David Garcia, one of nine men challenging the incumbent, Warren Fletcher, has been dismissed as an LA Unified teacher, putting his candidacy in limbo.

Garcia confirmed his firing in an email circulated on Friday and blamed it on his challenging the district on an issue involving other candidates’ being able to campaign during school hours. A district official in the human resources division confirmed the dismissal.

But whether that means Garcia must withdraw as a candidate remains uncertain.

Mike Dreebin, co-chair of the UTLA Election Committee, said in an email that Garcia was an eligible candidate as of the deadline to submit nomination forms and the committee has no confirmation yet that Garcia was fired.

No immediate action would be taken, he explained, because Garcia still has several options, including the right to file a grievance with UTLA and seek legal action against the district.

Dreebin said if Garcia makes it into a runoff for president, “the matter will be dealt with then.”

“Ultimately,” he wrote, “it will be up to the UTLA Board of Directors to determine what to do if a candidate wins, but has been fired and is no longer an employee of the District. The Board of Directors formally ‘seats’ new Officers, and Board of Director representatives, after the results of the elections are presented to them by the UTLA Elections Committee.”

The district did not immediately respond to an effort to learn why Garcia, a substitute, was fired.

Previous post: Deasy says principal who ok’d campaign leave was disciplined

Superintendent John Deasy

LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy said a principal who gave Alex Caputo-Pearl permission to take unpaid time off to campaign for president of the teachers union, UTLA, has been disciplined.

The action came in response to accusations that the leave, a violation of district’s contract with UTLA, provided Caputo-Pearl an unfair advantage over other candidates by allowing him to campaign during school hours.

Caputo-Pearl is one of nine men challenging Warren Fletcher, who is seeking a second three-year term.

“First neither I nor any administrator at Beaudry approved any leave for Mr. Caputo-Pearl or any other UTLA candidate. I believe his principal may have done such,” Deasy said in an email. “A letter was sent to Mr. Fletcher notifying him of the situation. And the principal has been disciplined. The letter further clarified that our interpretation (long standing) of the contract was that such a practice is prohibited.”

While Caputo-Pearl defended his campaigning, pointing to Fletcher’s ability to do the same as the incumbent, the district finally ordered him to stop.

Yet as tomorrow’s deadline approaches for UTLA members to mail in their ballots for elective positions this year, accusations of cheating persist.

Several of the candidates for president have suggested that Deasy granted Caputo-Pearl permission as a way to influence the election — never mind that Caputo-Pearl has been as critical as any candidate of Deasy and his policies.

No candidate has focused more attention on the issue than David Garcia, whose campaign is aimed at rooting out “corruption” by ousting Fletcher and all who serve with him.

Garcia has been particularly suspicious of an October dinner Deasy had with six union area chairs who are also Union Power members, suggesting that conversations that night led a wink from the district, that Union Power members would be allowed to campaign during school hours. With permission or not, some did while other candidates who sought time off to campaign were denied.

Fletcher has filed an unfair practice complaint against the district with the state Public Employment Relations Board, charging that the district bypassed official union representatives by engaging in discussions with other union members.

Garcia, in a March 9 email to the UTLA election committee and 60 other recipients, including the New Yorker, Mother Jones, the Washington Post and People magazine, wrote in the subject line: “RAMPANT CHEATING IN L.A. TEACHER’S UNION, CITY WIDE ELECTIONS”

Here’s what he said, in part:

“The union power slate has been visiting campuses since September of last year, ok? These same individuals had a dinner ‘meeting’ with the Superintendent, although what they talked about, no one knows for certain…. While its (sic) purely speculation on my part, its (sic) possible that the Superintendent met with these people to voice his dissatisfaction in Warren Fletcher ——and to encourage these people to run for office…still with me?

“Union Power has several candidates who are chapter chairs and who are also running for UTLA leadership positions…These same people, who are running for Union Power positions AND in positions of authority within the union were also the same individuals who allowed Alex Pearl to ‘visit’ their school sites, ok?”

In his email, Deasy wrote: “Wow. Not even sure how one constructs such a narrative.”

Deasy went on to write that the dinner included “several area chairs” but not Caputo-Pearl. He said the issue of campaigning “never came up,” and the conversation “dealt with local issues like parent trigger and some very specific valley school climate issues.”

He did not name the principal who was disciplined.

In a March 6 email, to the UTLA election committee and its members, Garcia repeated his accusation of the district “ ‘unfairly influencing a UTLA election’ by allowing certain candidates to miss work and prohibiting others from doing the same.”

He further suggests in the same email that the district gave the Union Power members an unfair advantage by paying the substitutes who took over for them while they were campaigning.

The district did not respond to questions about another of Garcia’s suspicions, that if substitutes were called in while candidates were out campaigning, the district was making a “campaign contribution” to Union Power by paying for the substitutes.

As eager as he has been raising the issues at candidate forums and in emails, Garcia did not respond to a series of questions from LA School Report, seeking elaboration on his accusations.

Previous Posts: LA Unified teachers union race gets national attention; Misunderstood election rules cause friction among UTLA candidates; At a UTLA candidate forum, issues break out within the mudslinging.

David Garcia (left), Alex Caputo-Pearl
Candidates for President of UTLA

Tensions deepened last night among the candidates running for the top job at United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) as one of them came close to a physical confrontation with another after the event ended.

Hosted by the teacher advocacy group, Educators4Excellence, at City Hall in Boyle Heights, the event played before a crowd of about 60 teachers, activists, students and community members dining on Subway sandwiches.

E4E members Bianca Sanchez and Jeff Austin moderated four questions to the 10 candidates — all male — running to lead the second largest union in the nation.

Friction was most evident between David Garcia, a substitute teacher, and Alex Caputo-Pearl, who is running at the top of a slate called “Union Power,” over Caputo-Pearl’s recent campaign appearances at LA Unified schools. Garcia angrily accused Caputo-Pearl of violating union election rules and misusing his ties to LAUSD. After the forum, the two nearly got into an altercation, as Garcia swatted at Caputo-Pearl before being restrained.

Other candidates, like Saul Lankster, agreed with Garcia’s accusations, saying that the school district is “giving Caputo-Pearl all the answers to the test since he has had unfettered access to all schools since September.”

The district has said Caputo-Pearl did not file proper paperwork for the unpaid leave, but he has not been disciplined.

“We have to accept fact that this is a very specialized election and the district has made its vote,” Lankster continued as a few crowd members clapped and hooted.

Such issues are why E4E hosted the forum, as the previous debates have often spiraled off topic and were rooted in rhetoric and personal attacks, according to E4E Executive Director Ama Nyamekye.

“There is too much at stake here in LAUSD and UTLA not to ask our candidates to squarely tackle tough policy issues,” she said. “We need to refocus the debate in this election.”

The moderators asked questions that sometimes elicited concrete responses, though a handful of candidates continued to push certain issues no matter what the question.

The very first questions of the evening — what inspired a candidate to run and what first three priorities would be tackled as president — were first addressed by Garcia, who immediately launched into accusing LAUSD of giving Caputo-Pearl preferential treatment by allowing him to take unpaid leave and hire substitutes to visit schools and campaign.

“There is a lot of favoritism going on in this election,” Garcia said. “It’s a corrupt circus.”

Lankster reminded the crowd that closing teacher jails was his top priority.

“It’s more important to me than anything in this race,” he said.

Marcus Ortegas II, a teacher in a “teacher jail,” revised a familiar theme, vowing to change UTLA’s color from red to pink to promote a new, more encompassing leadership.

Kevin Mottus stuck to his platform that Wifi and digital classrooms are seriously endangering students and teachers, citing six teachers who reportedly all died from cancer at one school.

Bill Gaffney said he favors a 20 percent raise for teachers.

The forum also aimed to address hot issues facing teachers that the union and district have clashed about in the past, such as differentiated compensation.

No candidate gave a simple “yes” or “no” answer on how to reward teachers, except Innocent Osunwa, a new union member, who flatly vetoed the idea and said the policy “forces favoritism and encourages discrimination.”

The other nine candidates said they would only support paying certain teachers more money if those teachers put in “extra work, had earned degrees and years of experience,” according to Caputo-Pearl.

Warren Fletcher, the incumbent, reminded the group that this has been in place for a year, and it is meant to “reward experience.” However, Fletcher criticized Superintendent John Deasy for transforming it into a “bonus for test scores to leverage teachers.”

Surprisingly, all 10 candidates basically agreed on the next question—that Gov. Jerry Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula money should be spent at the school level.

The moderators ended the forum by asking candidates if they believe the union has an obligation to fix the tense and fractured relationship with Deasy and other district leaders.

Fletcher said the district has been vying to “mechanize teaching for years,” and that its senior leadership has a history of intentionally marginalizing teachers.

“We know that LAUSD bureaucracy operates counter to instructional logic,” he said.

For Osunwa and Greg Solkovits, the answer was blaming the media.

“Big media has an anti-union bent and that will never change,” said Solkovits.

Osunwa added that the media discriminate against teachers.

Mottus said he would introduce weekly meetings with the superintendent, adding that Fletcher lost the relationship with the school district with his vote of no confidence in Deasy months ago. He then paused, and returned to condemning Wifi in classrooms.

The two-hour forum ended much as it began, with Caputo-Pearl defending his campaign actions and his union team, and Garcia heatedly interjecting and calling conspiracy.

“The knives are out,” Caputo-Pearl said.

Coming our way?

Presidential candidates in the race to lead the United Teachers of Los Angeles faced tough questions and a rowdy audience last night, in the second forum of the campaign season.

It was the first time all 10 candidates — Alex Caputo-Pearl, the incumbent Warren Fletcher, Bill Gaffney, David Garcia, Saul Lankster, Kevin Mottus, Marcos Ortega II, Innocent Osunwa, Leonard Segal and Gregg Solkovitz — have participated in such an event, drawing a modest audience of about 45 people at Monroe High School in the Valley.

Unlike the forum last month, during which the candidates spent most of their time discussing disfunction within the union, this meeting was all about the big issues: (finally) negotiating a salary increase and improving UTLA’s relationships with LA Unified administration and the school board

On the question of a pay raise, nearly all candidates agreed, a strike may be necessary.

“We need to organize our schools and give the district our demands but if they’re not receptive, we go on strike,” Solkovitz said. “We should have been doing this since March.”

Segal agreed but warned that a strike with the wrong person at the helm could potentially bankrupt the union. “We could lose up to a million dollars a day.”

Caputo-Pearl argued the union needs to launch an “escalating action to give members confidence as [UTLA] builds up to a credible threat of a strike.”

Lankster, however, opposed the idea of yanking teachers out of the classroom and into a picket line.

“No, we will not go on strike,” he told the audience. “We don’t sell out our membership.” He said, only UTLA leadership should be asked to make that level of sacrifice, not average teachers who are living hand to mouth.

Lankster also said a 17 percent raise — which is what the current leadership is demanding — is “not reasonable.” A more reasonable goal he said, would be to aim for an 8 to 10 percent increase.

The candidates were split on how best to improve UTLA’s relationship with the school board. Lankster, Caputo-Pearl, Garcia, and Mottus agreed that a show of strength is the best avenue.

The only way to make the district sit up and listen is when “we unite with the other unions of LA Unified, and organize parents and community groups,” Fletcher said.

But Gaffney said he favors a more conciliatory approach and suggested “interest-based bargaining,” which requires both sides to acknowledge they have something to gain from a relationship.

“It has gotten better deals for teachers in Santa Monica and Long Beach,” he said, before adding, “We can’t always butt heads and we need to start building trust.”

The next forum is on Thursday at UTLA headquarters from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Previous posts: In race to run powerful teachers union: ideology up for grabs; Candidates for the teachers union presidency ganged up on Fletcher.

Bill Gaffney, one of ten candidates for president of UTLA

The Los Angeles teachers union election process is long – from February to July – and a lot like a reality show, with multiple voting rounds to knock out candidates/contestants, until finally, there’s only one person left standing.

That’s especially true in the race for UTLA president, which has 10 men competing for the chance to lead about 40,000 teachers, counselors, nurses, and other health and human services professionals.

Eight of them faced each other for the first time yesterday, in the first forum of the campaign season. It was held at Thomas Starr King Middle School in Silver Lake, organized by the school’s chapter chair for members of the North Area. Fewer than 40 people attended, and that included candidates for other offices.

Over the course of an hour incumbent Warren Fletcher, Gregg Solkovits, Alex Caputo-Pearl, David Garcia, Bill Gaffney, Saul Lankster, Marcos Ortega II and Kevin Mottus answered questions touching on the union’s successes and failures over the last three years under Fletcher; they addressed the causes of the achievement gap and how to close it; and the opportunities and challenges in LA Unified.

Without wasting any time they all agreed — even Fletcher — the current state of the union is fractured and plagued with in-fighting.

“One of the great challenges we face is disunity,” he admitted to the audience, which, ironically all appeared to be united on this issue.

And, although Fletcher said “discourse is healthy” he cautioned members against becoming entrenched in their differences at the risk of losing recent gains made for the union, such as the passage of Prop. 30. Referring to the extra infusion of cash to the district from the tax initiative, he said, “we need to make sure we don’t fritter it away by being at each others throats.”

All the other candidates blamed Fletcher for the lack of cohesion and clear messaging.

Gaffney, a 28-year teacher, said Fletcher has been an ineffective collaborator and union officers have failed to lead or devise a strategic plan.

“We’re just putting out fires,” he said, throwing his hands in the air.

“We haven’t been able to put ourselves at the table with power,” Caputo-Pearl argued. Instead, “we privately negotiate with school board members and that doesn’t work.”

To strengthen UTLA’s leverage, Caputo-Pearl said he would develop a coalition branch, a communications department, and also cultivate team of researchers and experts “to frame the debate” on big issues like the Common Core.

Solkovits also argued UTLA’s governing structures and constitution are outdated. “The constitution was written in 1969 . . . and it sets up a system where there are a lot of chiefs without much input from average members,” he said in an interview before the event. “I would get rid of it, rewrite it, and make it easier to pass motions.”

But as much as the non-Fletcher candidates blamed the current leadership, the real villain of the night was not in the room: Superintendent John Deasy.

Garcia came out swinging, calling Deasy “Evil Von Sleazy.” He proceeded to punctuate each response by tossing the microphone on the lectern until he was asked to be more respectful of school property.

Lankster accused Deasy of being a “corporatee” and in league with corporate interests.

On a similar note, Fletcher received a smattering of applause when he said, “Deasy was sent to this town to dismantle UTLA” and that the superintendent views LA Unified as a “drill and kill district” for charter organizations hoping to privatize public education.

Mottus suggested Deasy is deliberately ignoring scientific evidence that the district’s wi-fi infrastructure is jeopardizing the health of students and teachers.

Ortega, who says he’s been “trapped in teacher jail” since October, said Deasy’s mission to rid the district of bad teachers has caused irreparable collateral damage.

“Deasy cast a big net and it’s catching sharks and barracudas but it’s also catching guppies and angelfish,” he said.

The low turn out was especially poignant in light of the stream of comments about teacher disenfranchisement.

Throughout the question and answer session, only Fletcher made a brief mention of cuts to the district’s Adult Education programs. That was disappointing to Veronica Toleda, a family literacy programming coordinator at 15th Street Elementary School, who supports Mottus.

“That’s the reason I came,” she said. “I think the people in charge now only focus on K-12 teachers. They forget that adult education teachers are in the union too, and they don’t support us.”

Other topics that received very little attention: teacher evaluations, the Common Core, standardized testing, and the district’s billion dollar iPad program.

Wil Page, the school chapter chair who organized the event and moderated the Q&A session, said that was due to time constraints.

“This is a really long election cycle and I’m sure we’ll get to all of those questions in the time to come,” he said. “This was more like an elimination round. I don’t know who I’m voting for yet, but I know who I’m not voting for after tonight.”

Previous Posts:

UTLA President Warren Fletcher

If Warren Fletcher is reelected president of the LA Unified teachers union, UTLA, it won’t be easy.

At yesterday’s filing deadline, the union announced that eight others – all men — are challenging him for a three-year term that begins next year.

The size of the field, which includes one current UTLA officer, Secondary Vice President Greg Solkovits, and one who also ran for president in 2011, Leonard Segal, suggests an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Fletcher’s policies, leadership style or both.

The other candidates are David R. Garcia, Alex Caputo-Pearl, Kevin Mottus, Saul Lankster, Marcos Ortega and Bill Gaffney. Fletcher defeated seven other candidates and prevailed in a runoff when he won in 2011, succeeding A.J. Duffy.

“The upcoming UTLA election is about the fundamental direction of the union,” said Mike Stryer, a former union chapter chairman and now a Teach Plus vice president. “Teachers are essentially being asked whether the union should be driven primarily by bread and butter issues, broader social justice issues, or professionalization of teaching.”

The elections of president, six other executive officer positions and the UTLA Board of Directors will be conducted during the first quarter of 2014. All candidates run as individuals, and any who surpasses 50 percent of the vote is the winner. Short of that, the top two finishers contend in a runoff.

With an expected turnout of no more than a quarter of the union membership, it’s difficult to handicap the race for president. But Caputo-Pearl and Solkovits are regarded by many as the strongest among the Fletcher challengers.

Caputo-Pearl is running at the top of a slate – “Union Power” – that includes three current officers, an indication of current fractured leadership. Caputo-Pearl advocates for a broader approach of unionism than Fletcher, with a focus on socio-economic, race, equality and class issues. Fletcher has spent much of his time pushing for such basics as higher salaries and lower class size.

Solkovits, a UTLA officer for six years, says the union needs to be more open to ideas from membership. “There are a lot of younger teachers, people with divergent points of view,” he told LA School Report. “We need to listen to them.”

He also says the union has become too divisive for its own good.

Only the position Solkovits is vacating is an open seat, and all executive positions are being contested. NEA Vice President Mary Jan Roberts has two challengers; AFT Vice President Betty Forrester, three; Elementary Vice Juan Ramirez, four; Treasurer Arlene Inouye, five; and Secretary David Lyell, one.

Forrester, Ramirez and Inouye are running on the Caputo-Pearl slate.

The list of all candidates is here.

Previous Posts:  UTLA President Warren Fletcher, saying John Deasy isn’t a savior; Teachers Union Presidents says a Strike could help win pay raises; Caputo-Pearl Kicks Off Money Drive for Union Presidency

Kevin Mottus

With the filing deadline tomorrow, a new candidate has emerged to challenge Warren Fletcher as president of UTLA.

Kevin Mottus, who frequently appears at LA Unified school board meetings to warn of adverse health effects of wireless digital devices, is the latest among three challengers to file for running, according to the union’s most recent list of candidates.

The others are David R. Garcia and Alex Caputo-Pearl.

Mottus has worked as a psychiatric social worker at the School Mental Health Department of LA Unified, focusing on students with behavioral problems. He is also a registered coach for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and helps children and adults with learning disabilities and dyslexia.

He was recently profiled in the USC newspaper, Neon Tommy.

UTLA elections for president, six other executive officer positions and the UTLA Board of Directors will be conducted during the first quarter of 2014.

Previous Posts: Caputo–Pearl Kicks Off Money Drive for Union Presidency; Another Candidate Emerges to Challenge for UTLA Presidency.

Caputo-Pearl, left, phone-banking for Steve Zimmer in March

The first step of running for office is raising money, and the UTLA Presidential election is no exception. In an email to would-be supporters this week, candidate Alex Caputo-Pearl set a fundraising goal of $100,000 by the end of the year for his slate of seven candidates, dubbed “Union Power.”

“The Union Power slate has the kind of broad-based support that gives us a real opportunity to win this election,” he said in the email. “It is, however, going to take major funding to do it.”

The email was sharply critical of the current wave of “school reform” thinking, or what Caputo-Pearl calls the “run schools like businesses” approach, “with test scores being viewed as the bottom line.” The email makes no mention of his chief rival and incumbent, Warren Fletcher, viewed by many as the slight favorite to be re-elected for a second three-year term.

Outsider candidate David Garcia said in a recent interview that he will not raise or spend any money. He contends that spending $100,000 has become typical in recent UTLA elections, and that, “for last five cycles, the slate that has spent the most amount of money has won.”

Anyone can contribute to a candidate for UTLA office, although only UTLA members vote. The elections are set to take place in February.

Previous posts: Another Candidate Emerges to Challenge for UTLA Presidency; UTLA Factions Lining Up to Oust Fletcher as President; ‘Political Season’ Starting with UTLA Leadership Conference; Union President Likely Faces 2014 Challengers; Union President Volunteers for Pay Cut

David Garcia

The election campaign for president of the teachers union, UTLA, has expanded with a third candidate entering the race, joining the incumbent, Warren Fletcher, and a previously-announced challenger, Alex Caputo-Pearl, a member of the Progressive Educators for Action caucus within the union.

The new candidate, David Garcia, is a former Navy corpsman and veteran of the first Gulf War who was a high school art teacher until he was laid off in 2010 because of budget cuts.

Now a substitute teacher, Garcia has begun sending emailing flyers with a 14-point campaign plank, which includes promises to lower union dues, to make all officer and board meetings open to the public and to prohibit consecutive terms for UTLA officers.

He’s also pledging to do the job for only $10 an hour, which calculates to about $18,200 a year, about a fifth of Fletcher’s annual salary.

As a frequent speaker at school board meetings, wearing black wraparound sunglasses, Garcia has been deeply critical of LA Unified Superintendent John Deasy. And now he’s taking shots at his campaign opponents.

“Everyone knows that LAUSD is wanting to privatize the school district,” Garcia told LA School Report. “That’s fine, it’s phenomenon that’s going nationwide. Everyone wants to vilify LAUSD, but it takes two to tango. The union hasn’t been doing a good job defending our teachers.”

As for Fletcher, the incumbent: “I think that he’s incompetent,” Garcia said. “He doesn’t return your calls, he doesn’t return your emails. He’s evasive. A real leader would try to bring in the community into the forum. That’s something that Warren Fletcher has avoided at all costs.”

As a parent of four children in the school district, Garcia says he supports what he calls “legitimate reform.” Having taught for years in South LA, he says the district needs to focus more on security for many schools, and he favors randomly searching students for weapons and contraband. He also thinks all teachers should be subject to random drug testing, much like army personnel.

“That would raise the consciousness of the public, convince people that these guys are professionals,” he said.

Unsurprisingly, he’s adamantly opposed to the kinds of reforms put forward by Deasy, such as using test scores as part of teacher evaluations and switching the curriculum to the new Common Core standards.

“No Child Left Behind was a failure, Common Core will no doubt be a failure,” he said. “It just keeps going and going.”

Garcia remains a decided underdog in the election, which will be held in February. Both Fletcher and Caputo-Pearl have bases of support and are expected to raise and spend tens of thousands of dollars. Garcia calls this practice “buying yourself a position of power in the union.”

Money notwithstanding, Garcia does claim to have a secret weapon – an endorsement from renown linguistics professor and liberal activist Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky did not respond to a message seeking confirmation of his endorsement.

But Garcia provided an email from Chomsky, who wrote after reading Garcia’s 14-point plank: “I’m always somewhat reluctant to endorse anyone when I don’t have first-hand knowledge of the circumstances.  But this seems a clear enough case so that I’ll overcome the hesitations. Glad to be listed as an endorser.”

Previous posts: UTLA Factions Lining Up to Oust Fletcher as President; ‘Political Season’ Starting with UTLA Leadership Conference; Union President Likely Faces 2014 Challengers; Union President Volunteers for Pay Cut