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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALLIANCE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

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

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

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

A MODEL THAT VALUES AUTONOMY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONTROVERSY IN BATTLE WITH UTLA

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

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

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

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

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

Classmates Stephanie Martinez, left, Yessica Zayas and Kevin Romero won Gates Millennium scholarships.

A Los Angeles public high school graduating its first senior class this week has an extra reason to celebrate: four seniors have scored the same prestigious scholarship.

One thousand students this year were selected to participate in the Gates Millennium Scholars Program, a $1.6 billion initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that awards full-ride college scholarships for minority students all the way through graduate school.

The winners came from 45 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories. Four are from Alliance Susan & Eric Smidt Technology High School, an independent charter school in the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools network. Alliance operates 27 schools within LA Unified, many of them top performers. The four students are part of the first graduating class of the school, which opened in 2012.

The winners are Andrea Mapica, who will attend Brown University; Stephanie Martinez, who will attend UCLA; Kevin Romero, who will attend Johns Hopkins University, and Yessica Zayas, who will attend Mt. Saint Mary’s. They and 123 classmates will receive their diplomas on Saturday.

Both Romero and Zayas attended Wallis Annenberg High School in South Los Angeles before switching to Smidt Tech. Both said the former principal at Annenberg, Lori Rhodes, who had left to be the first principal at Smidt Tech, convinced them to give the new school a try.

“The principal at Wallis, she saw potential in me I guess and reached out to me and said, ‘I am going to leave and start a new school and I really think you would benefit from it.’ She was the main reason I started considering it,” said Romero, who left Annenberg in April of his freshman year.

(Rhodes is no longer at Alliance and is principal of Healdsburg High School in Northern California. She was named in a complaint filed by UTLA with the California Public Employee Relations Board as having unlawfully made a coercive statement to a teacher by implying that the teacher’s views on unionization could impact her official evaluation. A judge last week agreed with the complaint.)

Zayas also said Rhodes urged her to give the school a try. But first she and Romero said they needed to convince their parents it was the right choice.

“They were against me going to a new school, because it was so new. In their eyes there was nothing wrong with my previous school, and I was really attached to it,” Romero said. “It was a K-12 school, and I had been there since kindergarten. All my brothers went there too.”

Zayas said her parents had similar concerns but finally agreed to let her transfer, which she did at the start of her sophomore year. The distance was another concern, because getting from South LA to Lincoln Heights every day was no easy task. Her dad drove her the first week, but it became clear that it wasn’t going to be possible to continue doing that.

“It was so much money and took 30 minutes. They told me, ‘You are going to take the bus,’ but then they didn’t want me to take the bus because, ‘You will get home late and it gets dark early.’ They were worried,” Zayas said. “And they were thinking, ‘Shoot, we made a mistake. We aren’t going to get to go to school events or anything.”

Zayas ended up riding the bus every day, an hour each way. Romero did too. But that wasn’t the only difficult part of the transition.

“It was definitely a bumpy road. Once I got there I started realizing how new it was and it didn’t really hit me until we were asking for certain things and we didn’t have those things,” Romero said. “But over time I started realizing that it is great to be a part of something new.”

Zayas also had a tough transition.

“When I first moved, like Kevin the shock was hard because I had gone to [Annenberg] school since middle school. All my friends were there and I felt comfortable,” she said. “Moving here, it was new. There was technology and we all got computers. And I felt like I regretted the choice, not academically, but more of like, I missed my friends. But then I thought, it is offering me better stuff, it is offering me better AP’s.”

Martinez came to Smidt Tech by a different route, and almost by accident. She grew up in Lincoln Heights and attended PUC Excel Charter Academy, but wasn’t sure where she wanted to go to high school. Her mother had vetoed Lincoln High School, the large, traditional district high school in the neighborhood.

“My mom was like, ‘You are not going to Lincoln High School, that’s a for sure no. I don’t want you to get shot there.’ That was her stereotype for Lincoln,” Martinez said.

But although her mother wanted an alternative choice, the family knew little about how to enroll in charter and magnet schools.

“Me and my mom didn’t know you actually had to apply to high school. I thought I could just send in my transcripts and they would accept me,” she said.

After missing the deadline to get into the magnet of her choice, Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet, Martinez ended up enrolling at Smidt Tech as a last-minute decision, although she initially didn’t want to go to the school because it was brand new.

But now?

“I think Smidt Tech has been one of the best choices I could have made, although it was on accident. At Lincoln I don’t think I would have gotten the attention that I personally need sometimes,” she said.

Romero also said he does not regret the choice of switching schools.

“At my old school if you were trying really hard and trying to get good grades, people would be like, ‘Oh, he’s just kind of a nerd.’ You know, in this sort of environment people really actually do want you to succeed,” he said.

Zayas also said she does not regret the decision to switch to Smidt Tech, but there is one thing about it she will not miss.

“It’s been three years, and I am so glad I don’t have to take the bus anymore! It wears you out, to be on the bus for an hour,” she said.

Zayas’ parents, who initially didn’t want her to switch to Smidt Tech, are now relieved of the burden of paying for her college. They run a home photography business and both have taken second jobs to prepare to pay for her college and to pay for her brother, who is attending Pepperdine, Zayas said.

“I remember when I first opened the envelope after receiving the scholarship, I told my mom, ‘You don’t have to do that job anymore.’ And the look on her face, she was crying,” Zayas said.

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, LA School Report spent some time recently talking with Brendan Wallace, a math teacher at Alliance Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science High School. On Thursday, Wallace was named the Teacher of the Year for Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, an organization that runs 27 charter schools in Los Angeles. (Check out the above video to learn more about Wallace.)

The interview is lightly edited for clarity and length.

LA School Report: Tell me what your reaction was when you found out you were being recognized for the award.

Brendan Wallace: My reaction was very surprised because I actually found out before Alliance announced it. My principal came into my room during home room and said we were going to have a senior assembly in my room, which I thought was very odd because there’s like 160 seniors. So I said OK, and when she came back, my assistant principal came in first and he had a huge smile on his face, and that gave it away.

And then all these seniors came in and they gave me the award, which is like a crystal apple. And I was surprised I won, because Alliance had been releasing the videos for the finalists this past week, and I was watching their videos and I was thinking that they looked more qualified, or their videos made me feel not as confident that I would win. So I was genuinely surprised when I won.

LASR: So it was tough competition you are saying?

Wallace: Yeah, based on my interaction with Alliance teachers through my own school and at our professional developments, I know there are a lot of high quality teachers at Alliance and I figured there would be a lot of people applying and that it would be competitive. I didn’t even think I would even make it to the final round. When I was announced as a finalist it was a shock, so to win was super surprising. I’s definitely competitive.

LASR: Tell me about your background and why you became a teacher. 

Wallace: I am from the East Coast originally and I went to George Washington University in D.C. and I was a math and economics major, and I was recruited into teaching by Teach for America. My placement school through Teach for America was at [Alliance Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science High School], which is where I continue to teach.

I decided to become a teacher because through college and the classes I was taking I started to realize how fundamental a good education is to not only to achieve your life goals, but to progress through life in a way that allows you to not be taken advantage of. You have to set goals for yourself in order to achieve them. And I always thought that being involved in that field would be obviously a great service to the students I was teaching, but also be rewarding for me just because I am helping young adults develop into intelligent and fully capable adults. 

LASR: You’ve only taught at Alliance, so you obviously don’t have anything to compare it to, but what is your understanding of what it is like to teach at Alliance and what makes it different?

Wallace: Well, yes, not being able to compare to specifically, but I have experienced a school culture that really encourages people to take on new projects and challenge themselves and fully supports teachers who, for example, want to create new classes. I created a class this year for multi-variable calculus.

My principal told me if I wanted to make a new class that I should go ahead and do that, so I did it over the summer, also creating student organizations and sports teams. I think the Alliance is a place where if you have ideas and passions where you want to explore, and students are interested in those passions and ideas, that the Alliance and a charter and the people that they hire as administrators are incredibly supportive. So that’s something I think is not necessarily true in other areas, where I don’t think teachers have as much room to explore outside their classroom or beyond what they are already teaching.

LASR: What do you think you have learned the most about teaching compared to your first few weeks on the job teaching your first class.

Wallace: I think I learned that as a teacher you need to be really patient with students and you really need to force yourself to adopt the mindset that your students have when it comes to content. When I was first teaching I was teaching algebra I, and it was sometimes hard for me to understand why students were not able to grasp concepts and that can lead to frustration, just because I learned that stuff when I was their age and I just don’t remember the process of learning those concepts.

Now when I am preparing a lesson I think, OK, where are all the possible places that a student could get confused and I adopt a Murphy’s law approach in that anything that could confuse the student will probably confuse the student. So I think for teachers that can be a source of like severe frustration, not being able to understand the misconceptions from the student’s perspective, so I definitely have learned to completely think through the lessons because it keeps my ability to be patient more sustained.

It also helps me answer the questions because if I have thought through how students will be confused then I am more readily able to answer their questions.

Alliance College Ready High School 16 Principal Carmen Vazquez and some of her students.

Melissa Campos says senior year is a breeze for many of her friends and former teammates attending neighborhood high schools in Los Angeles Unified.

Many of them get out for “work study” after a few periods of electives, she said. They are done with math, science and foreign language classes, and there are no AP courses on their schedule. Few have had a single conversation about college applications with anyone at their school.

Not so for Melissa, who is facing her most challenging year yet at Alliance College Ready High School 16, a public charter in the Westlake neighborhood just west of downtown LA. She’s got AP Physics, pre-calculus, a special class in college-readiness skills and weekly meetings with her college counselor to refine essays and applications.

“Going to this school has really given me an identity,” said Melissa, who came to this country from Mexico in fourth grade and now is applying to several University of California schools and selective private colleges. “It’s given me goals and structure, and I have a determination about my future… to make a better life for me and my parents.”

Here’s another thing that going to Alliance has given Melissa and nearly all of the 1,766 seniors attending an Alliance high school: Assurance they are on track to graduate having passed the A through G college preparatory courses with a C grade or better.

This assurance has taken on a heightened importance recently, after LAUSD officials recently acknowledged in an earlier exclusive story that nearly half of their students were not on track to graduate because they have not completed or passed the now-required A-G courses. Credit-recovery courses, many of them online, and an “all hands on deck” command from the new superintendent have boosted that number to nearly 2 in 3 seniors on track, according to LAUSD figures released last week.

With just over three months to go until commencement ceremonies, LAUSD is now scrambling to fix their looming graduation crisis for the more than 12,000 seniors who are deemed “off track.” One fix was to lower the passing bar, so that students could pass their A-G requirements with a D, a bar too low for college admission. The other is with the $15 million credit recovery program, where students take online courses after school and on weekends to earn credits for advanced algebra or chemistry courses they failed or never took.

Alliance—the largest public charter network in Los Angeles with 12,000 students on 27 campuses— projected that more than 90 percent of its 1,766 seniors are on track to graduate this year. This tops the senior on-track rate at even the most selective magnet schools in LAUSD. Every Alliance graduate must pass with a C, and 95 percent of them are accepted to college, according to officials.

Other charter networks provided similar data about their A-G preparation and graduation rates.

PUC Charter Schools has about 400 seniors at five high school campuses, and about 94 percent are expected to graduate with a C or better in all of their A-G requirements. Overall, the network’s high schools have a four-year cohort graduation rate averaging about 91 percent across the five campuses.

Green Dot operates nine charter high schools in Los Angeles and has taught A-G requirements since its founding 16 years ago. Last year, of the 1,713 high school seniors network-wide, all of whom took A-G courses, 89 percent graduated with a D or higher, and 59 percent graduated with a C or above in these courses. Many Green Dot schools are different than other charters in that they “turn around” chronically struggling LAUSD schools and keep all of those schools’ enrolled students.

Alliance College Ready High School 16 student Melissa Campos (Credit: Alliance)

A smaller network, Camino Nuevo, reported that 138 of 140 seniors at two high school campuses are on track to graduate with a C or better in all A-G requirements

The disconnect between the graduation rates of charters and traditional high schools comes at a sensitive and embarrassing time for the district.

The school board issued a symbolic vote last month against a plan by the Broad Foundation to dramatically increase the expansion of charters. The teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, recently approved a 33 percent increase in dues to give them more money to fight “billionaires (who) are trying to cripple unions” by expanding charters. And charter leaders are pushing back, arguing in a letter signed by 21 charter operators that the district is unfairly blocking expansion of even the most successful charters.

Melissa doesn’t pay much attention to the politics behind her school choice. She doesn’t care about the comments she gets from her former soccer teammates from nearby Belmont High School, where her Alliance classes were held until the school moved to a newly built campus this year. According to district data, only 56 percent of seniors at Belmont are on track to graduate.

Melissa knows she easily could have been one of those statistics in a different high school, like the ones in her neighborhood of Crenshaw.

She’s got a strong GPA, but she still struggles to improve her reading, with English being her second language, and math doesn’t come easy to her. She doesn’t test well, and sometimes she lets personal problems distract her from her schoolwork. In middle school, she was considered “one of the smarter students,” but she said she just “went along with the pack” and no one pushed her to do better.

“This school, when you need help, they are always there for you,” she said.

With only 100 seniors, Alliance 16’s staff has the ability to offer that kind of personal support, which is important but not always enough to get a struggling student to—and through—college. Principal Carmen Vazquez said many of her students come to her high school reading four or five years below grade level, so the school keeps a relentless focus on the student’s Lexile scores, a test which measures reading ability.

Mastering college-level material is a formidable challenge for many of her students and others in many LAUSD schools, so she knows her staff can’t ease up on the literacy push even in these waning months of the senior year. Vazquez is also skeptical that an 11th-hour push for course completion—which is what’s happening in many traditional high schools—will give students the skills they need to succeed.

“We have a four-year plan for a reason. You can’t get it together in the senior year because it’s too late at that point,” she said. “Our goal is to support our kids all the way through college.”

So even in Melissa’s physics class, where students are reviewing the concept of momentum, she is getting a mini lesson in literacy and American government. Teacher Maya Bakshi pivots the conversation to the 2016 presidential election, asking the students to describe what this headline means: “Is Ted Cruz losing momentum?” The students scribble down their ideas, and then there is a brief discussion about the Iowa Caucus and the Republican Party’s immigration platform. Then Bakshi flips on a YouTube video of MC Hammer performing “Gaining Momentum” and the class pivots back to science.

The single-minded push to college starts in Alliance middle schools, so the idea of waiting until high school—let alone senior year—to make up for academic gaps is incomprehensible to teachers.

“What I love about working in a school like this is because we’re small we can respond quickly,” said Joan Wicks, a sixth grade humanities teacher at Alliance Skirball Middle School in Watts, a midlife career changer who counts herself as one of Skirball’s veteran teacher after six years teaching there. “Every one of our children deserve a place where they can come and learn.”

Tamajai Dampeer, a Skirball eighth-grader, said he’s come to appreciate the very public attention on literacy and achievement at his school. Students’ Lexile score improvements are posted on hallway bulletin boards, and teachers talk to him about his progress all the time. If students don’t do their homework, they are held responsible, with detentions.

“When I went to Gompers (his neighborhood elementary school), they didn’t really seem to care about our academic efforts,” he said. “When a kid didn’t do their homework, no one paid any attention. Here, I feel like everybody’s watching. I actually have to compete with the other students here.”

Tracy Dell’Angela is managing editor at Education Post and formerly a longtime education journalist at the Chicago Tribune. This article was published in partnership with Education Post.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, President of UTLAUPDATE

* UPDATED

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge issued a temporary restraining order against Alliance College-Ready Public Schools late yesterday, ordering its administration to cease stifling a unionization effort.

The LA teachers union, UTLA, is currently attempting to unionize the teachers at the charter school organization, which is LA Unified’s largest with 27 schools and around 700 teachers who are currently not represented by any union. Alliance has attempted to discourage the effort in ways that both UTLA and the Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) claimed were illegal.

“It’s very rare for the courts to find it necessary to issue a TRO to protect teachers from abusive behavior by charter school managers,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said in a statement. “Alliance employs hard-working, dedicated educators who only want to improve their schools and advocate for their students. Instead of respecting their rights and treating them as professionals and valued employees, they’ve faced an onslaught of unfair and illegal actions. This behavior would be wrong in any workplace but is totally unacceptable in a publicly funded school setting.”

The temporary restraining order request to the court came last week from PERB, which had ruled in favor of UTLA’s complaints and filed a formal complaint in state court in August. A hearing had been set for Nov. 2 before an administrative law judge regarding the complaint. PERB’s arguments for a TRO and injunctive relief were outlined in a letter to a lawyer representing UTLA.

The restraining order issued yesterday by Judge James C. Chalfant placed new rules and restriction on Alliance administrators, including:

• Alliance “must not” ask employees about their “beliefs, views or intentions regarding unionization.”
• Stay 100 feet from a conversation between union representatives and teachers.
• Refrain from efforts to “coerce or threaten to impose reprisals against certified employees.”
• Allow UTLA representatives access to schools sites after-hours.
• Cease efforts to “block or deny UTLA electronic email messages to certified employees work email addresses.”
• Provide every certified employee with a copy of the TRO.

The administration of Alliance has been vocal about opposing the unionization attempt by UTLA but has maintained that its activities are legal and simply an information campaign to educate its teachers. In a statement that echoed past ones, Alliance said it will respect the court’s ruling but that it was essentially based on misinformation provided to PERB and the court by UTLA.

UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl

The California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) will be seeking an injunction in Los Angeles County Superior Court to stop what it says is illegal interference by officials at Alliance College-Ready Public Schools against a unionization effort by some of its teachers.

The LA teachers union, UTLA, is currently attempting to unionize the teachers at the charter school organization, which has 27 schools in the Los Angeles area and employs around 700 teachers who are currently not represented by any union.

Alliance leaders have been vigorously fighting the unionization efforts, and UTLA claimed those attempts went too far and violated state laws. PERB agreed, and in August filed a formal complaint in state court.

“It’s been pretty shocking what is happening at the Alliance schools,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said in a statement. “Alliance has played hardball and used illegal tactics inappropriate for any workplace and totally unacceptable in publicly funded charter schools. We are pleased the labor board acted swiftly and decisively. It was the right thing to do.”

A hearing has been set for Nov. 2 before an administrative law judge regarding the complaint. PERB’s intent to file an injunction was outlined in a letter to a lawyer representing UTLA.

“Evidence reviewed by state authorities shows that Alliance’s managers had interrogated school employees about their pro-union sympathies, unfairly forced a highly-regarded physics teacher out of his job, and routinely conducted unlawful surveillance of educators,” a press release from UTLA said.

Catherine Suitor, a spokesperson for Alliance, said PERB was basing its ruling on misleading and false information from UTLA.

Suitor said UTLA’s effort to get a majority of Alliance teachers to support unionization is “stalling” because they have not garnered enough support, and the interference accusations is “sort of a last ditch legal effort on their part” to keep drawing the process out to buy more time. In a letter to its staff sent after UTLA asked for injunctive relief, Alliance claimed 80 percent of its teachers have expressed no interest in joining UTLA.

The administration of Alliance has all along made no secret of the fact that it opposes its teachers’ joining UTLA but has said its efforts have simply been an information campaign to educate its teachers and parents about UTLA.

“We refute the charges that they have said. We have all throughout this from day one, ever since they announced the campaign, we have sought legal counsel on not only the letter of the law, but the intent of the law,” Suitor said.

Suitor also suggested the PERB board was biased in favor of unions.

“Three of five members are former attorneys or leaders with labor unions, including two who worked with CTA,” Suitor said in an email, referring to the California Teachers Association, to which UTLA is affiliated.

*UPDATED

A bitter war of words between the management of  Alliance College-Ready Public Schools and UTLA, the union trying to organize its teachers, got nastier today.

UTLA accused Alliance management and the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) of “anti-teacher activity” by paying alumni to call parents of students to sway their opinion against union efforts to draw the Alliance teachers into UTLA.

The CCSA confirmed that it is paying alumni to make calls, but claimed to be doing nothing wrong.

UTLA released what it said were “leaked” emails from a CCSA employee, Annie Lee, that included the script the alumni were to follow when they called the parents.

“This is sowing the seeds of distrust among parents and students,” Michael Letton, an Alliance teacher, said in a statement issued by UTLA. “This is an unethical practice. Paying alumni to read a script designed to get parents to sign a petition against their own students’ teachers infuriates me.”

Elana Goldbaum, a teacher at Alliance’s Gertz-Ressler Richard Merkin 6-12 Complex who has been active in the union drive, said, “I don’t want parents to get misinformation. This is 100 percent a campaign to create fear among parents. It’s inappropriate.”

Alliance College-Ready Pubic School operates 26 charter within LA Unified, many of them high performing, and its teachers currently work independently without union representation. A group of teachers at Alliance has been working recently to organize Alliance’s 600-plus teachers to join UTLA.

In a statement, CCSA confirmed it had hired “less than 10” alumni over the age of 18 to “share information with the Alliance community about UTLA’s well documented opposition to charter public schools.” CCSA also said it had nothing to hide and objected to the emails’ being described as “leaked” or “secret.” It did not say how much the alumni were paid.

CCSA said in an email to LA School Report that it acted independently of Alliance on organizing the phone calls. The CCSA statement also said, “We contacted Alliance to ensure that our information was accurate about the Alliance so as to not misrepresent the Alliance.”

A communications representative with Alliance did not respond to a request for comment.

Alliance management has made no secret of its opposition to its teachers joining UTLA. But whether or not Alliance managers have crossed the line in trying to sway the opinion of its teachers and parents is a point of contention, as UTLA last month filed a compliant with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) accusing Alliance of illegally interfering with efforts to unionize teachers.

Alliance management, in turn, has said its efforts have been entirely legal and that it has a right to share its opinion. In response to the PERB complaint, it said it has a right “to educate administrators and teachers as to the impact of unionization.” In essence, Alliance has argued that it is not blocking or interfering with the the vote, but rather seeking to sway the voters.

UTLA says parents began receiving calls from alumni over Memorial Day weekend. The script alumni were given directs them to bring up a few key points in the conversation, including:

•  (Unionization) would end the independence that the Alliance has to make decisions on behalf of kids.
• If UTLA unionized at the Alliance, UTLA would get involved in decisions about how to evaluate teachers and how much learning time kids get, and class sizes.
•  UTLA has been against charter schools and the Alliance for years. They’ve given money to candidates for the LA School Board who voted to close some Alliance Schools.
• UTLA has supported laws that make charter schools – including the Alliance schools – harder to start and operate.

Although it includes some 1,000 charter school teachers in among its members, UTLA has consistently espoused anti-charter rhetoric and was a strong supporter of LA Unified board member Bennett Kayser, who routinely voted against charter schools on applications and renewals. Kayser recently lost his bid for reelection to Ref Rodriguez.

*UPDATED to reflect that a statement and headline attributed to Alliance was from CCSA, and that CCSA said it worked independently on the project

The documents outline a clear strategy by the administration to win the hearts and minds of teachers and parents over the union, but UTLA insists they also support a complaint it took earlier this month to the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). accusing Alliance of illegally interfering with efforts to unionize teachers.

The administration of Alliance has made no secret of the fact that it opposes its teachers’ joining UTLA. Alliance said in a press release yesterday that all of its actions have been legal, it has “nothing to hide,” and “in fact assume that all our documents related to the unionization campaign will end up in outside hands.”

The complaint to PERB came weeks after a group of 67 Alliance teachers announced a plan to mobilize the organization’s 600-plus teachers to join UTLA. Alliance operates 26 LA Unified charter schools, and its teachers currently work independent of any union representation.

An Alliance official confirmed to LA School Report that the document released by UTLA was authentic and said that it was prepared with help from its lawyers to answer questions about how staff should handle the activities at campuses regarding UTLA. It is in a question and answer format, all regarding UTLA’s effort and what Alliance is telling its administrators what they can, and cannot, do about it.

In a press release, UTLA pointed to a few passages it said was proof of wrongdoing.

Those passages include :

The release yesterday was an attempt by Alliance let steam out of UTLA’s scheduled press conference this morning where the documents were released by UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl.

UTLA said the memo demonstrates a “concerted campaign coordinated by Alliance home office to coerce and discourage teachers” from joining UTLA, a question it appears will be up to PERB to decide.

The LA teachers union, UTLA, has filed a complaint with the Public Employment Relations Board, accusing Alliance College-Ready Public Schools of interfering with the union’s right to organize teachers in the 26 Alliance schools.

The complaint was filed last night, UTLA said in a press release that outlined a series of steps that the union says are disrupting efforts to bring the Alliance teachers under the UTLA umbrella. It accuses school administrators of “using coercive tactics and interfering with educators’ right to form a union.”

“Educators formed Alliance Educators United, affiliated with United Teachers Los Angeles, on March 13, 2015, to have a real voice in advocating for both themselves and their students,” the union said. “The teachers, counselors and other professional staff are seeking genuine due process and ‘just cause’ rights, and the right to bargain over conditions of employment.”

The complaint was filed Tuesday night with assertions that Alliance is prohibiting teachers from using their workplaces to meet with organizers and share information about unionizing.

“When teachers announced we were organizing a union, Alliance publicly stated that we, the teachers would be able to decide for ourselves free of coercion,” Elana Goldbaum, a history teacher at Alliance Gertz-Ressler High School, said in the union release. “But since that time they are trying to persuade teachers against unionization.”

Among the accusations cited by the union is Alliance’s use of “funds that could be used for student education to hire high-priced PR consultants, to create an anti-union website.” It further said Alliance is “sending a steady stream of anti-union letters and emails to educators, parents, and alumni. Even students have been exposed to the anti-union campaign through Alliance’s web site.”

Union president Alex Caputo-Pearl told LA School Report, “The educators at Alliance are trying to assert a democratically protected right to organize a union and the Alliance management is interfering and interfering in an illegal way.”

Alliance said in a response today: “We respect the rights of our teachers to organize a union, and we also respect the rights of those teachers who do not want a union – and we repeatedly state that fact. We also recognize the rights of all Alliance staff to share their opinions, facts and experiences about unionization. In fact, we believe it is our responsibility to ensure our teachers have a full set of facts to make an informed decision – not just opinions from UTLA, an organization that for years has been opposed to charter schools and Alliance in particular.”

Efforts to unionize the charter school district were made public in mid-March when about 70 teachers with the newly-formed group, Alliance Educators United, announced their intention to form a union. Unionization requires approval from 50 percent-plus-one of the charter’s roughly 600 teachers.

But UTLA’s effort is driving a wedge between some who favor the union and some who oppose. according to interviews yesterday before the complaint was filed.

“It seems like there are teachers that are in the know, and then we just get the propaganda, and that’s it,” said Kip Morales, who teaches at Alliance Patti and Peter Neuwirth Leadership Academy. “My uncertainty and confusion might tell you a little bit about them trying to unionize us.”

“It has caused a friction, hurt the morale,” said Tina Wyatt, a teacher at Alliance Collins Family High School. “Several of the teachers said they were on board and then realized they didn’t want any part of this.”

Alliance officials called the UTLA effort self-serving, saying working conditions and student performance at the district are already above par.

“The experience we have had with them has been years of antagonism for charter schools,” said Catherine Suitor, communications officer for Alliance. “Their number-one guy [school board member Bennett Kayser] has literally voted not to renew every Alliance school, including some of the top performing ones in LAUSD. We find it disingenuous when after all these years they’ve been trying to undercut everything we do.”

In its statement today, Alliance said, “We’ve heard from a number of teachers that they feel harassed by UTLA’s communications tactics to strong arm them to join a union that they have no interest in being a part of.”

The efforts to unionize will continue despite the administrators’ opposition, Goldbaum said.

“It’s definitely growing,”  she told LA School Report, referring to the campaign. “We continue to have more and more support. It’s definitely one for endurance, I only say that because the response from Alliance has been so anti-union.”

Goldbaum said a union of Alliance teachers would affect Alliance teachers only. While she expressed enthusiasm about her workplace, she said decisions about things like teacher evaluation and classroom technology are too top-down and teachers need more job security.

“We have a disturbing amount of turnover. A good way to alleviate that is to have a union,” she said. “I think there’s a lot of power in being able to contribute to decisions without fear. When you take away the fear of retaliation, it makes people share legitimate and creative ideas.”

She also said every effort has been made to stay transparent and provide teachers any information they want.

“Our top priority is listening to our teachers and looking at the positive potential we’d have as a united organization of teachers,” she said. “I love my school site and I love where I work. I love my administrators. It’s not really about me, it’s about improving the decisions that are made district-wide.”

There is no deadline for a majority of teachers to sign up, but Caputo-Pearl said, “It is time sensitive because the more money the Alliance management pours into anti-union consulting firms and the more time spent creating an intimidating environment is the more time the students are going without the best services their teachers can provide.”

*Adds comments from Alex Caputo-Pearl

Dan Katzir

Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, a charter group in LA Unified, said today Dan Katzir will join the organization in March as CEO and President.

He replaces Alliance’s founding CEO, Judy Burton, a former LA Unified associate superintendent of innovation and instruction, who returned to the district last month to serve as chair of what is now known as the Instructional Technology Initiative, nee the Common Core Technology Project.

“We are thrilled to have Dan Katzir join Alliance’s leadership team,”  Tony Ressler, co-chair of the Alliance board, said in a news release. “He brings a wealth of experience and strategic vision to the position, and he shares the board’s long-standing commitment to improving public education, especially for low-income and minority students.”

Katzir most recently served as strategic advisor to school districts, charter management organizations and various state departments of education. Prior to that, he was the founding Managing Director for the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

“I am excited and eager to join Alliance College-Ready Public Schools,” Katzir said in the release. “I’m honored to follow in the footsteps of Judy Burton, a true educational icon. I intend to build on the Alliance’s first decade of incredible results to reach even greater levels of impact for students in Los Angeles in the coming years.”

Since its founding in 2004, Alliance has grown to serve more than 11,000 students across 26 high schools and middle schools, making it the largest public school charter network in Los Angeles.