The message was clear from United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) President Alex Caputo-Pearl as he spoke to hundreds of energetic, amped-up supporters yesterday: If teachers are going to get the raise and other concessions they are demanding from LA Unified in a new contract, it is going to be a fight.

“Now folks, we’ve got to fight for our next victory, and that is to win our contract demands in the Schools LA Students Deserve campaign. And let’s be really clear, folks, that is going to be a fight,” Caputo-Pearl told the crowd.

The teachers union staged five simultaneous rallies around Los Angeles yesterday, including at James Monroe High School in North Hills, in the latest and most significant of the UTLA leadership’s “escalating actions” as it looks to put pressure on the district at the negotiating table. That pressure has included hints at a strike, and the sight of hundreds of teachers dressed in red marching outside a school offered a preview of what that might look like.

The union’s contract demands are outlined in the Schools LA Students Deserve campaign, which includes teacher raises, lower class sizes and an end to “teacher jail.”

Hundreds of teachers turned out at Monroe as they marched up and down Haskell Avenue and Nordoff Street while many drivers in cars passing by honked in support amid the sounds of beating drums, whistles, claps and chants that filled the air. Some UTLA members held signs and flags, including one that provocatively read, “Eight years a slave,” referring to amount of time LA Unified teachers have gone without a raise.

In his speech to the crowd after the march, Caputo-Pearl highlighted the lack of significant progress that has marked the union’s recent negotiations with the district. On the issue of pay, UTLA is asking for a 10 percent raise while the district is offering two percent.

“When we’ve put our proposals around creating safe schools for educators, safe schools for students, clean schools, well-staffed schools, and when the district still hasn’t responded, that means it’s going to take a fight. Are you ready for that fight?” Caputo-Pearl said.

The union president also offered his first public criticism of interim Superintendent Ramon Cortines, who replaced former Superintendent John Deasy last month following his resignation. Caputo-Pearl had been publicly bashing Deasy for months.

“Even though John Deasy is gone, when Ray Cortines is sticking with John Deasy’s two percent [raise] offer, that means it’s going to be a fight. Are we ready for that fight?” Caputo-Pearl said.

In a reversal of the diplomatic, subdued statements he made at a press conference the day Deasy resigned, when he said that Deasy’s leaving “is not a victory for UTLA” and deflected any union credit for his resignation, Caputo-Pearl told the crowd during his opening statements that “getting rid of John Deasy was a huge victory.”

The rally featured several other speakers, including Arminta Elementary School teacher Debbie Schneider, who focused on large class size in her remarks.

“At my school we have kindergarten classes with 27 students and fifth grade classes with 30 students. We even have a special ed class with 18 students,” Schneider said.

Click on the video or here to see highlights of the rally.

Friedrichs vs. CTA plaintiffs Jelena Figuerora, Karen Cuen, Rebecca Friedrichs (Credit: CIR)

In a case that has implications for millions of public employees in more than two dozen states, a group of California teachers is planning to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case against the California Teachers Association (CTA) over union dues.

The case involves a state’s right to require public employees to pay dues to a union, known as “agency shop” laws. California and 25 other states currently require public employees to pay union dues. The teachers, with lead plaintiff Rebecca Friedrichs and co-plaintiff Christian Educators Association International, are arguing that agency shop laws in California violate their freedom of speech.

The plaintiffs were cleared to petition the Supreme Court following a ruling yesterday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which found in favor of CTA, based on previous Supreme Court precedent, according to the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), which is representing the plaintiffs.

CIR has worked to expedite the proceedings through District Court and the Court of Appeals by asking that they decide the case quickly without trial or oral argument. Essentially, they elected to lose the case in the lower courts and have argued that the only court with the authority to “grant them the relief they request” is the Supreme Court, CIR stated on its website. 

Were the Supreme Court to hear the case and rule in favor of the teachers, it would have major implications for unions in the states that require dues of its public employees.

CIR President Terry Pell explained on the radio show Morning in America how the case could impact public employees around the country.

“This case is about the right of teachers to decide for themselves whether they want to join a union. If we win, we will not just strike down the law in California but compulsory union due laws in other states,” Pell said. “So it would be a nationwide precedent that would make it impossible for any state to require public employees to join their union unless they want to join their union.”

Pell also explained that while teachers in California are not required to join the union, they still have to pay union dues, but can opt out of the one-third that goes toward political action. The other two-thirds goes toward collective bargaining.

“What we’re arguing in the case is those collective bargaining activities are just as political as anything else the union does, and the government can’t compel individuals to support speech by the union or by anybody else,” Pell said .

CTA has argued that compulsory dues are needed to prevent employees from gaining the benefits of union membership, including collective bargaining on their behalf, without paying for them, a term often referred to as “free riding.”

CTA explained why it is fighting the lawsuit after it won the case in District Court in 2013, saying on its website: “It’s always satisfying when the courts side with working people and the rights of their unions to protect and defend them. On a daily basis, CTA works tirelessly to represent all educators – members and non-members alike. Because non-members benefit from this work to ensure they have quality teaching and learning conditions, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled it is only fair that they contribute toward these expenses.”

The case could reach the Supreme Court by spring.

LA Unified and the teachers union, UTLA, met in another bargaining session today, but from the union’s perspective, not much happened to draw the sides closer.

The union announced late this afternoon that it was “rounding out” its list of demands, to include supports for displaced educators, improved UTLA representation for substitute educators facing termination, clean and safe schools, improved grievance procedures to deal with unfair treatment by principals and increased school-based decision-making regarding Breakfast in the Classroom.

As far as salary increases, nothing’s changed. The district is sticking to its offer of 2 percent; the union wants 10 percent.

The next bargaining session is scheduled for December 4.

United Teachers Los Angeles President Alex Caputo-Pearl

To commemorate “Big Red Tuesday,” United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) President Alex Caputo-Pearl used a sidewalk press conference at Thomas Starr King Middle School this morning to outline yet again the union’s contract demands from LA Unified.

UTLA encouraged teachers and supporters all around the district to wear red to campuses, and as he spoke, Caputo-Pearl was flanked by several dozen supporters wearing red clothing, including UTLA-issued garb, sweaters, button-down shirts and even an Anaheim Angels T-shirt. (See the embedded video below for highlights form the press conference.)

“All across the city today, our educators from Chatsworth to the harbor, from the beach to east LA, are in red in a show of unity behind the demands of the Schools LA Students Deserve,” Caputo-Pearl said.

Before turning the podium over to other speakers, Caputo-Pearl outlined the key items the union is seeking in a new contract and in its Schools LA Students Deserve campaign, which includes lower class sizes, more support staff like nurses and librarians and a pay increase for teachers. In his recent State of the Union speech, Caputo-Pearl said “Big Red Tuesday” would be the first of union actions meant to put pressure on the district and Superintendent John Deasy as the union looks to project unity during contract negotiations.

Caputo-Pearl then launched into some familiar attacks on Deasy in regard to the policies of teacher jail, the suspended iPad program, the troubled rollout of MiSiS and the district’s offer of a 2 percent raise for teachers in their new contract. The union is asking for a 17.6 percent raise.

Caputo-Pearl insisted it was was a coincidence that the LA Unified School Board is meeting today to determine what criteria to consider when Deasy comes up for his annual performance review in three weeks. An unsatisfactory review could end Deasy’s tenure, and Caputo-Pearl repeated the ambiguous call for the board to hold the superintendent  “accountable” for his actions.

Two teachers from Thomas Starr King also spoke at the press conference.

“By treating and training and paying us like the professionals that we are, and providing our classrooms with the resources we need, the teachers of Los Angeles will be able to continue to step up to make sure our students have the ability to be global citizens of the 21st century,” said Wil Page, who is a UTLA chapter chair and 6th grade teacher.

Holding back tears, science teacher Linda Howard said, “I love my school. I love my students. I have to look into their eyes everyday and I have to tell them why we can’t do a project, why we can’t do one thing or another. Because, there’s nothing here to support us.”

Rounding out the speakers was Tomas O’Grady, a parent at King who is running for LA City Council in District 4.

“I’m just speaking as one parent. I really think we ought to reward our teachers appropriately for the kind of work they put in the last five years, even when the leaders of this district have been bickering,” said O’Grady, who curiously was not dressed in red like the rest of the union supporters.

After the press conference, several dozens teachers appeared from around the corner and held a short march into the school while chanting and cheering.

Previous Posts: UTLA plans ‘Big Red Tuesday’ and monthly ‘escalating actions’

In preparation for the actions, which are to begin in October, UTLA is dubbing Tuesday, Sept. 30 as “Big Red Tuesday,” when union members are all being encouraged to wear red clothing as a sign of unity.

In his recent State of the Union speech, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl outlined the idea behind Big Red Tuesday.

“It seems small, but [LA Unified Superintendent John] Deasy will ask his administrators — you best believe he will — to count the shirts to measure our resolve. And when they see them from the harbor to Chatsworth, and East LA to the beach, it’s going to send a message to our networks of communication and our resolve across the city,” Caputo-Pearl said.

Sept. 30 also happens to be the same day the school board is meeting in a closed-door session to discuss Deasy’s upcoming annual review.

Red is one of the official colors of UTLA and many of its T-shirts are printed in red. The organization has often encouraged members to wear red when taking part in a protest or gathering, as it did in 2010 when members staged a protest outside of the Los Angeles Times.

Caputo-Pearl also told the crowd to “[k]eep your eye out for the first of a series of monthly escalating actions starting in October at school sites.”

Details on what the October action might entail have not been released by UTLA. Earlier this week, the union issued a press release that covered Big Red Tuesday and the October action but gave no more details than the hints Caputo-Pearl dropped in his speech. The release did encourage parents and community members to wear red on Sept. 30 to “show Deasy and LAUSD that we are united in our fight for Schools LA Students Deserve.”

UTLA and LA Unified are meeting periodically over a new contract, but the two sides remain far apart.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, President of UTLA

During his first State of the Union speech at the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) leadership conference last week, President Alex Caputo-Pearl promised that the union was “gearing up for this fight” as he works to negotiate a new contract with LA Unified.

Near the end of his remarks, as if to prove he wasn’t just talking tough, he announced that UTLA is hiring six new people in leadership positions as part of an internal restructuring made possible through a cost-sharing agreement with state and national teachers unions.

Caputo-Pearl described the cost-sharing agreement as “groundbreaking.” The organizations participating in the agreement are the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA), the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and the California Teachers Association (CTA).

“We went to our state and national affiliates…and we said to them that everything is affected by what happens in LA across the state, across the country,” Caputo-Pearl said at the conference. “We asked them because of this, our affiliates invest in UTLA and invest in our strategic vision. To invest to help us organize to win key things for our schools, educators and communities, to shape the national debate and to move forward a conversation about UTLA’s long-term stability.”

Caputo-Pearl said UTLA has already hired four people as part of the new agreement and is looking soon to hire a political director and a strategic researcher. The four recent hires are Jeff Good as Executive Director, Brian McNamara as Field Director, Esperanza Martinez, as a community organizer, and Sharon Delugach, who works directly for AFT as a parent coordinator but will now be dedicating three quarters of her time to working with UTLA, according to Caputo-Pearl.

The groups are “providing money and resources to get the union up to speed with internal organization to make it a true 21st century teachers union,” Josh Pechthalt, president of CFT, told LA School Report. “It’s focused on the union being more effective internally, which is part of what any union organizing work does externally.”

The announcement of the new hires was part of a seven-point action plan Caputo-Pearl outlined in his speech aimed at reorganizing the union and moving in a new direction.

“We are in a deep hole, and others have been digging that hole for us for a long time,” he said. “We are not going to turn this around overnight, and we are not going to win every battle, but we’ve turned the ship in the right direction now. We are going to organize and build the power we need to win.”

The underlying threat of a strike was sprinkled throughout the speech and the entire conference, as other invited speakers included former UTLA President Wayne Johnson, who led a successful walkout in 1989, St. Paul Federation of Teachers President Mary Cathryn Ricker, who led her union to the brink of a strike earlier this year when negotiating a new contract, and Portland Teachers Association President Gwen Sullivan, who also led her union to the brink of a strike this year.

In keeping with the theme, Caputo-Pearl touted McNamara’s strike credentials during his speech. McNamara has previously been an organizer for the National Union of Health Care Workers.

McNamara “has been an organizing director at one the premier organizing unions in the country for the last several years, having helped unions organize to the point of a strike, having helped unions organize strikes, and having helped unions organize toward numerous contract victories along the way,” Caputo-Pearl said.

When contacted by LA School Report, McNamara referred questions about his UTLA role to Caputo-Pearl, who did not return a message seeking comment. Nor did Good return phone calls inquiring about the role he would play with UTLA.

Another key part of Caputo-Pearl’s action plan included identifying and training a new parent-community coordinator at every LA Unified school to help support the Schools LA Students Deserve campaign.

Other points included getting rank-and-file union members more involved in political action campaigns, reconnecting with members though a comprehensive survey of their desired needs, “unapologetically” challenging LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy on a long list of grievances and fighting for a broad package in contract negotiations.

Caputo-Pearl’s full State of the Union speech is here.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, President of UTLA

In his first State of the Union speech as the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) president, Alex Caputo-Pearl delivered a careful, balanced address at the union’s annual Leadership Conference on Friday night, leaving most of the fiery rhetoric to one of his predecessors, Wayne Johnson, who energetically recalled the 1989 strike, which he led.

While Caputo-Pearl was not shy about “unapologetically” attacking LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy, his barbs were mostly repeats of statements he and UTLA leaders have made the last few months, which reduced a lot of their shock value. Most of the weight of the speech rested on what was only indirectly referred to — the possibility of a strike if negotiations for a new contract prove unsuccessful.

Speaking after Johnson, Caputo-Pearl let the audience know it was no coincidence Johnson was chosen to address the crowd.

“As I said many times as part of the Schools LA Students Deserve campaign, we are bargaining in good faith for a contract that is good for students and educators, but we are also preparing ourselves for all possibilities,” he said. “And you know from Wayne’s talk exactly what we mean.”

The comment was as close as Caputo-Pearl got to forecasting a strike, but he also stressed that union leaders are focusing on getting organized and “gearing up for this fight.” He dropped hints of actions to come, with a reminder for union members to wear red shirts to campus on Sept. 30 as a sign of solidarity and to “[k]eep your eye out for, first, of a series of monthly escalating actions, starting in October at school sites.”

Another part of his speech was dedicated to now familiar attacks against Deasy, which the crowd ate up and applauded.

They included describing Deasy as an “autocrat” and criticizing the policies of teacher jail, the suspended iPad program, the troubled rollout of MiSiS and the district’s offer of a 2 percent raise for teachers in their new contract. The union is asking for a 17.6 percent raise, and recent negotiations have not brought the two sides together.

Caputo-Pearl also repeated the careful language from a recent UTLA-issued press release that called for the school board to hold Deasy “accountable” for his recent actions during his upcoming annual performance review although he stopped short of recommending what the evaluation should conclude. The review is scheduled for Oct. 21, and an unsatisfactory review could end Deasy’s tenure.

Thoughts of a strike came not only in Johnson and Caputo-Pearl’s speeches. Attendees were also shown a film about the history of the UTLA that heavily featured a section on the ’89 walkout. When Johnson talked about it, he lit up the room.

“When you go out on strike, you put tremendous pressure on yourself,” he told the crowd. “The loss of pay, the uncertainty of when you are going back. They will threaten to cut your medical benefits. Tremendous pressure. And if you don’t put as much pressure on the district when you walk as you do on yourself, you are in trouble. But you can do it. Forty-five thousand teachers united, all walking in the same direction, they can’t beat you, folks. I’m telling you.”

Johnson concluded with a repeat of a famous line of his from the ’89 strike.

“Organize, organize, organize, educate, educate, educate. And then when they look at you across the table and say we’d love to give you that raise, but we just don’t have the money, you can tell them, as I told the 10,000-member rally at the [Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena] on May 19, 1989, you are lying, you are lying, you are lying,” he said, the crowd roaring to its feet as he finished.

Teachers who spoke to LA School Report after Caputo-Pearl’s speech said they liked what they heard even if it wasn’t entirely new.

“A lot of this is something I hear frequently because I get regular updates, so none of this is news to me,” said Teresa Sanford, a teacher at Fleming Middle School in Lomita. But that didn’t mean she didn’t like hearing it again, she said, adding, “I’m excited and inspired. I’m looking forward to some positive change.”

Matthew Kogan, a teacher at Evans Adult School in Chinatown, said he liked all the points of the speech and felt the crowd fully supported Caputo-Pearl.

“I think Alex and the other officers are coming in with a clear and energetic game plan,” he said. “I think that’s what the members want to hear. They feel we have really been taking it on the chin under John Deasy. I think everyone in that room would agree he’s been particularly hostile toward teachers.”

Kogan said that strike talk is prevalent not just at the conference but in the halls of many schools.

“At my school I’m surprised at the amount of people who keep asking me, ‘When are we going on strike?’ The frustration level has soared,” Kogan said.

Not all teachers are as enthusiastic about a strike.

“I’m really hoping a strike is avoided,” Andrea Burke, a teacher at Dr. Owen Lloyd Knox Elementary School in south Los Angeles, told LA School Report at a Teach Plus event the day before Caputo-Pearl’s speech. “I look at my students every day and I would hate to leave them, even though I know that what we are fighting for is definitely issues that need to be resolved. But I would hate for it to come to such an extreme.”

Loretta Toggenburger taught at over a half dozen schools during a 45-year career with LA Unified before retiring in 1999. She said she was on the picket lines in ’89.

“It was the hardest nine days of teaching,” she recalled after the Friday night speeches. “I hope we don’t have one, but if we have to have it, we have to have it. There is nothing worse than a strike for the students, for the parents, the teachers. The animosity that it causes, it’s not good but it has to be done if it has to be done.”

Previous Posts: Lots of strike talk expected as teachers union opens conference; UTLA’s Caputo-Pearl: ‘Our goal is to win a good contract’; Teachers union changes tactics, urges board to ‘evaluate’ Deasy*

Superintendent John Deasy

*Correction
In an earlier version of this post we mistakenly reported that UTLA is “urging the school board to fire” superintendent John Deasy. This is incorrect. We try our hardest to write with accuracy, but on this one, we missed the mark – and we regret the error. What follows is UTLA’s letter to us (in part) and our corrected post:

Our September 15th news release does not state that UTLA is urging the school board to fire John Deasy. …You may speculate on what you think the statement means, but to report that as fact coming from UTLA is simply wrong. … We also did not state we want the school board to downgrade Deasy’s performance to “unsatisfactory.” We stated that the board has the opportunity to evaluate Deasy “ to determine if his work is satisfactory.” As a long-time journalist I believe you realize that both the headline and the story posted by LA School Report on September 16th are misleading.
UTLA requests an immediate retraction so that your readers and the LAUSD school community will be informed of UTLA’s actual position on this issue.
Sincerely ,
Suzanne Spurgeon,  Director of Communications, UTLA

The Los Angeles teachers union has given up one of its oldest and loudest refrains, calling on LA Unified chief John Deasy to resign. Instead, UTLA appears to be changing tactics; it is urging the school board to ‘evaluate’ the superintendent.

In a press statement, UTLA says it wants the board “to evaluate the Superintendent to determine if his work is ‘satisfactory’… and hold Deasy accountable” at his annual review to take place behind closed doors on October 21. A less than satisfactory review would effectively spell the end to the superintendent’s contract which – at his own insistence – stipulates he meet performance targets set by the board.

“Deasy must be held accountable for the iPad fiasco and MiSiS crisis……[he] holds teachers accountable for their classroom programs, yet he cries foul when serious questions are raised by his supervisors,” UTLA said in a statement yesterday.

But amidst a fast-moving saga that features a fractured seven-member school board and a superintendent increasingly under fire, the landscape without Deasy may not be a silver bullet for the union.

Not only could firing the superintendent become a campaign issue for the four school board members up for election next March, but it could have an impact on negotiations between the union and the district, currently at the bargaining table over a contract on behalf of 31,000 employees.

“It’s likely to have a disruptive effect on the negotiations,” cautions Chris Tilly, Director of UCLA’s Institute for Research and Labor Employment.

While it is possible that a new superintendent who is more amenable to the union’s demands could be a catalyst to move the stalled negotiations forward, Tilly argues getting a new superintendent could take a long time. “And whenever you’re negotiating, you need to maintain continuity,” Tilly said.

The district has offered a 6.5 percent raise over three years, with a one-time, 2 percent lump sum payment, in line with other union contracts awarded this year. The union has asked for a 17.6 percent bump over two years.

Whoever follows Deasy will have the same budgetary constraints and the same equalizing requirements under the “me too” clauses included in other unions’ contracts with the district, which means an increase for UTLA would mean an increase for all.

Further, replacing Deasy does not eliminate many of the fundamental issues between education reformers and the union.

The most recent formal search for a LAUSD superintendent was in 2006 when David Brewer, a retired Vice Admiral of the United States Navy, was recruited to lead the district. Before hiring him, the board formed a citizens commission to help inform the criteria; the district contracted a search firm to cull applicants nationwide, and then a second committee was brought together to help review the applicants.

“The last time we conducted a real search for a superintendent, it was a long and hard process,” a district staffer told LA School Report.

And that was at a time when the school board was in more agreement, albeit, a lot less friendly to the teachers union.

Previous Posts: Deasy on his critics: Constant attacks are ‘politically motivated’; Teachers union ups pressure on Deasy over technology, contract; UTLA holds morning rally to insist Deasy be thrown into ‘jail’; UTLA skewers Deasy: ’10 reasons to Vote NO’

The teachers union filed the unfair labor practice charge against the district and Deasy a year ago, after Crenshaw was split into three magnet schools, a restructuring the 12 teachers vehemently and publicly fought against. As a result, they argue, Deasy specifically targeted them for removal from the school, forcing them to find jobs elsewhere in the district.

“This is a case about discrimination and retaliation,” UTLA attorney Dana Martinez said in her opening statement. “As the evidence will reveal, his comments will clearly demonstrate his motivation to get rid of union supporters who challenged him.”

As it happens, the hearing before the state Public Employment Relations Board, or PERB, comes as UTLA is trying to win a new labor contract from the district. Caputo-Pearl and Deasy are among the chief strategists in negotiations that have barely progressed despite a handful of meetings.

Caputo-Pearl has linked the PERB hearing to other disputes between the union and Deasy, calling the superintendent’s actions at Crenshaw “Another Autocratic Deasy Decision,” as a headline on the UTLA website says. Caputo-Pearl has also called Deasy’s handing of the district’s iPad program and the student-tracking system (MiSiS) “autocratic.” And then there are the contract negotiations, which have gone nowhere.

Caputo-Pearl, who taught at Crenshaw for 12 years, was among those who were sent packing when Crenshaw was reorganized. During that time Caputo-Pearl, co-founded the Social Justice and Law Academy at the high school, implemented the Extended Learning Cultural Model, and was largely responsible for attracting hundreds of thousands of dollars in outside grant money to the school.

But attorneys representing the district balked at the idea that Deasy would undertake the magnet conversion, which required nearly all employees to reapply for their jobs, just to eliminate a handful of teachers. The district contends that Crenshaw was a failing school making “minuscule and insignificant” progress.

“The notion that this was used as a reason to make staffing changes that somehow retaliated against individuals is a very cynical view,” said attorney Aram Kouyoumdjian, who is representing the district. “Because the alternate view was the district should have let Crenshaw remain a failing school and leave the staffing there and structure there intact.”

Further, he argued, it was school principal Remon Corely and not Deasy who had final say over the hiring process. The teachers  behind the complaint were not rehired for a multitude of reasons, completely unrelated to union activity, Kouyoumdjian explained. Those not asked to return demonstrated differences in ideology, opposition to magnet schools, a reluctance to undergo rigorous training or an unwillingness to adapt to the new direction the district was trying to take.

An administrative judge will decide the case. If UTLA wins, teachers want the option of taking their old jobs back, compensation for lost wages and attorneys fees, and an electronic posting from the district to all union bargaining members.

Caputo-Pearl was the first to testify yesterday. Over several hours he meticulously discussed his role as a leading figure at the school, his involvement in organizing protests and rallies against the “magnetization,” and several confrontations with Deasy.

In a meeting about the impending conversion held by the late school board member Marguerite LaMotte, Prinicpal Corely and Deasy, Caputo-Pearl explicitly recalled the superintendent saying, “Those who fit with the program or were a good fit would be accepted back to Crenshaw High School.”

Then, according to Caputo-Pearl, Deasy added, “let’s not have a war at this school.”

Caputo-Pearl will continue his testimony today. A final ruling is expected in two weeks.

Previous Posts: Crenshaw choir director released from ‘teacher jail’; Three-in-One Approach Gives Crenshaw a New Look for Success; Crenshaw Teacher Activist Packs Up His Boxes

President of UTLA, Alex Caputo-Pearl

* UPDATED

With a new contract on the line, the LA Unified teachers union, UTLA, is stepping up its attack on Superintendent John Deasy, blaming him for problems large and small and the opening line the district has taken for a new contract with teachers.

Union president Alex Caputo-Pearl ratcheted up the tension at the district board meeting this morning, with a broadside against Deasy, who appeared unmoved throughout the barrage.

“This board has to look very carefully at what money is going into cleaning up after autocratic measures,” Caputo-Pearl told the members, referring to the recent problems surrounding the district’s iPad contract and the bungled roll out of MiSiS, a student data management system.

It was the latest of Caputo-Pearl’s references to Deasy as an autocrat, a broad criticism for unilaterally making policy decisions without consulting or completely ignoring the union’s position on issues.

Caputo-Pearl also used his brief appearance at the meeting to tell the board members they have $507 million in “unrestricted reserves,” suggesting that the money could be included in a new deal for teachers, who have been offered the same contract terms — raises of 2 percent, 2 percent and 2.5 percent over the next three years — as the district has offered its other unions.

“That’s a huge amount,” he said, and he returned to face the board hours later, after its closed session, to repeat his demand to use the $507 million for teachers.

But it’s not all available, according to district officials. Most of the $507 million has already been rolled into the 2014-2015 budget, which means it has been allocated to cover other costs, they said, adding that only $85.8 million remains in reserve for such expenditures as raises for teachers.

The district is also mindful of the impact of teacher raises on the district’s other bargaining units if UTLA were given a contract with higher percentage raises than other unions are receiving. The other unions have what is known informally as “me, too” clauses, which means an increase for one is an increase for all.

Speaking to reporters later, Caputo-Pearl switched gears to announce a hearing before an administrative law judge at Public Employment Relations Board tomorrow over union complaints of Deasy’s reorganization of Crenshaw High School, where Caputo Pearl taught for 12 years..

“The superintendent tried to illegally cleanse Crenshaw High School of union leaders,” he said, adding that Deasy specifically targeted a dozen active union teachers.

UTLA filed an unfair labor practice charge against the district a year ago after the reconstitution of Crenshaw. The move dismantled the existing school improvement model and split the school into three distinct magnet programs.

On another front, Caputo Pearl appeared to be trying to leverage pressure on Deasy through other board members. In a press release yesterday, Caputo Pearl said he called school board president Richard Vladovic asking him to demand Deasy abandon MiSiS.

While it’s unclear how often a UTLA president has ever called the LA Unified president to make a direct plea to influence behavior of the superintendent, the district’s chief employee, it was another unambiguous shot at Deasy.

“The UTLA President deals with the BOE President when the superintendent has proven to be tone deaf to the suffering of educators, students, and parents,” UTLA’s Executive Director Jeff Good told LA School Report.

The full court press against Deasy comes in the middle of labor negotiations for a new contract — the first in more than eight years — in which UTLA is seeking a 17.6 percent salary increase over two years, class size reductions, an end to the widespread practice of teacher jail, and greater access to electives.

After a handful of meetings the two sides remain far apart with no agreement in sight. The next “bargaining” session is tomorrow.

Previous Posts: Deasy on his critics: Constant attacks are ‘politically motivated’; The Ratliff report: one view of the iPad program gone awry; Deasy planning to hire his own liaison for MiSiS project

* Clarifies amount of money LA Unified is holding in reserve.

In a document submitted to the board this morning, the union called for discussions of various subjects, including salaries, teacher evaluations and discipline at its next bargaining sessions, according to a district staffer who read the two-page letter to LA School Report.

Chief Labor Negotiator Vivian Ekchian, said in an interview she was “very pleased to have received their initial proposal.” She declined to discuss any of its content.

The letter, sent by UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl to the board, did not elaborate on salary demands, which the district contends it has not formally received. Caputo-Pearl says the union made it clear to the district long ago what it wants.

“UTLA’s salary proposal of 17.6 percent was formally presented to LAUSD under former President Warren Fletcher,” Caputo-Pearl told LA School Report. More recently, the union has clarified that the 17.6 percent salary increase demand is for two years.

The proposal comes on the heels of the district’s new deal with the Lieutenants and Sergeants School Police unit, whose contract was approved last night in a unanimous vote by unit members.

LA Unified has also completed negotiations with six other labor groups, most of which agreed to a similar salary increase package: a raise of 2 percent for 2014-15, 2 percent in 2015-16, and another 2.5 percent in 2016-17. Each annual pay bump is contingent on funds available.

While some groups also received a 2 percent lump sum payment for the 2013-14 school year, others tailored the additional payment to suit different preferences.

The raise UTLA is seeking over the next two years is nearly double what other groups have received over the span of three years. Superintendent John Deasy and other district officials say that could ultimately bankrupt the district.

Further, a “me too” clause included in most of the signed agreements allows a union the opportunity to re-open salary negotiations should the school board approve a higher general percentage increase for another group.

The UTLA proposal was distributed to staff and board members. More than a petition of specific demands, it is a document that lists subject areas the union leadership wants to discuss in future bargaining talks.

The subjects generally follow those included the last contract, such as terms, conditions and compensation for employment as well as language that would define teacher rights, grievances and assignment rules.

At the very least, by addressing what the union wants to talk about rather than listing specific demands, the union appears to be taking a slow-go approach to negotiations, which are now playing out against a backdrop of growing criticism of the district for issues related the iPad and student-computer tracking system.

The pace of negotiations is also allowing the union leadership to build a sense of unity among teachers in case Caputo-Pearl recommends a strike, which he has often threatened.

In any case, the district today updated the agenda for its next meeting, on Sept 9, adding a discussion of the UTLA proposal as the first item of business.

Previous Posts: LAUSD, Teachers union talking AM/FM on new contract; LAUSD schools assured to start with no new teacher contract; Teachers union calls district contract offer ‘a non-starter’

Alex Caputo-Pearl speaking at a news conference 9-3-2014

UTLA is calling on Superintendent John Deasy to lock himself in teacher jail while he’s under any investigation over iPads, computer systems or anything else.

At a rally earlier today union President Alex Caputo-Pearl told a crowd of teachers, “We are saying that he has to play by his own rules… He must not report to work here, he must report to teacher jail or report to home.”

Caputo-Pearl also called on “whoever is at the head of this district to be focused on schools and students and the day-to-day operations, and not scrambling to try to get out of investigations.” Assuming that’s Deasy, Caputo-Pearl did not explain how he might do that from “jail.”

The union claims that since Deasy took over, the district has escalated the practice of removing teachers accused of misconduct from the classroom and reassigning them to the central office where they often do nothing but continue drawing a paycheck. And many teachers who have been reinstated after a stint in teacher jail complain they were never informed of the charges against them.

In that respect, Caputo-Pearl said, “He [Deasy] actually has an advantage over many of our members who experience this, he knows the allegations against him.”

Deasy is also under scrutiny for his dealings with Apple and Pearson, leading up to the iPad deal, which was expected to cost the district upwards of $1 billion. He’s also under fire for launching MiSiS despite reports the student data base management system was riddled with problems.

UTLA hopes to end the widespread use of teacher jail for all but the most egregious offenders — those who pose a real threat to student safety.

Deasy responded to the protest in an interview with KNX calling it political grandstanding and pledged to continue to do his job.

“Our team is way too focused about lifting youth out of poverty to be involved in nonsense politics,” he said. “I think the only opinion that matters is what we’re doing for students.” The superintendent also defended his involvement with the tablet makers in a memo to the school board, leaked to the LAT Times.

“Today, even though we have taken advantage of a number of opportunities to constantly improve processes associated with this work, this extremely important initiative for the youth of LAUSD has been sidetracked by insinuations, innuendoes, and misleading statements,” he wrote.

Previous Posts: LAUSD aiming to resolve MiSiS issues as ‘Norm Day’ approaches; The Ratliff report: one view of the iPad program gone awry; Teachers union says computer glitch cost students first day

Superintendent John Deasy

As LA Unified teachers continue their complaints about the district’s new student data management program, MiSiS, Superintendent John Deasy said today he plans to hire an independent liaison to  keep him informed of corrective actions.

“This is not my area of expertise so I have to be sure, when I think something is not optimal, that I have my own person working on this to tell me if we are doing this smartly,” Deasy told LA School Report. “I want a third party who is knowledgeable about changing student informations systems, to give insight into are we making enough changes, are we making our changes correctly.”

Deasy said the person he will hire — within a week or so — will report directly to him and will not require board approval. He also said he intends to meet next week with a new court-appointed monitor charged with overseeing the development of a district-wide student tracking system. The previous person serving in that role died.

Since 2012, the person directly in charge of MiSiS is Bria Jones, according to Bria Jones. On her LinkedIn profile, she identifies herself as head of a small Arizona company hired by the district as “IT Project Director.” She claims she “Provide[s] day-to-day project direction and management of the MiSiS team.”

How she came to the district as the only candidate for the job was among questions that board member Tamar Galatzan included last week in a written request to Ken Bramlett, the district’s Inspector General, seeking an examination of the MiSiS program.

Efforts to reach Jones through the district and her LinkedIn account drew no response.

In an eight-minute telephone interview today about Jones’s role in the MiSiS launch and subsequent problems, Chief Information Officer Ron Chandler told LA School Report that “there are several project managers on the project…her role is to oversee different parts of the development of specifications and code development.”

Chandler confirmed that Jones is involved in district’s efforts to fix glitches in the program that have left thousands of LA Unified students without school or class assignments and access to other school services. District officials say “99 percent” of students are unaffected by the problems.

“She’s leading part of the team and she’s done a great job,” Chandler said, but he declined to identify others among the “several” involved.

A spokeswoman who was on the call cut it short, saying Chandler had to leave to attend a meeting.

Jones was recommended to oversee the MiSiS project at an annual salary of $280,800 after district officials determined there were no other viable experts to handle the complexities of the program, according to a district procurement official, George Silva.

Silva told LA School Report that Chandler’s office sought multiple candidates for the position, and finding no others to meet the complexity and urgency of the project, solicited opinions from experts in the IT field, and that led the district to Jones.

“You can’t run a project of that complexity without the right manager,” he said, adding that sole-source contracting, while rare, is sometimes required when the needs are specific.

The district Inspector General’s Annual report to the board for the 2013 fiscal year, wrote that Jones’s proposed rate of $135 per hour as Project Manager “is not supported and not reasonable.” It recommended that the procurement office justify why it should award a single-source contract to Jones’s company “without competitive procurement, which is normally required for a professional services contract of this size.”

At the time, school board president Richard Vladovic was alone in raising concerns over the deal.

In her LinkedIn profile, Jones describes herself as someone who is “known for transformational leadership, cutting-edge technology deployments, business enablement services, company strategy optimization, and business benefits realization.” She boasted that her contributions to the MiSiS project include “restoring trust in the project outcomes and on-time deliveries.”

Her self-evaluation notwithstanding, the MiSiS project has caused any number of problems for teachers and principals across the district, drawing particular fire from the teachers union, UTLA, which prompted Galatzan to ask the Inspector General to examine why the system was launched despite its flaws.

“I demand to know what happened and how this got so messed up,” she told LA School Report last week. “Because until it happened, the board had no inkling that the system wasn’t ready to go live.”

Jones has had a long career in IT, based on information she included on LinkedIn. She has worked on projects in a variety of industries including insurance, pharmacy, video rentals and education. She says: “She tackles thorny project issues and shows IT professionals how to motivate their teams toward new levels of achievement.”

Yet her work for LA Unified has not played out perhaps as smoothly as with previous clients.

MiSiS is an extension of previous computer programs used by schools to track student information. As the latest iteration, it is more complex than its predecessors, requiring more understanding and training for users.

Within six months of Jones’s hiring, problems were apparent, according to contemporary notes of a working committee that oversaw the project development. They were given to LA School Report unsolicited.

The notes show that in a series of meetings over the next six months that included the principals union, AALA; the teachers union and the district, various logistical, technical and financial were cited for disrupting a smooth development schedule.

Another document included in the notes, an AALA Update in March of this year, included the headline, “ADMINISTRATORS APPREHENSIVE ABOUT MiSiS PROJECT.” It referred to a February letter from AALA President Judith Perez and AALA Administrator Dan Isaacs to Chandler, warning that the software for MiSiS “is not ready for rollout and that we are at high risk of a failed implementation . . .”

They further said AALA members “felt that in a rush to meet deadlines, insufficient attention was given to the functionality that end users require.”

The letter also expressed concern that the MiSiS project had “become shrouded in secrecy.”

Chandler wrote back a month later, according to the AALA Update, which was in the notes, and apologized for any perception of exclusivity and assured the AALA officers that budgets and timelines are being met.

As manager of the project, Jones noted in her profile that in the first two years that she contributed to “maximizing the orchestration of team resources,” to “promoting persistence and project discipline” and  to “coaching and mentoring Technical Project Managers by giving constant feedback and advice.”

The feedback she might not have contemplated is the criticism from teachers and officials who say they are still struggling to get the new system up and running.

Previous Posts: LA Unified computer problems hampering special ed teachers; Teachers union blasts Deasy again for new computer system; Teachers union says computer glitch cost students first day

Negotiators met for the second time yesterday, and the next session is not scheduled until Aug. 21 — nine days after school starts.

While the teachers union put out a press release yesterday, chiding the district for not being cooperative, the district’s chief negotiator, Vivian Ekchian, said the meeting was constructive.

“I would say it was productive,” Ekchian told LA School Report.

Among the topics covered over the three hour meeting, she said, were the budget, staffing, and class size reductions.

But in the press release, the union accused the district of giving them a Sophie’s Choice of smaller classes or salary increases. Not both, which the union says the district can afford.

“We don’t buy it,” the release said. “We believe the district is trying to pit educators against parents and the community.”

Union President Alex Caputo-Pearl told LA School Report yesterday that teachers have been waiting for the district to provide line-by-line numbers for the district’s base expenditures. Ekchian says they began to do that “in a very global way” and will delve more deeply into the budget in future meetings.

 Previous Posts: UTLA’s Caputo-Pearl: ‘Our goal is to win a good contract’; LA Unified, teachers meeting today to discuss a contract; Teachers union calls district contract offer ‘a non-starter’

With school about to open for 2014-2015, Alex Caputo-Pearl embarks on his first year as president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). He couldn’t have found a busier time to begin his first term, with negotiations underway for a new collective bargaining contract, a curriculum transition to Common Core and a host of other issues facing his 30,000-member union.

LA School Report had a chat with him today to get his thoughts on the union and the issues ahead as school doors open. Here’s what he had to say:

Question: LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy has characterized your statements of a potential strike as “breathtakingly irresponsible.” What is your response?

Answer: What is actually breathtaking is the conditions in our schools. We’ve got many schools without nurses, without librarians, arts or music programs. We’ve got some of the highest student to counselor ratios and highest class sizes in the country. What’s breathtaking is that the conditions of students and by extension educators face everyday in schools. That’s what we should be talking about when we’re using dramatic words like “breathtaking.”

Further, we are still waiting on an actual narrative and numeric description about how the base expenditure money that increased because the district received so much more money was spent. We’ve been waiting for months for a line-by-line description of where that increase was spent, and we still haven’t received it.  To expect a snappy agreement without process would be ridiculous.

Q: So, do you expect this to be a long and protracted process? Is a strike inevitable?

A: Do we want a strike? Hell, no! But do we know that we need to build up our capacity to deal with the kind of intransigence that we’re seeing. Yes, and  part of preparing for struggle is building up our capacity and part of building our capacity is building the capacity of a strike.

Q: Assuming you get a fair contract for teachers, what’s your next big priority for teachers this year?

A: Our goal is to win a good contract and to win good board policies for students and for members. And I think contracts, by definition, are temporary compromises on a bunch of issues, so I think the next step would be to continue to move the ball forward around the (union’s) “Schools LA Students Deserve” program, be it class size, school improvement, and educator control over professional development.

Q: We know teacher jails are a problem for you. How do other major urban districts deal with problem teachers?

 A: I have a 10-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter who go to LAUSD schools, and if there is an educator or any school staff against whom there are credible allegations around sexual misconduct, they need a place to go that is not the school site. I’ve always been clear about that. What has to stop, is using the pulling out of teacher jail in much more indiscriminate and inconsistent ways that hurt kids and hurt student programs. But right now the system is such that the district isn’t following its own policy.

There are clear policy memos that outline the kind of allegations that should lead to someone being removed from a school, and they are very clear about timelines for investigations so you don’t have people sitting for years and leaving schools to deal with a vacancy. The district is breaking those rules.

Q: So if the district were to follow its own rules things would be OK? Or do the district’s policies still need to be modified? 

A: It would be a huge first step to have the district follow its own policies.

Q: Even with recognizing that poverty, neighborhood security and family support influence a student’s learning capabilities, how much responsibility should teachers have in the equation?

A: Teachers have enormous responsibility every day, and they got into education because they wanted to make a difference. That’s part of the job. What we have to do is find a balance between being involved in a movement to improve conditions for young people that include dealing with poverty, dealing with jobs programs, dealing with recreation space, all things that young people need.

We have to find a way to be involved in those kinds of movements but at the same time be able to contribute to young people’s development in schools, and the best way to do that is to involve educators in the building of school improvement programs.  And most educators would jump at that if they’re given a real opportunity to contribute to shaping a school improvement program and then actually implementing it.

The problem has been that there have been top-down metrics that people don’t feel they were a part of, that they don’t feel like they were consulted or that their expertise has been respected. And it’s that approach has pushed people down rather than lifted them up.

Q: Was that your experience teaching and leading the social justice program at Crenshaw High School?

A: Yes. In the case of Crenshaw we had years of organizing that went into building relationships with communities, and national foundations. And then through the blood sweat and tears of educators built a program that that ultimately was destroyed by the superintendent. He essentially just blew it up.

Q: How could teachers improve their public image, convincing average citizens that they are of greater value?

A: I draw from my own experience: 22 years teaching in south LA. The way that we, at Crenshaw, were able to shift some of the perceptions of the schools and of educators was to open up and work with parents on specific things. Work with them on building up our small learning communities so that they actually felt like they had a role doing that. I think a lot of it is letting people in to the day-to-day work of what educators do and helping expose the public to success stories but also day-to-day struggles in a really honest and forthright way. We’ve got to do that on a larger scale.

The second side of that coin is that we have to expose a lot of the big money interests that are specifically trying to shape public opinion against teachers’ unions because they see teachers’ unions as being in their way.

Q: Why is student enrollment in the district declining year after year?

A: A bunch of different factors are involved in that. Obviously there are changing demographics; people are moving away from LA ,but also I think charter schools are a big part of that. But there’s no question that we’ve got to improve LAUSD schools and get out there in the community and involve LAUSD parents. Not just by saying, ‘Hey, your child should come to our school,’ but involve them in really creating programs at schools.

One of the tragic underlines in the story of declining enrollment is that as the overall enrollment has declined, it has not declined proportionately to sectors of students. So, for example, as enrollment has declined, the enrollment of special-education students has increased. The proportion of foster care youth and the number of students who struggle with chronic tardiness has increased, because many charter schools, not all but many, are recruiting certain sectors of students who are higher performing or have a more institutional supportive home. That ends up being the Catch-22 of LAUSD’s efforts: to build a real school improvement strategy because it becomes more challenging as you have greater concentrations of higher needs students. But it doesn’t mean you stop trying.

Q: How much progress have you made in your efforts to unionize charter school teachers?

A: We’ve had some very important victories, including Ivy Academy, which has unionized and won their first contracts. What’s exciting about this moment is that we want charter school teachers engaged in the “Schools LA Students Deserve” campaign. We want them to come to the table and say this is a vision that expresses our desires as well, and give us input and insights. It’s a huge opportunity for a broad campaign like that to unite educators across LAUSD.

Q: Inasmuch as the Vergara court decision found that two years is too short to make an informed decision on a new teacher for tenure, what do you think is the right amount of time?

A: What’s needed is a system that involves educators in teacher support, development and evaluation. A system that invests in strategies that have been known to work, that expands programs, like the Peer Assistance and Review Program, which we already have in the district. And we need better training for administrators to support newer teachers. if you actually do those four things, you will address, much more systematically, the problem of supporting new teachers, and the bigger problem of having so many teachers drop out within the first few years. Those should be our top priorities. Not a lawsuit funded by big money to say that the union rules are the problem.

Q: In two recent reports, the National Council on Teacher Quality has put a large blame for rookie teacher ineffectiveness on college and university education schools. How much do you hold those schools responsible for the problems young teachers encounter?

A: I came through the teaching program at California State University Dominguez Hills and it was a good program but in no way did it prepare me, and I don’t think it could have prepared me for everything I would have to deal with in the classroom. The reason I made it through my first three years was because I had that foundation together with the fact that, out of dumb luck, I happened to be next to the classroom of someone named Cleopatra Duncan, a 35-year teacher and icon in the black community. She basically walked me through my first three years.

It’s a mistake to isolate the university programs from mentor teacher programs, which are critical, doesn’t serve anyone. We’ve got integrate them more.

Negotiators for LA Unified and the teachers union, UTLA, resume contract talks later today amid charges and counter-charges of which side is responsible for the lack of progress. Teachers are set to return for the opening of the school year next week.

Late last week, the sides exchanged letters, each sharp in tone, that sought to blame the other for delays, miscommunications and disagreements over how the negotiating sessions should play out.

While the accusations are the usual stuff of collective bargaining involving public entities, the missives were helpful in at least one respect. Maybe for the first time publicly, in a July 28 letter to the district’s chief negotiator, Vivian Ekchian, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl clarified that 17.6 percent salary increase the union is demanding would cover a two-year period, last year and the year ahead.

Until now, the union had not specified a period of time.

Caputo-Pearl’s letter is posted on the UTLA website, and it calls the district’s latest offer — raises of 2 percent, 2 percent and 2.5 percent for three years — “lethargic” and further accuses the district of ignoring other union concerns, including issues of staffing and class sizes.

Ekchian responded a day later, accusing the union of not taking a new contract serious enough to warrant more frequent negotiating sessions, with the start of school so close at hand.

She also took Caputo-Pearl to task over “your now seemingly ritual, repeated threats of strike” against the backdrop of only a single negotiating session.

To anyone who has followed high-profile labor negotiations, the current backing-and-forthing, including threats of a strike, is not unusual when sides are far apart and communications sound as if they are taking place on AM and FM.

That all could change, of course, during today’s session, scheduled for 1 pm to 4 pm.

Or not.

Previous Posts: Deasy on UTLA’s talk of a strike: ‘breathtakingly irresponsible’; Teachers union leaders updating members on strike potential; Strike talk emerges on Caputo-Pearl’s first day as union chief

Here’s what he had to say.

Question: As the school year opens, and with only one bargaining session under your belt, UTLA is preparing teachers for the possibility of a strike. How much of that is real and how much is theater for bargaining leverage?

Answer: What is there to strike over? We have yet to receive [UTLA’s] bargaining proposal. We don’t even know what their demand is? I just don’t understand such a language whatsoever. It would strike me as breathtakingly irresponsible to talk about something as great as a strike when we have only had one bargaining session. I would never even have a conversation about something as ludicrous as saying to the public that we might have a strike when we met people once. The gravity of telling parents something like that is breathtakingly irresponsible.

Q: We know what they want: Teachers are demanding a 17.6 percent raise.

What we have offered is a 26.3 percent compensation over three years. We have committed to completely picking up the all district’s pension costs, taking care of all increases in health benefits for the next three years and maintaining all the raises that everybody gets. And that is a non-starter? Someone should clue in the LAPD, who are getting zero.

Q: Looking to the new school year, what is the biggest change that will influence student performance this year?

A: As we prepared to make the switch to the Common Core, we had no markers of student performance last year. And this year we’re going to give an assessment, which we won’t get until the year’s over. So we have to use this cluster of three things out here, which is (National Assessment of Educational Progress) data, SAT data, and AP scores, so we are looking very anxiously trying to get new information from the implementation of the Common Core.

Q: In the last several months a number of states have withdrawn their support for Common Core. How committed is LAUSD to using Common Core?

A: I have absolutely not wavered on the new Common Core standards. I am deeply committed to the fact that students should have college-ready standards, career-ready standards and that we should be working to help students have a more rigorous curriculum.

Q: How satisfied are you that teachers are properly trained to teach it?

A: I think teachers are more trained here than other places I’ve seen. It’s been awesome when you look at the professional development and what teachers are doing. I attend a lot of the trainings, and I’m like, “Holy cow!”

It will take us years to get better at it, and we haven’t developed the standards at the state level yet so you’ve got a half a faculty who’s got a whole set of standards they’ve developed, and then there’s science which is just coming out. So teachers are implementing what we have and what we know.

Q: If I were a student, what would you tell me to do that has an impact on my daily life?

A: I’ll tell you one non-academic thing: get your TDAP shot before you walk through the door. There is whooping cough in this part of the world, and we are not going to let you in the door without a shot. No joking.

Second: I hope you read over the summer. Reading is really important particularly fiction and non-fiction texts. For high school students, I would ask if they’ve read the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from Birmingham jail.

Q: Perhaps your most controversial move has been your single-minded — some say misguided — quest to get iPads into the hands of all students. How would you have done it differently now that you’ve seen the fallout? 

A: It was controversial? My initial plan was to have technology in the hands of students as fast as possible, and that is my hope. That what wealthy students have, students who are not wealthy should have the exact same thing.

With all due respect, I think we’re living in two different realities.

Q: What is your reality of how the iPad program was rolled out? Do you think it went smoothly?

A: As of today, less than a hundred elementary schools have them. I would hardly call this a fast rollout. And we have 119 high schools, and we’re going to roll out laptops to 14. This doesn’t strike me as breakneck speed and that was as fast as we planned to go. The narrative that something happened really fast when most of the kids don’t even have them, is not accurate. I think this is really worth understanding. My reaction is, I wish it was sped up.

Q: As we noted in a recent story charter school growth in LAUSD has exploded. What will we see over the next 10 years?

A: I’m not expecting that trajectory to continue. I don’t think that demand is going to maintain that pitch, but if it did, we would continue with the same process, which is, we bring to the board recommendations to authorize charters and maintain them based on their performance. And we bring to the board denials and closures based on performance.

Q: Should there be more strict oversight of charter schools?

A: I make recommendations based on a pretty strict oversight model. However, the administration has seen more of its votes to close schools not supported [by the board] than we did denials of new charters that did happen by vote.

Q: In other words, when you recommended that a charter school be shut down, the board voted against you, but when you recommended to deny a new charter application, the board usually approved? 

A: Yes.

Q: Why?

A: I have no idea.

Q: Last year the board came close to firing you — or you came close to quitting. Can you clarify what happened?

A: No. I don’t discuss personnel matters with the media.

Q: The politics of the school board is often characterized as a split between reform-leaning members and teachers union-leaning members. What impact does the internal politics have on what you are trying to accomplish?

A: None. And you know, for all this swirl of controversy, the board voted the budget unanimously and the LCAP unanimously. These are major initiatives. I think if a vote is 4-3 or 3-3, well that feels really unnerving to tell you the truth. So when it doesn’t really happen, I guess, I wonder, where is the controversy?

Q: How long will you be LA Unified Superintendent?

A: As long as the board wants to employ me. Where could you possibly be more fulfilled than this job? This is job is overwhelming in its responsibility, and I’m very focused on it. And I’m very happy.

Since we decided to do a one-on-one initiative, the number of initiatives around the country has skyrocketed; since we decided to launch restorative justice, President Obama has now launched “My Brother’s Keeper”; since we stopped willful defiance suspensions, districts are tripping over themselves to do more of that. When we decided that we would have the ability for students to visibly see we’re completely accepting, not tolerant, but accepting, of whatever your particular sexual orientation is, school districts across whole country are trying to emulate that. When we build health clinics at a dozen a clip other districts are trying to figure out how to do that. And I’ll make a projection: We will have a major consequential voice in immigration reform in the not too distant future.

That makes me feel very proud.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl speaking to union members

No matter the state of contract negotiations between LA Unified and the teachers union, UTLA, instructors are becoming more familiar with the possibility of a strike.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, the union president, said in an interview today union officials are busy organizing parents, sending out negotiation updates and preparing school sites for the possibility that the district and the union reach an impasse in bargaining.

“I’m very confident we can organize ourselves to be a force,” he said, a reference to developing unity among union members. “We’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response to our efforts so far.”

Negotiators for the district and union have met several times to exchange ideas. So far, the union has rejected each of the district’s first two offers, calling the latest one “a non-starter.” The district has offered a 2 percent payment to teachers for last year, a 2 percent salary increase for each of the next two years and a 2.5 percent increase in a third year. The out years are predicated on district revenues.

The next bargaining session is scheduled for Aug. 6.

Previous Posts: Teachers union calls district contract offer ‘a non-starter’; LA Unified, teachers meeting today to discuss a contract; JUST IN: LAUSD sweetens contract offer to teachers union

The union brought all seven officers into negotiations yesterday, signaling a shift to what it calls “big bargaining.” And it’s likely to get bigger: The union said in a statement future bargaining sessions would include rank-and-file members as part of the bargaining team and parents and academics as observers.

Teacher unions in other cities, like Chicago and St. Paul, have used the tactic, ostensibly to demonstrate strength, unity and determination, in UTLA’s case, perhaps as prelude to a strike. For UTLA, the statement said, the idea is to put a focus on “smaller class sizes, full staffing, salary restoration and raises for educators, who have gone seven years without a raise, took furlough days and made other sacrifices during the recession years.”

“We know more money is coming into the district every year and there is no reason to maintain large class sizes,” the statement said. “The district wants us to be quiet on the class size issue. We will not. Nor will we drop our demand for fully staffed schools that provide social-emotional support for students and offer the arts and other electives that our students deserve.”

LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy declined to comment on the change.

What it might achieve is unclear. The union is clearly unsatisfied with the district’s latest contract offer — a 2 percent bonus for last year, 2 percent salary increases for the coming year and the next and a 2 1/2 percent raise for the year after that, with the second two years conditional of the district’s financial situation.

The union has called that offer a “non-starter” and yesterday asked district negotiators “to explain their numbers in formulating the most recent offer.” The union is demanding a 17.6 percent salary increase over an undetermined number of years.

“In many ways, their offer represents a throwback to bad ideas the district had in past years that did not work,” Union President Alex Caputo-Pearl said in the statement.

The next bargaining session is scheduled for August 6th; a larger table may be necessary.

Previous Posts: LA Unified, teachers meeting today to discuss a contract; Teachers union calls district contract offer ‘a non-starter’; JUST IN: LAUSD sweetens contract offer to teachers union

Negotiators for LA Unified and its teachers union, UTLA, had planned to meet today to discuss a new contract for teachers, based on the district’s latest offer. The district described it as an improvement over the initial offer, but days before the offer was officially made, the union dismissed it as a “non-starter” and continued the threat of a strike. Meanwhile, courtesy of the LA Daily News, here’s a look at the rate of salary increase for LA Unified teachers over the last 10 years.

Previous Posts: Teachers union calls district contract offer ‘a non-starter’; JUST IN: LAUSD sweetens contract offer to teachers union; UTLA could start another academic year without a contract