trained some of the people who were in charge, and most of the union teachers were replaced by young and inexperienced teachers from outside the state, none of whom worked under a union contract.

In his study, Douglas N. Harris of the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans argues that while many of the lowest-income and minority students did not return to New Orleans after Katrina for a variety of reasons, academic performance in the city schools rose among those who remained.

Another study found academic performance “has improved significantly — particularly among the schools that were once among Louisiana’s lowest-performing campuses”  but also said “far too many New Orleans charter schools are not yet adequately preparing students for college and careers. There is much work to be done.”

The California Charter School Association joined the protest against the protest with a press release yesterday, calling for Caputo-Pearl to “stop disrespecting parents who want to choose the best school for their children.”

For his part, Caputo-Pearl has challenged Broad to a “public debate on public education . . . . any place, any time — and that includes outside his new museum on September 20.”

The charter group said, “If Caputo-Pearl wants to debate anyone, he should start by debating the parents of the more than 100,000 Los Angeles students who have chosen charter public schools” in LA Unified.

Whether Broad intends to accept Caputo-Pearl’s challenge remains unclear. The Broad Foundation did not respond to messages seeking comment. Nor has the Foundation made any public comment about its charter expansion plan since word of it leaked last month, except to say some of the descriptions about its intent were incorrect. It has made no effort to correct those descriptions.

The UTLA protest is scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m.

Matt Gonzales and Adrianna McMullen on panel

A group of LA Unified students joined local and national educators last week to describe academic challenges they face and to suggest ideas for what could help them.

The four-hour discussion last Thursday evening kicked off a weekend of activities sponsored by UTLA in conjunction with the “White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.”

David Johns, the executive director of the initiative, participated in the discussion with the students and in two other events, at Palisades Charter High School and the Grammy Museum, where the theme was social justice.

Also speaking Thursday was Congresswoman Judy Chu, a Democrat from Monterey Park and the first Chinese-American woman elected to Congress. She discussed her concerns that schools in predominantly poor and ethnic neighborhoods have less-experienced teachers than those in more affluent and predominantly-white schools in the same district.

“Kids are coming to our schools hungry, stressed and unprepared,” Chu said. “We need to strengthen teacher preparation and give the teachers resources.” Referring to the federal “No Child Left Behind” program now under review by Congress, she said, “We all know it’s a failure that needs to be fixed.”

“The bottom line,” she said, “is the voices of minority students need to be heard.”

Seven Latino, black and mixed-race students from charter and traditional schools were part of the Thursday discussion. Some said they experienced racism from other students, even from within their own culture, and from teachers and administrators. They also said they wanted their parents to be more involved in their academic pursuits.

“It’s as simple as my mom listening to what I did at school that day,” said Regina Black, who said that administrators could help by “supporting us when we want to start a club at school” and encourage after-school activities.

Judy Chu

Adriana McMullen broke into tears as she talked about transferring to a higher-achieving school in a mostly-white class neighborhood and being accused of a cheating by a teacher on her entry test. “I took it over and scored 100 percent. At my previous school we were like 46 to a class and sharing desks and books,” she said.

Matthew Gonzalez, who won a Fulbright Scholarship, said many of his friends have parents who have given up on them, and so they no longer try hard. “The parents just don’t participate in their education, and I know I have been lucky that way,” he said.

UTLA vice president Cecily Myart-Cruz said, “These conversations are so important to have to bring students, educators and community members together for this town hall.”

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl stressed that the union will be more involved in Black Lives Matters and talked about seeing white racism very up close when he lived in the east. “Then, when I began teaching in Compton, I was always doing some kind of organizing on the side,” he said.

Caputo-Pearl said, “Young people are experiencing things we find hard to believe. Our school environment has to be based on love and not on fear.”

Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of the United Teachers Los Angeles union, told the LA School Report that he has made it known to the school board the kind of superintendent teachers want in a successor to Ramon Cortines.

“So far we have been advocating these three issues,” he said. “We want the process to be transparent and open and understandable. It can’t be a move from the corner office to the front office like John Deasy was last time around and without a process. That didn’t work out well.”

The search process is now underway, with the board set to pick an executive search firm on Sunday. There’s a deadline to the extent that Cortines says he want to step down by December. At the outside, the board wants a successor in place before the start of the 2016-2017 school year.

Once the finalists are chosen, Caputo-Pearl is advocating public meetings where educators, parents and the community can ask the candidates questions and voice concerns. “We need to see how they get to engage with folks,” he said.

“The second thing that we feel strongly about is that it should be someone who has an education background, who has a history of collaboration with different stakeholders, obviously with educators but also with parents, community organizations and more,” Caputo-Pearl said.

“And the third thing we have advocated strongly about is that it not be someone out of the Eli Broad Academy,” he added, pointing out that Deasy was from that academy. “We strongly believe that the philosophy that’s used in the Broad Academy is essentially to teach people autocratic methods of leading, and that was a lot of the problem with the iPads and MiSiS. It was full stream ahead no matter what other people said even though it’s not ready, even though there are legal problems with how a bid is being done. We can’t afford that kind of autocratic hot house behavior anymore.”

Although he has had conflicts with Cortines, the UTLA chief said, “He is somebody who comes out of education who understand schools and is someone that we can talk to and try to solve problems with. But we have certainly struggled with Cortines.”

Caputo-Pearl said he plans to maintain communications with the school board as the search process continues. As for his relationship with newly-elected board president Steve Zimmer, Caputo-Pearl said he has worked with him for more than two decades on such challenges as social justice issues and immigrant rights.

“I’ve known him for a long time, and we have a good solid, communicative relationship,” he said.

United Teachers Los Angeles president Alex Caputo-Pearl says extensive input from teachers over the summer points to conditions in the classroom and the future of health benefits as among the issues most important to the union membership. He also said UTLA will strive to unionize more charter schools.

“Everyday teaching and learning conditions tend to be something that we hear a lot from our members,” Caputo-Pearl told the LA School Report. “They want to come into their classroom and do what they do and work with young people and not have to deal with ceiling tiles that are falling, or class sizes that are too big, or an administrator that refuses to follow basic contractual guidelines. Basic conditions are a concern.”

The other big concern voiced by teachers is the potential erosion of health benefits that have helped teachers to LA Unified. The benefits package LA Unified offers is among the most robust of any district in the state, including free lifetime benefits for retirees and their dependents.

“There is obviously a very well-funded national movement to attack public sector workers and health benefits that are associated with public sector workers,” Caputo-Pearl said. He talked about billionaire John D. Arnold who he said is “specifically intent to fund efforts to attack pensions, attack health benefits and retirement. It’s a very well-funded effort that our members are concerned about.”

Caputo-Pearl said teachers also expressed alarm over the proliferation of charter schools in LAUSD, which could result in a loss of revenue for schools. He said he is concerned about developments at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, which run 25 charter schools at LAUSD. In trying to unionize the Alliance teachers, Caputo-Pearl said the efforts have run into opposition from Eli Broad and others who “have built an aggressive anti-union campaign against educators there who just want a voice in their classrooms and their curriculum.”

He said a key element in his strategic plan for the next two years is the organizing of charter educators. “We are going to continue to do that wherever we can,” he said. “Some of the teachers at Alliance who are fighting to have their voice heard and to have a union are some of the most inspiring young teachers that I’ve met in a long time. So we’re going to continue to do that.”

Alliance and the union have had clashes in recent weeks, culminating in a Public Employees Relations Board hearing.

Caputo-Pearl said unionizing teachers at charter schools is not necessarily a way of boosting UTLA’s declining membership.

“We don’t think of it so much just as a narrow way to increase membership, but moreso as an opportunity to try to bring educators together across district schools, across charter schools to create a floor or what we hope is higher than a floor of what learning conditions should be in schools,” he said. “The way you get that is through collective action across both district and charter schools.”

UTLA President Alex Caputo Pearl

* UPDATED

UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl said the teachers union is planning an aggressive campaign to oppose Eli Broad and other wealthy foundation leaders who have announced plans for a major expansion of charter schools in LA Unified.

In a wide-ranging interview that focused on the state of charters in the district, Caputo-Pearl was highly critical of the effort, asserting that charters are undermining the ability of traditional district schools to maintain a quality education for all students.

“We’re going to make every effort that we can to organize against the expansion of what are essentially unregulated non-union schools that don’t play by the rules as everybody else,” Caputo-Pearl told LA School Report. “So we’re going to take that on in the public, take that on in the media, engage the school board on it. We’re going to try to engage Eli Broad. We’re going to try to engage John Deasy because we understand he’s the architect of it. It will be a major effort. It is a major concern.”

The charter expansion plans involve three major foundations that have been active for years in education reform across the country: the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the W.M. Keck Foundation. They said they intend to create enough charter schools in eight years to serve as many as half of LA Unified students.

The California Charter School Association has consistently denied that there are separate rules for charters, pointing to the fact that charters have to demonstrate academic achievement and financial stability to remain operating. Many charters do employ non-union teachers, but UTLA in recent years has succeeded in unionizing a number of them.

Caputo-Pearl’s targeting of Deasy evolves from Deasy’s association with Broad before and after he served as LA Unified’s superintendent. Before he was hired in 2011, Deasy attended the Broad Academy, which prepares senior executives for roles in urban education. He resigned as superintendent last year after problems with the iPad program, leading to a federal investigation of the bid process. Currently, he is a consultant for The Broad Center, a separate non-proft organization that helps train future education leaders.

Deasy was replaced as superintendent by Ramon Cortines, who says he intends to step down in December.

“It turns out (Deasy) is involved here with Eli Broad and and this effort, but what really offends us about Eli Broad is that he has been two-faced on issues of public education,” Caputo-Pearl said. “He publicly supported Proposition 30, which was arguably the most important thing in public education in decades in terms of restoring the system. Yet privately was funneling his cash in efforts to defeat it.”

Proposition 30 was a state measure approved by voters in 2012 that raised taxes to support public education.

The Board Foundation did not immediately respond to a message, seeking comment.

Caputo-Pearl and other teacher union leaders, local and national, have fought against the rise of charter schools, asserting that they undermine public education by draining financial support from public education systems and creating an educational caste system that favors some demographic groups over others.

For Caputo-Pearl and UTLA, Deasy personified the challenge for his open support for alternatives to traditional schools.

“We are concerned about these flavor-of-the-day interventions in the school system by billionaires who think that they know things, but really don’t,” Caputo-Pearl said. “The last major intervention that Eli Broad did at LAUSD was making John Deasy superintendent. That didn’t work out too well. We’re under an FBI investigation because of John Deasy. We finally, finally have begun to make improvements to the MiSiS system that spent tens of millions of dollars and had kids out of class for weeks. We of course had the iPad fiasco. We had the beat down of moral of (Deasy’s) autocratic style across the district. Our members are telling us we don’t need another intervention from Eli Broad in LAUSD.”

So strong is UTLA’s animus toward Deasy that Caputo-Pearl said he has urged the school board in its search for Cortines’s replacement to find someone “not out of the Broad Academy.”

“John Deasy was out of the Broad Academy. A lot of the people that he brought in were out of the Broad Academy,” Caputo-Pearl said. “Broad has 120 different people across California that have come out of the Academy who are in high management positions, clearly that’s part of the game that’s being played here.”

While the foundations are formulating their charter expansion plans and UTLA is devising its counter-measures, Caputo-Pearl said he would try to establish a productive working relationship with charter school advocates, such as newly-elected board member Ref Rodriguez, a former charter school executive. He and Rodriguez have met several times.

“One of main issues I raised with him is was that we feel a big part of our strategic plan is around public school accountability and sustainability,” Caputo-Pearl said. “I told him that we want to engage him this issue that all publicly-funded schools need to have common standards we need to adhere to, in terms of equity and access to all students, opportunities for parents to be genuinely involved, adherence to conflict of interest standards, financial transparency, basic common sense apple pie stuff.”

* Corrects John Deasy’s current role with the Broad Center

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