Yesterday, we saw with strong turnouts at We are One rallies across the state, that Californians don't take kindly to the anti-worker tone emanating from some of the other statehouses. But now we have numbers:
In the aftermath of major demonstrations by labor unions on Monday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death and to bring attention to working families, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) today released new polling results showing that 56% of California voters have a favorable view of public employees and 61% support their right to bargain together. With public sector workers under assault and major battles over union rights in Wisconsin, California voters also sided with the Wisconsin public employees (56%) over its governor (37%). (Tulchin Research/CFT)
The poll asked 800 Californians a variety of questions on public workers, and they basically all turned up the same answer: Californians understand that public workers have a tough job, and that they should be supported.
I had the opportunity to speak this morning with three California teachers about the budget cuts they've faced. We also discussed the high stakes of the November election and Proposition 24. All three of the teachers to whom I spoke, Mary Rose Ortego, Sergio Martinez and Tyrone Cabell, are working actively to try and restore the terrible budget cuts in our schools.
Mary Rose Ortega, who teaches third grade, summed up the state of affairs. "30,000 teachers have been laid off in the last 3 years", she said. With the budget the way it is, she told me, we can expect thousands more pink slips soon.
The numbers became even more shocking when we discussed the effects on individual classrooms. I learned that class sizes have gone up to 40 in most elementary schools, and resources are incredibly scarce. Teachers are rationing paper, textbooks aren't updated or replaced even when torn, and teacher's aides have had their hours cut so students are getting even less one on one attention.
I want to like Joe Matthews and "Prop Zero." I know a lot of smart, wonkish people have loved his book. But it seems these days that you can't keep a job in the media without picking an issue to punch some hippies on. Apparently, Matthews has decided to pick on teachers. Well, at least their unions. You see, teachers unions aren't allowed to advocate for teachers and do their jobs. They're supposed to be education policy officials for some reason. (This must have been a "new rule" at some point.) The new ethos in America is to stop anyone from doing well if you can't too, I guess.
Sigh.
Today's blog post is entitled, "Teachers Aren't Secret Agents." (No linky.) As if the only public scrutiny teachers face is a potential LA Times database. Have these people completely forgotten school boards? There is also data published all the time on the individual schools. It's also completely ignorant of what goes on in schools right about now: a lot of breaking down of last year's test score data to work on areas of improvement.
You know how we keep cutting teachers from districts all over the state? Well, some folks are thinking that maybe you can't do that without consequence. You know, maybe people would want to avoid a job that carries big risk of layoffs without the big salaries you see in other risky professions.
As thousands of laid off California teachers sit out the school year, educators are worried about the long-term effect of losing so many teachers. Some instructors are considering leaving the state or even the profession, and if history is any indication, fewer young people will pursue careers in teaching.
"The pipeline issue is one of the most significant challenges that we're dealing with, with the layoff situation or the pink-slipping," said Margaret Gaston, executive director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, a Santa Cruz-based nonprofit focused on strengthening California's teacher workforce. (LA Times 10/3/09)
At various times in the last few years, some California districts have had to hunt desperately to find teachers, and then only to lay them off a few years later. This constant state of flux is bad for the teachers, bad for the districts, and certainly bad for the students.
I've been asking around and it seems that most Californians don't know that the budget deal that fires so many teachers also has a huge tax cut just for big, multi-state and multi-national corporations.
But it's true. Last month's budget deal that fires teachers, cuts essential government services, and guts the investments that bring future economic benefits also has a huge tax cut for the largest of corporations. While this part of the deal has been kept pretty quiet, the LA Times had a story, Business the big winner in California budget plan. From the story,
The LA Times is reporting that 26,000 thousand California teachers are being laid off today.
26,000.
That figures to about 1 in 1000 people in California. I know that some people are claiming that these numbers have been inflated for political effect. By whom? By some coordinated effort amongst school districts mostly run by cranky retired people who hate paying taxes for whippersnappers? I don't think the Teachers Unions were down for that gambit either.
My wife was one of the 26,000.
She is a former county teacher of the year. She has earned tenure in two different school districts. She's laid off. So, yes, this is personal for me, even though my precious function as an attorney dwarfs her income.
(Good as always to hear from our Lt. Governor. - promoted by Julia Rosen)
My job and your government's job are to protect your job today and tomorrow. California's legislators are left little choice but to swallow hard and accept a very bad budget deal put together in secret without any public hearings and public input, all contrary to the open meeting laws of the state. The tragedy of this budget is that it robs our ability to advance our values and expand our economy by insuring a well-educated workforce. The budget does not allow us to provide adequate resources for the least among us. The budget does not allow transportation, water, and sanitation systems to keep up with population growth. Sadly this budget will force us to abandon robust research programs that will create tomorrow's wealth.
The governor wants to be known as the green governor, the education governor, the reform governor, yet he has utterly failed to lead a budget process that in the remotest way advances any of these goals. There is no real reform of education, prisons, or the state funded healthcare programs in this budget. Yet it is in real reform that efficiencies and increased effectiveness is found and fair cuts can be made. A significant change is in labor contracts that are unilaterally altered, setting aside a long and honorable negotiation process between labor and management. Where is the effort in this budget to advance the green economy?
Unfortunately the budget that is to be voted on in the days ahead does nothing to position California for a quick return to a healthy and growing economy. In fact the budget hastens the starvation of our educational programs at every level, thereby directly and in many case irreversibly damaging millions of our children. The budget accelerates the financial decline of the University of California and the largest university in America, the California State University. California needs teachers, engineers, nurses, doctors, and every other job skill. This budget gets a D in meeting the educational needs of tomorrow's workforce.
When Arnold took office in late 2003 he argued that one of the state's highest priorities was to "reform" a workers' compensation system that was supposedly driving businesses, and therefore jobs, out of the state. And the Legislature did so, cutting benefits to injured workers in order to try and keep business and the Chamber of Commerce happy.
Five years later California faces a similar crisis, as skilled workers flee the state in droves, taking their salaries and therefore their positive economic impact with them. But this time, Arnold seems happy to see their backs, because it's teachers and not well-connected corporations that are fleeing a state thanks to poor budget priorities:
Precious Jackson has two years of teaching under her belt and two school teacher-of-the-year awards to show for it. She also has a pink slip...
"Your future is in our classroom," the Fort Worth, Texas, school district says on a San Diego billboard. It plans to send recruiters to the city next month to dangle $3,000 signing bonuses.
Several Los Angeles-area newspapers are carrying ads for the Clark County, Nev., school district, which hopes to lure teachers to Las Vegas with $2,000 incentives.
"We don't hear things like that here," said Jackson, 25, who teaches English at Lincoln High School, her alma mater in San Diego's hardscrabble Lincoln Park neighborhood. "Instead we just don't know what to expect, and it makes us feel underappreciated."
Here is a teacher who gave back to her community, sacrificing opportunities for better pay and easier working conditions to devote herself as a teacher to the students in need in her community. Now she's looking at leaving the state because California isn't willing to do what it must to keep her employed.
It's not as if California has a surplus of teachers to lose to other states. It has been estimated that California needs to recruit 100,000 new teachers over the next 10 years just to maintain current staffing levels thanks to retirements. Given the staffing needs, and the economic benefit of having employed teachers contributing to the state's businesses, one would think that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be moving heaven and earth to keep California competitive and stop this economic exodus.
Instead we have young teachers looking at moving to Atlanta, or Las Vegas, or Fort Worth just to make ends meet:
Andrea Wiesner, a middle-school teacher in San Diego whose one-year contract won't be renewed, plans to apply in Henderson, Nev., south of Las Vegas, to take advantage of generous student-loan repayment assistance offered by the Clark County School District.
"I worked really hard to be a teacher and now it's like, 'Well, if you want to stay in California, go back and work jobs you worked in college,'" the 28-year-old said. "But I can't just volunteer. I need a job."
I would love for Arnold and his fellow members of the Yacht Party to explain how any of this is good for California's economy.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell has a post at the California Progress Report on the declining number of students in teacher credential programs in California:
Since 2001-02, the state has reduced the number of underprepared teachers in the classroom by 25,000. California, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning reported, "...seemed to be on the right track toward building a teacher development system with the capacity to produce an adequate supply of teachers and deliver them to schools where they were needed most."
So while we're improving the quality of the teachers in the field, what about the supply of future teachers: those students in college today who are considering teaching as a profession? Unfortunately, the picture isn't so bright....
For example, the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning recently looked at the number of enrollees in teacher preparation programs since the state's last fiscal crisis in 2003. The Center reports the following: "During the 2002-03 school year, colleges enrolled 74,203 candidates in preparation programs. The next year, that number dropped to 67,595 and the following year (2004-05) the numbers declined further to 64,753, a loss of 10,000 teacher candidates in two years. Similarly, the numbers of teaching credentials awarded dropped from 27,000 in 2004 to 22,400 in 2006."
O'Connell could be a bit clearer here on the causes of the decline. As a result of the last budget crisis, the CSU system - which handles the bulk of teacher training in California - was hit with hundreds of millions of budget cuts, and a significant increase in student fees for professional education programs. Most students entering these programs already carry significant debt loads from their undergraduate years, and the stagnant pay for California's teachers often makes it difficult for young people to repay these loans - especially when you add in our state's high cost of living.
O'Connell does an excellent job of explaining how the current education budget cuts might dissuade future teachers:
This year California once again faces a budget crisis with potential cuts to education of $4.8 billion dollars. Undergraduates or those students already in teacher credential programs are thinking twice about their career choice. They are aware of the 14,000 pink slips just sent to teachers to prepare them for potential layoffs. They are well aware of the "last-hired, first-fired" rule and they ask themselves, "Do I want to pursue a career that is so unstable that I will face potential layoffs year after year?"
If we don't find a way to stabilize our funding to schools, California may soon be facing another crisis: classrooms full of students with no teachers at the head of the class.
This is already beginning to take place. Between myself and my sister, who teaches 5th grade in Orange County, we know nearly a dozen people who are in their first years of teaching or in a credential program. Many of them have expressed regret about entering the teaching profession, especially as they worry about whether or not they'll have a job this fall. A friend of ours who came to visit on spring break a couple weeks ago, currently a substitute teacher in Santa Ana, told me she was happy she had an accounting background, and said she thought it would be better for her to pursue an accounting degree instead of a teaching credential.
Not only will the teacher firings discourage new teachers from entering the profession, but further higher ed cuts will have the same effect. The CSU system is facing another hundred million dollar budget cut, which will certainly result in higher student fees. Thanks to the global credit crunch, however, it is now becoming much more difficult to take out student loans - meaning even fewer students will be able to pursue the necessary education for a teaching career.
Californians have to ask themselves what they really care about. A state that prefers to fire 20,000 teachers and place teacher training out of the reach of interested young people is not a state that values education. Teachers have already carried much of the burden of public education for the last 30 years. But without more financial support, and without the ability to have a secure career, one of the state's most valuable professions is in very serious jeopardy.
The Long Beach Democrat has introduced a bill that would scrap statutes allowing teachers and other public employees to be fired for being members of the Communist Party.
The measure, scheduled to be considered Wednesday by the Senate Education Committee, also would drop a requirement that representatives of organizations seeking to use school facilities sign a form stating they do not have communist affiliations.
Lowenthal said the measure would drop old laws that were adopted at the height of the Red Scare following World War II and that have been found unconstitutional by the courts.
"Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the threat between us and communism just isn't there...," he said in an interview. "They are not a danger to our liberty, and the courts have uniformly said that."
It's been nearly 20 years since Communism ceased to be a threat to the United States, and 60 years since the height of the Red Scare that produced the current version of the oath. It has absolutely no value or relevance to the present day, and even in the 1950s was really just a tool to remove politically incorrect educators from the UC system, as well as a political opportunity for Earl Warren's reelection bid.
Even a member of the Yacht Party, Chuck DeVore, agrees with this - last year he proposed eliminating the anti-communist language from the oath, only to replace it with language allowing the firing of teachers who "support terrorist groups." That last part is very slippery language indeed, as both "support" and "terrorist group" are so vague and undefined as to be a threat to civil liberties (and besides, there are numerous federal laws dealing with the matter).
Still, most California wingnuts are apoplectic at the very idea of rolling back their beloved McCarthyism:
But some conservative groups and bloggers have sharply criticized the measure, contending it would lead to the indoctrination of students.
"Less than 20 years after the fall of the communist Soviet Union, California lawmakers are eager to once again begin advancing a political ideology responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people," Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Family Impact, said in a statement.
"Instead of promoting communism in our schools, lawmakers should be focused on actually teaching students to read, write and think for themselves."
Right, because there are just SO many Communist teachers out there just waiting to turn their innocent young students into cadres for Raul Castro and Hu Jintao. But then again, if these wingnuts want to make these kinds of silly arguments, who am I to stop them? The more they expose themselves as so radical that they've lost touch with reality, the less Californians will listen to their ideas.
So kudos to Sen. Lowenthal for wanting to restore some sanity to state employment. As to groups like Capitol Resource Family Impact, don't you have some more pressing concerns?
The university, averting a showdown over religious freedom, agreed to rehire Kearney-Brown after the office of state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown helped draft a statement declaring that the oath does not commit employees to bear arms in the country's defense....
The firing of Kearney-Brown, who also is a graduate student at the campus, brought widespread criticism from faculty members, students, Quakers and civil-liberties advocates. Some faculty members began circulating a petition objecting to it. The United Auto Workers, which represents teaching assistants, pursued a grievance on Kearney-Brown's behalf.
"People were outraged," said Henry Reichman, a Cal State East Bay history professor and chairman of the Academic Senate. "I was very vocal on the campus that this was an outrageous thing."
The ultimate resolution involved Kearney-Brown getting CSUEB to attach a document to her signed oath clarifying that the oath would not require her to take up arms to defend the state or the constitution, in conformance with her Quaker beliefs. Although the university resisted this, Jerry Brown's office produced a document that read:
"You should know that signing the oath does not carry with it any obligation or requirement that public employees bear arms or otherwise engage in violence," read the unsigned statement. "This has been confirmed by both the United States Supreme Court . . . and the California attorney general's office."
Although this particular story has a happy ending - and should set a precedent for others whose religious or personal beliefs would be violated by this ridiculous oath - it still raises the question of whether or not this ridiculous anachronism still has any place in California.
It also reminds us of the importance of unions in protecting not just wages and benefits, but civil liberties. Kearney-Brown, like most CSU TAs, is represented by UAW Local 4123. (Note: I was an organizer and steward in UAW Local 4121 at UW.) With her union on her side she had legal and political power, helping her get her job back within days. It also helped that our state Attorney General was willing to step in and defend her civil liberties, as opposed to trying to trample them like some other AGs we know.
Ultimately this reminds us of the importance of coalitions to protect civil liberties. Whether it's a loyalty oath, FISA, or waterboarding, our basic rights must be supported and protected by the public. Once we start abandoning or refusing to defend the rights of others, we will quickly find we are losing our own.
If every Californian paid an extra $150 a year in vehicle license fees, $6.1 billion would be raised eliminating the proposed budget cuts to health care, parks, and education. If we closed the tax loopholes that LAO Elizabeth Hill identified - as Arnold kinda sorta agreed we should - we would raise $2.5 billion, over half of the $4.4 billion cuts proposed in Arnold's budget.
Class sizes in hundreds of classrooms might increase from 20 to 30 students.
And one district may shutter a campus altogether.
The county's 28 school districts are deep in efforts to develop plans to cut about $204 million, or 5 percent, from their operating budgets in the face of a mounting state budget crisis.
They're preparing for the worst because school districts, which receive about 70 percent of their funding from the state, often have to approve staffing and much of their spending for the next school year long before Sacramento lawmakers finish wrangling over the state budget.
"These could be the most devastating cuts our schools have ever seen," county Superintendent William Habermehl said. "I don't know how some of our school districts will be able to survive this and provide the same quality of education."
This being the OC Register we should not be surprised that the piece claims "locked-in teacher pay raises, restricted state and federal funds and other fixed expenditures" are a big part of the problem, but let's look at the bigger picture here.
Restoring the VLF would cost an average of $150 per person per year. But the proposed teacher firings would cost nearly 40,000 Californians around $50,000 a year in income, health care, and other important benefits. That's money that isn't going to pay mortgages or rents. Money that isn't keeping a small business afloat, or a big box store's sales high enough to prevent mass layoffs. As California slides into recession, and with zero job growth to show for 2007, how on earth does it make any sense to deliver such a crippling blow to the state's economy through firing all these teachers?
Surely it is more sensible to ask Californians to pay an extra $150 a year for the privilege of driving, and to keep the state's economy afloat and its schools in session, than to privilege a wasteful and reckless tax cut at the expense of the economy.
Of course, there is also the long-term damage to the state through these crippling education cuts. Larger class sizes and fewer classrooms mean fewer students will learn. Fewer students will attend college, fewer will get good jobs or create new businesses and technologies. The state will be set back even further - California will become Mississippi.
All so that people can save $150 a year on their car registration. All so that a handful of wealthy yacht owners can get a tax break. We are constantly told that tax cuts are necessary to keep the state in business - but as the looming collapse of public education should suggest, this is just not so. California's economy is still living off of the investments made in education in the 1960s and 1970s - but that is beginning to run out.
Even in Republican Orange County, in cities like San Juan Capistrano and Mission Viejo, voters want to ensure that their kids will get a decent education. Parents know full well that firing teachers means their children will not learn. Republicans are talking a hard line, claiming they're not going to compromise an inch on the budget.
But I think we should ask the parents in south Orange County whether they agree with their Republican representatives that their child's future is really worth $150 a year.
As a teacher myself, from a family of teachers, I have never quite understood why so many people think the problem with education is bad teachers. Sure, I've had one or two along the way, but they were far outweighed by the good teachers. Teachers are the key to education. If they are happy and supported, and allowed to do their jobs, wonderful things can and often do happen. But if they are demoralized and attacked, well, teachers are human beings, and nobody does well in that kind of environment.
Arnold's plan is all about punishment and attacks. It's the idea that if we merely crack down and hurt people - hurt teachers in their wallet, hurt schools in their budgets - then suddenly they'll improve. It's a kind of shock doctrine approach to education. Although it defies logic that the solution to a school with low test scores is to close the school, that's exactly what Arnold's business allies are whispering in his ear - impose NCLB on California.
The basic elements of Arnold's education reforms have begun to make their way into the press, and unsurprisingly, they're not good. Arnold intends to use his "Year of Education" to make a power grab at the expense of teachers, students who have different educational needs, and even basic democracy.
In his State of the State address on Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to announce an ambitious but controversial education agenda that includes merit pay for teachers, more local control of school finances, and essentially barring 4-year-olds from entering kindergarten.
Business leaders who advise Schwarzenegger say failing schools need to be held accountable first. They want Schwarzenegger, through his education secretary, David Long, to use the tools of the federal No Child Left Behind Act to punish schools with large numbers of failing students.
Many of those schools are in high-poverty neighborhoods and have a high proportion of black and Hispanic students.
2008 will indeed be "the Year of Education" in California, but not in the way Arnold intended. We will have to engage in a major fight if we are to protect education from crippling budget cuts and the imposition of a business-based agenda that parents oppose and that does nothing to actually improve learning and achievement.
Invariably these days, Labor Day is occasion for progressive intellectuals all over the country to show up on community radio talk shows, academic symposia, and newspaper op-ed pages to ponder the question: Whither labor?
With union density what it is (13% overall, less in the private sector), it's a discussion worth having, and having often. Happily however, here in California, we have as muscular a labor movement as ever (or maybe not ever, but in living memory). If I could post pictures here, I would put up a nice one from this morning's L.A. Labor Fed breakfast at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels, where just about every Southern California Democratic officeholder above dog catcher showed up to honor the organizations that fight for what we now apparently refer to as the "middle class," and that we once knew better as the working class. With that kind of political juice, breakfasters were safe to table the discussion of Labor's Future in favor of that of what unions need to get done between now and November to get a new governor in Sacramento.
The big news of the night: the California Teachers Association has worked out an agreement allowing it to affiliate with the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
That may sound less than earth-shattering to those who have other interests than the political machinations of union bureaucrats, but it is actually quite significant. The 335,000-member CTA is an unaffiliated union, meaning that it does not belong to the California Federation of Labor, the state's governing body of the AFL-CIO, and by extension, nor to the L.A. Fed, the county's AFL-CIO governing body. Yet the teachers union is, arguably, the single most powerful campaigning and lobbying organization in the state. And the L.A. County Labor Fed is not just another Central Labor Council -- it is a legendarily capable labor council. It has helped launch the careers of many California political stars, including Antonio Villaraigosa. Fabian Nunez was the L.A. Fed's political director before winning his seat in Sacramento. The combination of these two formidable outfits is promising indeed.
So, some good news for Labor Day in California, an occasion usually devoted in progressive circles only to nostalgia and hand-wringing.
(I posted much of this on DailyKos yesterday, but what with Lieberman, 100K users and terror, it's probably better to share with more of a California-oriented audience!)
Riding on the wave of energy stemming from YearlyKos, I've been enjoying my involvement in the California Clean Money Campaign. The more I learn about this effort, the more I believe in it and its promise. Is it perfect? No. But Californians have a historic opportunity to enact real reform, one we might not get again soon. And clean money proponents are aware of some shortcomings and already looking to the review process to remedy them should it pass.
I was therefore disappointed to read this press release from the California Teachers Association stating their opposition to Proposition 89, the California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act. I'm apparently not alone. In fact, in volunteering I've met several CTA members who have expressed concern about the union's stance.
