Fast-forward 11 months, and the board members, again, voted on an expensive contract that locks in future liabilities that the district can’t afford. The approved agreement between the district and the teachers union that ended the recent six-day strike adds to the payroll new teachers, nurses, counselors, and community schools coordinators, all of whom will be eligible to qualify for the lifetime benefits approved last February.

An ominous letter from the Los Angeles Country Office of Education delivered just prior to Tuesday’s board meeting confirmed what nearly everyone knew already: the agreement put LAUSD at risk for state takeover without cuts elsewhere even though the district is already slashing funds earmarked for low-income, English learner and foster youth to pay for new salaries. Still, the agreement passed unanimously with nearly no discussion.

The district’s board members (current and past) have made head-scratchingly bad decisions forever, it seems. Somehow, years of declining enrollment have corresponded with the creation of more district schools, an increase in administrative positions, and a loss of teaching positions. There is no evidence the district has a coherent plan for administrative staffing at the central office or the school sites. For the third year in a row, the district has counted among its “cost savings” the ability to save $35 million by getting the state to not impose fines for having too many administrators. Every neutral fiscal observer has expressed serious doubts about the district’s ability to meet its current financial obligations without significant future cuts or revenue increases.

Into this mess steps Alex Caputo-Pearl, who ran for union president on a strike platform and openly admitted that his plan was to foster a “state crisis” to protect his members’ benefits. Mission accomplished.

Caputo-Pearl led a strike that cost his members millions in lost wages, cost the district approximately $150 million in lost revenue it can’t afford, and committed the district to obligations it has no concrete plans to pay for. Hundreds of thousands of students lost six days of learning time, and families were faced with the choice of sending their kids to school that was little more than daycare or miss work. A district in desperate need of Superman got Captain Chaos instead.

Caputo-Pearl hammered away at the district with the lie that it was actually in fine financial shape and could afford to pay more to current members and hire a lot more right now. He sold his members on the idea that they were entitled to a bigger raise than the other unions, and that he was going to get it for them.

At the end of the day, the strike Caputo-Pearl led yielded many teachers nothing more than the pay raises they had been offered before — the same 6 percent the other unions received — since the additional promise of incremental class size reduction applies only to certain subjects and schools and leaves out special education classes altogether. The union’s Facebook page was inundated with unhappy union members who thought they were spending a week on strike to fundamentally change the district, only to see modest differences when the details of the deal began to emerge. Supporters of the settlement openly questioned why a strike was necessary for the modest achievements it brought. For a huge district drowning in red ink, however, even small increases in short- and long-term obligations can bring about dire consequences.

Yet Caputo-Pearl, who most speculate has his eyes set on a state or national union leadership position, will be the ultimate winner in this whole sad affair. What better political platform to run on than to be the union leader who bullied a broke district into hiring more union members in a post-Janus world? The district is in desperate need of more funds. If it gets more money than needed to meet its current financial obligations, then Caputo-Pearl succeeded in locking that surplus into union priorities. It was a stunning display of bare-knuckled political power.

It will also likely mark another retreat for the district board from its own promises to “do better” to improve the district’s financial condition. The euphoria and credit-taking for this deal will soon meet the reality of the district’s still-tenuous financial position. If it gets worse, there is real risk the district could lose the ability to govern itself. Who will want to take credit then?

Chris Bertelli is the founder of Bertelli Public Affairs, an education public affairs consultancy based in Sacramento. He specializes in working with clients focused on improving educational equity in California public schools.

Having private and secret meetings to discuss how tax dollars will be spent is not acceptable. Too much is at risk when our students are counting on sound financial decisions that will ensure they get the quality public education they need and deserve. #ab1478 https://t.co/NAhXAVpmkj

— Seth Bramble (@CATeachersGR) January 17, 2018

The public’s business should be transacted in public. Public agencies must take their actions openly and their deliberations must be conducted openly. #ab1478 is an easy decision.

— Seth Bramble (@CATeachersGR) January 17, 2018

The hubris of these tweets is fascinating given the fact that the union is far and away California’s biggest beneficiary of secret, backroom deals to spend public money.

Based on historical spending patterns and Gov. Jerry Brown’s most recent budget proposal, California is poised to spend approximately $40 billion next year on teacher salaries and benefits. To put that number in education context, the state will likely spend less than $3 billion on books and supplies for the entire K-12 public school system.

That $40 billion figure is more than 2½ times as large as the entire state higher education budget. It is more than the state spends on the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, transportation, natural resources, environmental protection, and prisons. Combined. It is more than is spent on the combined total of every state health and human services program. If teacher salaries and benefits had their own budget line item, it would be the largest single item in the entire state budget.

Here’s the kicker: How that $40 billion in public dollars is spent is negotiated out of public view.

In over 1,000 school districts across the state, negotiations on spending this money take place behind closed doors. There is no transparency in how these deals are done. No public scrutiny or debate. No opportunity for the community or parents of children in the schools to impact the process. An amount of money equivalent to 30 percent of the entire budget for the state of California is divvied up by a relative handful of people out of sight and without accountability to parents and the communities that are affected.

The union’s ability to secretly self-deal doesn’t stop in the back rooms of local school districts. In 2011, as California was trying to drag itself out of the Great Recession, the state budget deal was being finalized in a room with only four people in it: Brown, the Assembly speaker, the leader of the state Senate, and the union’s chief lobbyist.

The ability of the union to preserve this funding is critical to its status as the most potent political force in the state. How? Because part of the money used to pay teachers is kicked back to the union to advance its political agenda. This year alone, it has $195 million of those public dollars to work its political will, putting the union at the very top of the education plutocracy.

These secret deals are having devastating impacts on school districts. Not only do these contracts provide for salaries and benefits of current employees, they obligate districts to unending years of payments to people long after they stop working.

School district health benefits promised to retirees are underfunded by $24 billion. The state’s teacher retirement system is underfunded by a whopping $97 billion. The public is on the hook for paying enormous debts for terrible deals, negotiated in secret by a select few. All the while, making sure hundreds of millions in public funds are siphoned off to the union, which demands more.

It’s not hyperbole to say these obligations are bankrupting our schools. After several years of economic growth and two voter-approved tax increases, at least one school finance expert expects two-thirds of school districts to engage in deficit spending within three years. Los Angeles Unified School District projects that benefit obligations and pension costs will consume more than half of the district’s budget by the 2031–32 school year. Let that sink in. Less than half the funds LAUSD receives will actually go toward educating its students.

Given the magnitude of these decisions and the billions of dollars in public funds involved, these negotiations demand greater public scrutiny and accountability. Several states have passed laws either allowing or mandating that these negotiations take place in public.

California should join these states in demanding that these deals be negotiated in the light of day.

Chris Bertelli is the founder of Bertelli Public Affairs, an education public affairs consultancy based in Sacramento. He specializes in working with clients focused on improving educational equity in California public schools.

This article was published in partnership with the74million.org.

Kelly Gonez and Nick Melvoin

On November 7, Los Angeles Unified’s two newest board members will face early tests of their commitment to changing the district’s culture as it relates to how it views and relates to the charter schools it authorizes.

The LAUSD staff is recommending the board vote to close highly successful, existing charter schools serving thousands of high-need students and deny charter school petitions for new school despite the quality of education they provide. That information alone should be enough to demonstrate how far down the wrong path LAUSD has traveled when it is willing to close successful schools because of bureaucratic disagreements.

For years, the board has lamented the existence of charter schools and treated them as unwanted competition, placing onerous conditions on approval and roadblocks to sustainability, like the year-to-year facilities agreements that make life hard for schools and their parents and are part of the current disagreement. The previous board went so far as to spend time and money trying to figure out how to keep kids in district schools, including launching a unified enrollment system this year that excludes charters. People not inured to the dysfunction that often characterizes the district-charter relationship find this attitude ridiculous. These are all public schools within the district that exist to meet the needs of students. Parents don’t want arcane governance debates that get in the way of focusing on kids.

Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez were elected, in part, to change the culture around the district-charter relationship. Melvoin said last week that he would like the district-charter relationship to transition from a “compliance-driven mindset to one of creativity and collaboration.” In order for that to take place, he and Gonez are going to have to set the tone. If they follow the staff recommendation and vote to close successful schools for the most “compliance-driven” reasons possible, it would only exacerbate the current dysfunction and send a signal to parents that educating children is still subordinate to bureaucratic mandates.

Melvoin and Gonez need to demonstrate they are going to place the well-being of students at the top of the priority list when it comes to which schools open and which schools close. By bucking the staff recommendation, they can set a new tone of collaboration and unity by demonstrating an end to the old “us versus them” paradigm and embracing all successful schools in LAUSD, not just the ones run by the district.

Collaboration, creativity, and partnership among all of LAUSD’s public schools can only occur if there is bold leadership from the board demanding it. There are too many old wounds scarred over by years of battles between charters and district bureaucracy to expect change without it. Voting to keep schools open because they do a good job educating kids is a great first step in signaling that anyone who is in education for the benefit of kids is welcome on the same team.

Chris Bertelli is the founder of Bertelli Public Affairs, an education public affairs consultancy based in Sacramento. He specializes in working with clients focused on improving educational equity in California public schools.