Josh Pechthalt

In a wide-ranging State of the Union address Saturday in Los Angeles, Josh Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers, reviewed the union’s latest successes and challenges, including the Vergara v. California lawsuit that’s heading toward conclusion later this week.

Among his over-arching themes was the familiar call for union members to stand together against “the billionaire and anti-union forces” aligned “to make public education a commodity.”

He closes with a call to “fight back,” saying, “The future of our members, our students, our families depend on our winning.”

A full transcription of the speech is here.

Currently, only teachers get to vote for conversion. But the change in the law is winning support not only from the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), but also, according to a press release, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT).

It’s not everyday that those two line up on the same side of things.

AB917, which has been approved by both houses of the legislature and needs one last “concurrence” vote by the Assembly, would require charters to have a majority of all school employees – not just teachers — approve conversion.

“School workers bring a different perspective to the charter school process,” said Hilda Guzman, a Health Care Advocate at The Accelerated School, in a press release sent out by SEIU local 99. “We understand that students need quality services outside the classroom to support their success in the classroom. As an employee, I have knowledge about school operations that a parent or a teacher would not have.”

According to the CCSA, of the 1,063 charter schools in California, about 200 were formed through conversion. As an example, Locke High School, an underperforming school in south Los Angeles, was turned over to Green Dot in 2007 via the signature gathering process.

So why would CFT support it? Perhaps the the union believes AB917 would slow down the charter conversion process because so many more signatures would be required.

Indeed, Eric Premack, the Executive Director for the California Charter Schools Development Center, a non-profit that provides advocacy, training and leadership development for California charter schools, said he thinks the bill will make it “significantly more difficult” for schools to convert to charters.

“I think that classified employee labor groups will use it to block charters,” said Premack.

A spokesman for CFT called the bill “inclusive, involving all school employees, both certificated and classified as potential signatories on a charter petition at the school site where they work.” As a result, the email said, the workers “deserve to have their voices heard when their workplace is being considered for charter status.”

The CCSA said in a press release that the bill “creates a more substantive role for classified employees without adding any new burden on the charter school petitioners.”

The larger teachers union, California Teachers Association, is neutral on the bill.

Previous posts: Charter & District School Alternatives; Don’t Forget The “Teacher” Trigger; Local 99, LAUSD’s “Other” Labor Union

Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) sponsored the teacher evaluation bill.

A proposed bill known as SB 441 that would tighten teacher evaluation rules statewide narrowly failed to pass the Senate Education Committee Wednesday — but it’s not completely dead yet.

After hearing impassioned testimony from parents, teachers, and union representatives, the Committee deadlocked 4-4 over approval of the legislation.

But the Committee also voted to reconsider the bill later in an amended form, leaving the door open for a return to the issue.

The bill’s sponsor, Senator Ron Calderon (D- Montebello), described the measure as “modest” in its scope.

Just before the hearing, his Chief of Staff, Rocky Rushing, told LA School Report that the evaluation bill is Calderon’s “attempt to modify the evaluation process and to provide better feedback for teachers to allow them to become better educators.”

The main change the bill would make is to update current evaluation law, which grades teachers on two grade levels, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Calderon’s bill would create four grade levels, to be decided by school districts.

The bill would also require teachers who have taught more than 10 years to be evaluated at least once every three years. Current law only requires veteran teacher reviews every five years. (Read the bill’s text here.)

During the hearing, a stream of supporters — many of them teachers and parents from the Los Angeles area — spoke before the Committee on Wednesday, urging its members to pass the evaluation bill.

One LA-area teacher told the Committee he supported the bill because he had a more “comprehensive evaluation working at Blockbuster than I do as a public school teacher in California.”

Amy Baker, a LAUSD parent, criticized the state for making “no effort to improve our broken teacher evaluation system” and asked the committee to pass the bill because it was “a modest step in the right direction.”

CTA representative Patricia Rucker admitted that her union is unsatisfied with the current teacher evaluation system, but she insisted that Calderon’s bill “does not fix it.”

Lynne Faulks, representing the CFT and UTLA, said her unions oppose the proposal because it “fails to address central issues, such as developing teacher effectiveness and ensuring measurements are effective and fair.”

Calderon defended his intentions, saying, “Nowhere do I say, in this bill or in my remarks, that I’m putting targets on teachers’ backs… We want to give teachers a tool to deal with changes and become successful.”

The debate continued with both sides arguing their technical points, and committee members seemed torn between both sides.

Eventually they voted the bill down, 4-4, with an agreement to hear the bill later, after it’s amended.

Senators Bob Huff, Mark Wyland, Ben Hueso and Lou Correa voted in support; Bill Monning, Hannah-Beth Jackson, Carol Liu, and Loni Hancock voted against the bill; and Marty Block abstained.

Previous posts: Union Tells Teachers How to Protest Evaluations; Deasy Requests Changes to Teacher Dismissal Bill; Union & District Clarify Positions on Teacher Evaluation

New Analysis Bolsters Case Against Suspension, Researchers Say
The results of a new analysis of out-of-school-suspension data that show staggering rates of the punishment’s use at some schools are even more reason to rethink that common method of disciplining students, researchers said Monday. EdWeek
See also: KPCC, EdSource, Yahoo

LA Unified Off Track to Meet Deadline for College Prep Courses
Los Angeles Unified School District has some work ahead of it to meet its deadline for all students to pass college-preparatory classes in order to graduate. EdSource
See also: LA Daily News

California Federation of Teachers Lobbies Lawmakers
It’s lobby day for the California Federation of Teachers, which means members of the state’s second-biggest teachers union (after the California Teachers Association) are in Sacramento to petition lawmakers. Sac Bee

Shepard Fairey Taps LAUSD Students for Ideas
Fairey is the third high-profile L.A. artist who has signed on to participate in the “Arts Matter” public awareness campaign by the L.A. Fund for Public Education, which plasters artwork on city buses and billboards to help get their message out. LA Times

Targeting Classroom Predators: The Encore
Last June saw one of the rawest displays ever of the power wielded by the half-million-plus members of the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers. SD Union Tribune

LAO Seeks Conditions on Brown’s Surplus Property-Charter Proposal
The governor’s plan to provide charter schools with more access to surplus property appears to have support within the Legislature – but lawmakers also seem interested in conditioning the proposal. SI&A Cabinet Report

Reform Falls Short
Lest there was any doubt, it is now clear that the pension bill Gov. Jerry Brown signed last September was not reform, it was merely a tweak. San Jose Mercury Editorial

Long Beach Has Jumpstart on Transitional Kindergarten
When California school districts were required by state law to start a new early kindergarten class for some 4-year-olds for the first time this year, Long Beach Unified had an easier task than most: to simply expand the existing “preppy kindergarten” program it started five years ago. EdSource

Students Matters‘ David Welch, third from the left, surrounded by his legal team

Last week, the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit Vergara v. State of California, which seeks to overturn five education laws in California (seniority-based layoffs, teacher tenure, and three dismissal statutes that make firing a teacher so onerous).

“This lawsuit is baseless and meritless, and hurts student learning,” said CTA President Dean E. Vogel in a blog post. “It is the latest attempt by corporate special interests and billionaires to push their education agenda on California public schools.”

However, an attorney for the eight plaintiffs Marcellus McRae, told LA School Report that if the judge does allow the two unions to intervene it could delay the start of the trial.

“We’re focused on keeping this trial date,” he said. “We don’t want it derailed.”

The suit is being bankrolled by Students Matter, which was founded by tech entrepreneur David Welch. They’ve hired a team of lawyers that includes the two Teds — Boutrous and Olson — who recently argued against the constitutionality of Proposition 8 in front of the United States Supreme Court.

If the judge agrees with the motion, the two state teachers unions will join the State of California and the LA Unified School District as defendants in the suit, currently slated for trial in January 2014.

Plaintiff’s lawyer McRae said that he worries more defendants could complicate and even widen the scope of the trial.

“What happens, invariably, is that the more players you have, the more voices you have, the more issues you have,” said McRae. “Each side tries to say what the case is actually about.”

Previous posts: Landmark Teacher Dismissal Case Gets a Court Date, Landmark Suit Inches Forward, School Reform In The Courts