A major entry comes from Assemblyman Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood. Assembly Bill 1331 would place a $6.5 billion bond on the Nov. 2014 ballot.

It would replace the $11.1 billion California Water Bond currently on the ballot, but which has been postponed from the 2010 and 2012 ballots because of concerns voters would reject it because of the high cost. Rendon’s bond would be more modest and targeted at specific current needs.

“Both houses of the Legislature have engaged in substantial efforts to reanalyze and right-size a bond so that voters can be confident that it addresses California’s most pressing water infrastructure and program needs and is accountable,” a water committee background paper explained of AB1331.

In a CalWatchdog.com interview, Rendon explained that his bill includes:

• “$1 billion for maintaining and improving drinking water quality;
• “$1.5 billion for protecting rivers and watersheds;
• “$1.5 billion to fund integrated regional water management that will improve water delivery and help regions reduce the impact of climate change on water supply;
• “$1 billion to protecting the California Delta that is critical to the state water supply system and a key ecological resource;
• “$1.5 billion for water storage projects that will also reduce the impact of climate change on clean, reliable and affordable water supply.”

Rendon said the PPIC polling data showed a bond of $7 billion or less could pass, so the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee worked to formulate AB1331.

Dirty water politics

As surprising as it is, there are locations in California which have dirty drinking water. Rendon said in his district the city of Maywood has had historical problems with dirty water.

Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill authored by Rendon, AB240, which requires three mutual water companies in tiny Maywood to comply with open-meeting and open-record rules that apply to public agencies. The bill also said the Legislature’s intent was “to create a public agency that can consolidate drinking water services” in Maywood, according to the Los Angeles Times.

There are other problems. The Times reported, “[T]he Central Basin Municipal Water District, has been raided twice in recent months by the FBI as part of a corruption investigation that involves state Sen. Ronald Calderon (D-Montbello).”

Maywood recently has been a hotbed of water politics. Located in southeast Los Angeles County, residents have long complained about yellow and brown tap water smelling like rotten eggs. Rendon’s AB240 is intended to rid the city of dirty water — and dirty water politics.

The Central Basin Municipal Water District has jurisdiction in Maywood. Residents worry the Central basin agency is angling for more influence there, according to KPCC Public Radio. “A former Central Basin employee, Gil Cedillo Jr., ran for the board of Maywood Mutual Water Company No. 3 last year,” KPCC reported.

Watershed

Rendon said the water bond funding from his AB1331 also would go to protecting and restoring watersheds and aquatic ecosystems, including the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. He said the state’s watersheds provide regional and statewide benefits for cities, farms, manufacturing and wildlife. Benefits would include protecting water quality and sustainability, improving flood control and providing habitat for wildlife and recreation for citizens.

Rendon stressed that none of the bond money would go toward the governor’s Delta Water Tunnel project. 

Storage

One of the biggest concerns in the state is water storage.

Rendon said his bill would fund above and below ground water storage, with a focus on regional self-reliance.

“The County of Los Angeles has talked about storm water runoff and other things we should look towards in terms of regional self-reliance,” Rendon said. “We need to look at how we manage water in our own backyard.”

Cities and municipalities will be able to bid on separate projects to receive funding from the water bond, if passed by the voters.

Rendon said in a June hearing of the water committee:

“We need to maintain that focus and continue to ask fundamental questions like how do we use and reuse water in our regions? How do we manage the watersheds where we live?  How do we manage our storm water supply?  How do we manage our groundwater aquifers for storage and supply?  These are the questions that we will need to answer in the years ahead, and consistent with the 2009 statute we need to invest in that future in greater self reliance.” 

The Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee has already held five hearings on AB1331: One each in Redding and Seaside and three in Sacramento. Upcoming hearings will be held in Hanford, Eureka, Fresno, the San Gabriel Valley and Stockton.

“This is not an era to build large conveyance projects through a bond,” Rendon said. “Rather than a large bond directed by the state, these will be local decisions.”

Status

The latest revision of AB1331 does not yet have a legislative analysis. So far, there is no opposition. But it will compete with other bills, some of which were reported on earlier by CalWatchdog.com. Our site will continue to cover the bonds as the debate over them, and the drought, continues.

Freshman Assemblyman Ian Calderon, D-Whittier, authored two bills in 2013, AB 344 and AB 533, involving the movie industry.

His uncle, Ron Calderon, D-Montbello,  is the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on California’s Film and Television Industries. He stands accused of offering to help provide a state tax credit for films that cost less than a $1 million.

The younger Calderon went one for two. AB 344 did not pass and was shelved. It would have authorized the Labor Commissioner to collect into the existing Entertainment Work Permit Fund from child actors, and use the proceeds from this fund to pay the costs of administrating and enforcing the permit  program.

But AB 533 was passed by both houses of the Legislature, and was signed into law in August by Gov. Jerry Brown. AB 533 “exempts an employer of a minor under a contract for services as an extra, background performer, or in a similar capacity from the requirement that the employer set aside 15% of the minor’s gross earnings in trust for the benefit of the minor,” the bill analysis said.

The bill’s support came from BizParentz Foundation, Children in Film, Inc., Entertainment Partners, and The Actors Fund of America.

Affidavit shows case against older Calderon

An FBI affidavit obtained by Al Jazzera America detailed alleged bribe-taking by Ron Calderon.

“Undercover FBI agents posed as independent movie executives interested in taking advantage of a program in which films with budgets of $1 million or more are eligible for special tax credits,” Al Jazeera reported. “The agents, focusing on Calderon, asked the senator to help lower the budget threshold to $500,000. Calderon, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on California’s Film and Television Industries, agreed to help lower it to $750,000 but wanted financial assistance provided to his grown children, the affidavit says.”

The document alleges that Calderon accepted $60,000 for bribes from an FBI agent posing as a Los Angeles film producer, to help change a tax credit law and hire a woman posing as the agent’s girlfriend as a Senate staffer, the affidavit says.

“According to the affidavit, the FBI agent gave Calderon $30,000 for work the senator’s daughter never did,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “In return, Calderon offered to help provide a state tax credit for films that cost less than a $1 million. The FBI agent alleges he made another $30,000 in payment to Calderon for hiring his ‘girlfriend’ to work on his office staff. The woman was actually an FBI agent.”

AB 533 passed the Senate floor five days after Sen. Ron Calderon’s office was raided by the FBI. Ron Calderon voted in favor of nephew Ian’s bill.

Gil Cedillo Jr.

Gil Cedillo Jr. will be “relieved of duties” July 31 from the Central Basin Water District.  The Los Cerritos News reported Cedillo Jr. was paid $112,970 a year, as well as $22,000 toward his bachelor’s degree. He is the son of Gil Cedillo Sr., who now sits on the Los Angeles City Council; and formerly served in the state Senate and Assembly.

Cedillo Jr. was once the chief of staff for then-Assemblyman Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, who now is a state senator. 

And more than a decade ago, Cedillo Jr. was a senior field representative for then-Assemblyman Tom Calderon, D-Montebello, who left office in 2002. Tom and Ron Calderon are brothers.

On June 5, the FBI raided Ron Calderon’s office. According to the Los Angeles Times, “[F]ederal authorities have seized records from a Southern California water district that provided contracts to Calderon’s brother, former Assemblyman Tom Calderon.”

Tom Calderon is a “consultant” for the Central Basin Water District and has been a familiar site at the Capitol lobbying lawmakers on bills benefiting his clients.

Tom Calderon is paid $10,000 a month as a consultant/unregistered lobbyist, and another $140,000 per year as a consultant to a subcontractor, according to the Los Angles Times. The Chicago Tribune reported this totaled more than $750,000 in consulting fees since 2004.

The FBI also searched Pacific Hospital of Long Beach and Industrial Pharmacy Management in Long Beach, companies using Tom Calderon as a consultant.

Political fiefdom

“Cedillo Jr. was rarely seen at work for the past several months by employees and elected directors of the district, but still collected his six-figure salary,” the Los Cerritos News reported. “Copies of checks written to Azusa Pacific University to cover the costs of Cedillo Jr’s.” salary were “approved by former CBMWD General Manager Art Aguilar, who is a longtime personal friend of Cedillo’s family.”

Cedillo Jr. has been working since April of 2011 as a “business development manager” for the Central Basin Municipal Water District.

Cedillo name

“It pays to have the name Gilbert Cedillo in Los Angeles political inner circles these days,” said Randy Economy and Brian Hews in the Los Cerritos News story.

When Cedillo Jr. went to work for Central Basin, a college degree was a condition of his employment. So the water district paid him $22,000 toward tuition at Azuza Pacific University. If Cedillo Jr. were to “flunk out,” he had to repay the district, according to the Los Cerritos News. Instead, termination means he doesn’t have to repay the tuition. And he will receive a severance package.

By Katy Grimes

Editor’s Note: This is Part One of a series on the Calderon family.

June 13, 2013

By John Hrabe

It wasn’t quite the Academy Awards. But the 60 or so people assembled last Saturday afternoon at the Whittier Center Theatre were excited just the same.

The festival, a digital media competition organized by Assemblyman Ian Calderon, D-City of Industry, in conjunction with the California Arts Council, featured the works of 58 area high school students, who produced short clips on human rights and genocide. The nearby picture shows Calderon with two students getting awards.

“Around here, many of the kids won’t go to college because of money,” said Calderon, who provided small scholarships to some of the participants. “I want them to know there are opportunities out there.”

The kids were vulnerable — putting their creations up for judgment by the community. It’s something Ian knows about. Earlier this year, when he and two of his legislative colleagues released their own digital media creation, a surfer’s perspective on coastal protection, Ian’s father expressed his misgivings.

“The surf caucus?” recalled Ian’s dad, Charles Calderon, a former assemblyman and state senator. “I mean, in my day, surfing was associated with ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High.’”

The film was released in 1982, the same year that Charles won his first election to the Assembly. The film’s 1980s California slacker milieu is an anathema to Charles’s tough-guy image, especially because he came within a handful of votes of dethroning then Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, the self-proclaimed “Ayatollah of the Assembly.”

The old political rules, Ian says, no longer apply. Yet, he understands why it took some time for his father to come around. “The old guard keep things close to the vest because that’s when they come after you,” Ian said.

The Calderon “Dynasty” Storyline

This week, everyone seems to be coming after the Calderons. No sooner had FBI agents executed a search warrant at the Capitol offices of Democratic state Sen. Ron Calderon, Charles’s brother, than the press was churning out headlines about the “political dynasty” mired in scandal. “Sen. Ron Calderon, target of FBI raid, is part of a political dynasty,” read the headline of one LA Times piece. The Times wasn’t alone. Almost every major outlet has repeated some version of the “Southern California political dynasty” storyline.

The Calderons have certainly made politics the family business. Charles, the eldest brother, started it off in the Assembly in 1982, followed by middle brother, Tom, in 1998, then Ron in 2002. Last year, Ian, the surfer son, won a hard-fought campaign for his own seat in the Legislature. The dynasty storyline is easy and convenient. It’s also an oversimplification of the major differences among the Calderons.

The people who know the Calderons best, old friends, current and former staffers, community leaders, and Sacramento lobbyists, say that each of the Calderons has brought a unique style and approach to the family business. Far from speaking with a uniform voice, the Calderons often have had heated political disagreements within the family and been on opposite sides of controversial legislative fights.

The FBI says it won’t comment on the ongoing investigation, which has only intensified the Capitol rumor mill. The best evidence suggests that the FBI is investigating Ron’s relationship with the Central Basin Municipal Water District, where Tom has worked as a high-priced consultant. At least one state Senator, Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, has confirmed that he has been subpoenaed.

That Ron and Tom are the subjects of the FBI investigation, without any evidence to suggest that either Charles or Ian is involved, doesn’t surprise many Calderon confidants. When speaking candidly on background or not for attribution, these individuals described two brothers in conflict with Charles’s reputation as an honest broker and effective legislator.

Centinela Valley school desegregation case

Last Thursday afternoon, I sat down with Charles Calderon just a few blocks from the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, where his professional career began as a deputy city attorney. Under then-City Attorney Burt Pines, now an LA County Superior Court judge, Calderon got his start prosecuting misdemeanor cases that ranged from assaults to drunk driving. “My dream was to be a lawyer,” Calderon explained.

After two years, he moved into private practice, while also serving on the school board. Almost immediately, Calderon took up a low-paying, controversial school desegregation case representing a group of white, black and Latino parents that had already been turned away by the NAACP and MALDEF.

“Here I was, I’d just started with a private law firm, and I’m taking a risky case,” Calderon recalled of the lawsuit. “The case was a 50-50 proposition, maybe.”

Calderon’s clients claimed that the Centinela Valley Union High School District had closed a Lawndale high school in order to prevent integration of other high schools in the area. It was an uphill battle; the parents had to show intentional segregation. So Chuck, in search of any evidence to show de jure segregation, headed down to the school district headquarters to review years of board minutes.

Hours into his search, a secretary offered Calderon something to drink and casually mentioned that all the meetings were recorded. “I immediately knew if there was going to be anything, it’d be on those tapes,” he said. “Finally, I heard it.”

Calderon found audio of school board members making racial slurs about the students at Lennox High School, the segregated school that the board kept open. The school district quickly settled. Writing of the case in 1985, the Los Angeles Times observed, “The Lawndale group raised the focus of the community debate to a loftier level.”

“It takes discipline to go through that kind of exercise,” Charles proudly shared as he sipped a cup of coffee and ate a slice of pie a la mode. “It also takes a lead ass.”

A disciplined taskmaster who’d drive staff crazy

A year later, Charles was up and on his feet, walking door-to-door in his first legislative campaign. That first election, he estimates, he walked 98 precincts. He’d walk one side of the street, his mother the other side.

The discipline — to finish law school, to tediously review school board minutes, to walk door-to-door — explains Calderon’s approach in Sacramento. His former legislative staff members consider him “a taskmaster.”

“Chuck used to drive staff crazy,” says Tom White, who worked for Calderon all six years of his second stint in the Assembly. “On policy, he was a taskmaster. He wanted to walk through the bill, talk through the bill and think his way through it.”

Charles: “Head and shoulders above his brothers”

Phil Pace, a Montebello community leader whose friendship with Charles goes back decades, describes him as someone who has “always been straightforward.”

“I consider him a good friend, a good person, and a good legislator,” Pace said. “He tried to do the right thing for the right reasons.”

Personal friends say that Charles’s smarts and discipline are what separate him from his brothers. Another close personal friend, who has known the family since the days before a Calderon served in the Legislature, described Charles as “head and shoulders above his brothers.”

“In terms of everything, smarts, style, class, honesty, work ethic,” the friend said of Charles, the first in his family to earn a college degree and the only one to graduate from law school. “That doesn’t take anything away from his brothers. They just don’t have Chuck’s smarts, not even close.”

Part Two will explore Ron and Tom’s Reputation in Sacramento

By Katy Grimes

Following the June 5 FBI raid on his Capitol offices, Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, made a really brief appearance before the Senate convened for session.

However, Calderon revealed nothing about the raids, part of an ongoing corruption investigation, according to the FBI. Calderon instead referred all questions of substance to his attorney Mark Geragos, famous for his representation of Scott Peterson, now on death row, convicted of murdering his wife, Laci, and their unborn baby.

“My family and I have gone through a lot in the last several days,” Calderon said. “It’s been very stressful. It’s been very hard on all of us. We’re all very anxious to put this behind us and to carry on normal life.”

Calderon spoke for about 60 seconds.

“I have a lot of my own questions,” Calderon said. “My intention at this point is to do my job I was elected to do, attend my hearings, get my bills passed out of committee to the floor and do the work of the state.”

 The investigation

More details of the cases have been revealed. In April, the FBI also searched Pacific Hospital of Long Beach and Industrial Pharmacy Management in Long Beach, which had hired Calderon’s brother Thomas Calderon as a consultant. Thomas Calderon is a former Assemblyman.

Additionally, another consulting client, the Central Basin Water District, paid Thomas Calderon $10,000 a month as a consultant and another $140,000 per year as a consultant to a subcontractor, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Central Basin Water District has its own troubles. The water district is made up of 44 cities and water utilities in southeast L.A. County. The cities have been in a dispute with the Central Basin Water District over management issues which allegedly impact water rates.

Last year, Downey Mayor Mario Guerra testified before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee about the mismanagement. But the committee, led by then-Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, D- Bell Gardens, turned the tables on Guerra and ordered an audit of Downey’s Department of Public Works.

Lara is now in the Senate and rumored to also have been subpoenaed in the FBI case.

U.S. Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., pushed for an investigation and audit of the Central Basin Water District in 2009, the LA Times reported.  Napolitano said she has heard complaints for more than a decade from cities she represents about the agency’s lack of transparency and questionable spending of public funds,” according to the LA Times.

“In particular, Napolitano questioned how the district spent $5.6 million in federal funds she helped secure to build infrastructure for a regional system to recycle water.”

But the audit did not happen, and Napolitano blamed Sen. Calderon for thwarting efforts to make it happen.

And there have been charges of corruption of board members. “Central Basin Municipal Water District Board Director Leticia Vasquez is using her newfound -and possibly illegal – majority voting bloc status to benefit longtime personal associates including Maurice Chenier, the law office partner of her fiancé Ronald N. Wilson and another close personal associate Jasmyne Cannick,” the Los Cerritos News reported.

“CBMWD Director Phil Hawkins was even more outspoken telling LCCN, ‘The very first board meeting, after she was elected, I said her whole plan was basically to hire all her (Vasquez) campaign team, friends, and relatives and put them on staff so they would be ready for her next campaign, and it is all coming true now.’”

Sen. Calderon has carried legislation that would benefit the water district.

Calderon is also well-known in Sacramento for accepting gifts, tickets to sporting events, and exotic trips from lobbyists, including first class accommodations in Hawaii, Las Vegas, and the AT&T Pro Am in Pebble Beach. Some estimates of the gifts from special interests are between $45,000 and $60,000, since 2000, significantly more than any other legislator.

By Katy Grimes

UPDATE:  SACRAMENTO — As I left the Capitol today, I noticed several official vehicles double parked around the Capitol. Then I heard that Sen. Ron Calderon’s Capitol office had been raided by the FBI. Calderon, is a Democrat from Montebello, CA.

Additionally, I was contacted by legislative staff and told that the FBI raided the Latino Caucus offices in the Legislative Office building across the street from the Capitol.

“Three cars from the Dept. of Justice and one from the FBI, parked on N Street in front of the legislative office building about 3:30 pm,” I was told by a legislative staffer. “It looked as if there were seven people who entered the building with collapsed boxes.”

Scott Lay, publisher of Around the Capitol, reported more:

The U.S. Attorney in Sacramento (Eastern District of California) has confirmed that it has executed search warrants in the Capitol. While there are rumors that two other offices have been searched, they are just rumors.

From what I have gotten from multiple sources, the two offices searched are those of Senator Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) and the Latino Caucus office in room 511 of the Legislative Office Building across the street from the Capitol at 1020 N Street.

The actions are reportedly in response to a Los Angeles case, and the search warrants are sealed.

Some sources in the Capitol say the search of the Latino Caucus offices and Calderon’s office is part of a public corruption investigation in Los Angeles.

The story is one all news and internet news sites, with nothing more than speculation at this point.

More to come as the situation unfolds…

UPDATE: Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Calderon has hired Los Angeles attorney Mark Geragos, who contends the Justice Department is targeting his client. “This is a leak from the U.S. Department of Justice,” Geragos told KTLA news. “They should be ashamed of themselves. If I could shed more light on this, I would.”

“Calderon previously came under scrutiny for his handling of his legal defense fund, which was set up to cover costs stemming from a vote re-count in 2006,” KTLA reported.

Calderon received a warning letter, but he was not penalized.

Calderon was not at the Capitol at the time of the Tuesday raid. The Latino Caucus was holding a function for labor leader Dolores Huerta at nearby offices.

Calderon is part of a political family which has held office in the Legislature for more than 30 years. “Senator Calderon is the second of his family to serve in the State Senate and the third to hold a seat in the legislature,” his Senate bio says. “His oldest brother, Charles Calderon, was elected to the State Senate in 1990 and was termed out in 1998. Middle brother Thomas Calderon served in the State Assembly from 1998 to 2002.”

Charles Calderon was elected to the Assembly again, and held office 2006-2012, when he was termed out a second time.

The FBI raid went on for five hours at Calderon’s office, and many boxes were removed.

More updates to come…

UPDATE: “A company official who bid on work at the Central Basin Municipal Water District in Los Angeles County said Tuesday that he has been interviewed twice by FBI agents since March about the agency’s contracting practices,” Patrick McGreevy with the LA Times reports. “Central Basin has paid up to $140,000 a year on a consultant contract with Tom Calderon, the senator’s brother and a former state lawmaker himself.”

“In addition, Ron Calderon has authored legislation on behalf of Central Basin in the past. Michael J. Franchek, a vice president at EcoGreen Services, said Tuesday that the FBI agents wanted to hear about his complaints and allegations that favoritism has been involved in contract awards, including the one that went to Tom Calderon.”

More updates to come…

By Katy Grimes

Efforts in California to usher in teacher and school administrator accountability have been nearly impossible due to opposition from the teachers’ unions. But some reformers aren’t giving up, including in the Democratic Party.

Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, has authored SB 441, attempting reform one more time. Thus far, it appears he has bipartisan support. But the hurdle to overcome in the past has not been achieving bipartisan support; the hurdle has been overcoming the teachers’ and school employee labor unions, and the politicians they support.

Democrats divided

At last month’s California Democratic Party Convention, Democrats killed efforts led by other Democrats to call for much needed public school reforms.

Convention delegates even passed a resolution slamming education reform groups like StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform, claiming they are merely front groups for Republicans and Wall Street money.

The stark divide appears to be between supporters of the California teachers’ unions on the one hand; and on the other hand, supporters of school choice and linking teacher evaluations to student performance.

I talked recently with Jessica Ng, Communications Director at StudentsFirst, about the possibility of school reforms. StudentsFirst is a grassroots school reform advocacy group.

“We’re pleased Sen. Calderon has taken on the issue of improving teacher evaluations, and we particularly applaud his effort to base SB 441 on the guidelines laid out by the Obama administration,” Ng said. “We believe that this conversation is an important one because a strong teacher and principal evaluation system is critical to improving student learning, and we’re glad to be part of the broad-based coalition supporting Sen. Calderon’s bill.”

But many teachers blame students and their parents, complaining about the “poor quality of students” public schools have to deal with.

But some scholars look at teachers. “Teacher quality is the key to improved schools,” said Eric Hanushek in his book, “Teacher Quality.” Hanushek is a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

“Teacher quality cannot be readily linked to teacher characteristics; therefore new and more extensive certification and training standards are unlikely to be effective,” said Hanushek. “Policies aimed at student performance instead of inputs (like more education spending) offer the only real hope for improvement.”

What SB 441 would do

Calderon’s bill amends various provisions of existing laws governing the evaluation of certificated employees. It would, according to a Senate analysis:

* Require the evaluations to use multiple measures, including a minimum of four rating levels.

* Increase the frequency of evaluations for teachers with 10 or more years of experience in a school district from every five years to every three years.

* Require school districts to avail themselves to the input of parents, according to Senate analysis.

According to Calderon, the current teacher evaluations process under the Stull Act has proved to be insufficient in the recognition of high performing teachers and the identification of those that could benefit from professional development. Under the Stull Act, passed in 1971, a school district must include student achievement as part of a teacher’s evaluation.

Recently the Los Angeles Unified School District was charged with never having followed the Stull Act. According to education reform experts, the teachers union wouldn’t allow it.

While some districts incorporate student performance in their evaluation systems, others do not. And in districts that simply rate their employees as “meeting” or “not meeting” expectations, teachers may not receive sufficient feedback during the evaluation process to understand how to improve their practice.

Key to this bill, according to Calderon, are several research studies which document the correlation between teacher quality and student achievement. Differential teacher effectiveness is a strong determinant of differences in student learning, far outweighing the effects of differences in class size and heterogeneity, the bill analysis said.

This is correct, according to Marcus Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. In his new book, “How Important Are Teachers?” Winters explained: “Research using the value-added approach consistently finds that teacher quality is the most important factor for boosting student performance. Students with nearly identical backgrounds will perform quite differently on standardized tests depending on which teacher they were assigned.”

There is another hearing on SB 441 Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee. Last week the bill was nearly killed when the committee deadlocked on the vote, but Calderon asked for reconsideration so SB 441 could be heard again Wednesday morning.

Parents, teachers and student advocates feel muzzled

Julie Collier, the executive director of the Parents Advocate League, has spent her Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the last three weeks traveling from Orange County to the Capitol to support student-sponsored legislation. “Unfortunately, three of the four student sponsored pieces of legislation have failed,” Collier said. “Our last hope is SB 441 by Sen. Calderon.”

But perhaps the most bitter aspect for Collier and her group of student advocates was at the hearing last week where Calderon’s bill deadlocked. “Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson thanked all of the supporters that traveled to Sacramento in support of SB 441,” Collier said. “And then she invited the opponents of the bill, two union lobbyists, to come up to the podium and speak again, after they had already given their testimony.”

Collier added, “It’s disappointing to me, as a former educator and concerned parent, that the paid lobbyists’ seat at the table is apparently more important to the Senator than parents, teachers and student advocates.”

Take a look at the supporters and opponents of SB 441. Will this bill end up as all other education reform bills have — in the waste bin?

SUPPORT

California Mayors (cities of Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Jose)

California United to Reform Education

EdVoice

Lanai Road Education Action Committee

Los Angeles Unified School District

Office of the Mayor of San Francisco

National Action Network Los Angeles

Orange County Business Council

Parent Partnership

Parent Revolution

Parents Advocate League

San Diego United Parents for Education

Simmons Group Inc.

Stand Up for Great Schools

Students First

Letters from various individuals

OPPOSITION

California Federation of Teachers

California School Employees Association

California Teachers Association

United Teachers Los Angeles