After a quarter-century of explosive increases in California, charter schools experienced all-time lows in growth the last two school years. And charters may also be facing an era of much harsher treatment from school boards allied with teachers unions who more than ever see charters as taking away resources that should go to conventional schools.

That was many education observers’ takeaway this week from the Los Angeles Unified School Board’s decision to approve a local moratorium on approvals of new charters until their impact on the state’s largest district is freshly assessed. District leaders had agreed to pass the resolution as part of their deal with United Teachers Los Angeles to end a strike that shut LAUSD schools for six days earlier last month.

Charters are privately operated public schools that hope to attract students from regular schools with their freedom to follow different teaching regimens. Some also offer specialized language or academic programs. Most are non-union.

From 1992 to 2016, charter schools went from zero students to more than 600,000 – about 10 percent of total K-12 students in California. The last two years, however, there was less than 2 percent growth in the number of total charters for the first time.

Charters initially faced brisk opposition from the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers, which had heavy influence in many districts thanks to the board members that union local chapters helped elect.

But in 2000, California voters approved Proposition 39 related to school financing. One provision requires that “school districts make available to all charter schools operating in their school district … facilities that will sufficiently accommodate all of the charter’s in-district students, and that facilities be ‘reasonably equivalent’ to other classrooms, buildings, or facilities in the district,” according to the state Department of Education page outlining how school districts should comply with the state law.

CalSTRS bailout spurs scrum for limited resources

Proposition 39 gave charters a potent tool to fight attempts to block them, leading to something of a cease-fire from unions. But the passage in 2014 of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System bailout not only isn’t having the effect of stabilizing school finances that some hoped, it’s created a more intense battle for district resources than ever.

Under the bailout, total contributions to CalSTRS will nearly double from 2013-14 to 2020-21 as hikes are phased in. But districts are required to contribute 70 percent of the new money – or close to $4 billion when the phase-in ends. Even with two more contribution hikes awaiting in 2019-20 and 2020-21, many districts across the state are already struggling to make their budgets balance.

That list starts with L.A. Unified, whose board was warned by the Los Angeles County Office of Education that the district couldn’t afford the two retroactive 3 percent raises it gave teachers to end the strike. The county office raised the possibility that the district’s finances could be so broken by 2020-21 that it could be subject to an outside takeover based on a state law requiring districts maintain minimum reserves.

L.A. Unified leaders hope to get the state Legislature to provide more funding for next school year. But the L.A. teachers union also wants the district to stop providing so much funding to the district’s 225 charters, which teach 112,000 of the district’s 486,000 students.

The wild card in a new cold war between teachers unions and charters is Gov. Gavin Newsom. While he has often praised charter schools as an important part of public education, he said while campaigning last year that he would sign legislation “requiring charter schools to be more transparent with their finances and operations and to adhere to stricter conflict of interest rules on their governing boards,” according to the EdSource website.

Charter school critics see this as an obvious response to the messy finances and scandals seen in some charters. Charter advocates see it as an ominous first step toward rolling back the charter movement. They backed former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the 2018 governor’s race.

The most expensive contest on the 2014 California ballot is set to return next year. 

“Marshall Tuck, who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent schools chief Tom Torlakson in a contentious 2014 race that became a proxy fight over a lawsuit on teacher job protections, will run again for state superintendent of public instruction,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “The former Los Angeles schools executive on Monday announced his candidacy for the 2018 election, citing a desire to bring ‘big change’ to a public education system that has ‘settled for mediocrity.'”

The two tangled last time on opposite sides of many Californians’ sense that teachers unions had often become an obstacle to improving education quality statewide. “They split over the Vergara court decision that held teacher-tenure protections discriminated against poor and minority students,” as CalWatchdog recalled previously. “Torlakson took the side of the unions and supported the appeal; Tuck made sustaining the decision a keystone of his campaign.”

“After Torlakson beat Tuck in a close election, 52 percent to 48 percent, Democrats hoped to unite on education and put their divisiveness behind them. But UC’s tuition hikes reopened the wound, putting officeholders in an awkward political position and pushing instinctively liberal students to oppose policies set by Democrats.”

Shifting agendas

Now, Tuck’s plans have focused around budget oversight and teacher quality. In his campaign announcement, “Tuck said his campaign will focus on ensuring that Gov. Jerry Brown’s new school funding formula – which provides additional money to districts with large numbers of poor children, English learners and foster youth – is really funneling money to the neediest students and that its accountability measures are more understandable for parents and the public,” the Bee noted.

“He also said California’s efforts to address its teacher shortage ‘so far have been way too small.’ He would consider raising compensation and changing training programs to get more potential teachers into the profession.”

More conciliatory

The rhetoric reflected a desire to stake out reform territory that would not prove as bitterly divisive as in 2014. “Tuck, 43, said he continues to favor revising the state’s tenure law, granting due process rights in less than two years, and revising the state’s teacher evaluation system,” according to EdSource. “But the issues of overriding importance, he said, are the need to establish ‘phenomenal’ training and mentoring programs for principals and new teachers and ‘for more support for students with the greatest needs.’ There was an overemphasis in the last campaign on the 10 percent of the issues that were divisive and less on the other 90 percent, he said.”

Tuck’s words also worked to calibrate expectations to the reality of the superintendency. “The position has little direct authority over California’s schools, but Tuck said he would use it to set a direction for the governor, State Board of Education and Legislature,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Tuck previously led Green Dot Public Schools, a Los Angeles-based independent charter school chain that operates with a teachers union contract, and the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, a school turnaround organization. He has spent the last two years working as an educator in residence at the New Teacher Center.”

Torlakson’s own time has been consumed of late with education issues affecting undocumented residents. He recently “urged the state’s immigrant students not to be fearful of applying for the California Dream Act, a college financial aid program dedicated to helping undocumented students attend state universities and community colleges,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. “As of last Friday, the number of California Dream Act applications has declined by 42 percent this year, due to President Trump-spurred unease over possible deportations, according to the California Student Aid Commission, which receives applications from students.”

Declining to hear an appeal, the California Supreme Court brought an apparent end to the saga of California’s historic lawsuit against teachers union job protections, alleged to violate students’ constitutional rights. A majority of justices “declined to hear the case, Vergara v. California, and let stand an appeals court ruling that preserved an array of employment rights,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

“The outcome left some union opponents looking for a different battlefield in the ongoing wars over public education, while others said they should try the courts again. The Vergara litigation was closely watched across the country as a test of whether courts would invalidate rules that protect teachers on the argument that they violate the rights of students.”

In a twist that left reformers clinging to hope that the Vergara cause could still be advanced, the justices who declined to hear the case left the door open to an untested alternative. “The majority of justices didn’t say why they chose not to review rulings by the courts of appeal,” EdSource observed. “Lawsuits involving state education issues generally cannot be appealed to federal courts. However, Theodore Boutrous, lead attorney for Students Matter, said that attorneys were exploring that option or pursuing another lawsuit in state courts.”

Revolutionary potential 

Supporters of the defendants in the Vergara case, including some prominent state Democrats, breathed a sigh of relief. The persistence of the case had not only surprised unions and their supporters but forced them onto treacherous political terrain. At stake was a potent logic of argument seen by pro-union groups as a serious new threat to the status quo for teachers unions, which have attained substantial political power in California and other states. On the one hand, Vergara invoked the language of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, potentially recasting the debate over teachers unions in explicit civil rights terms. On the other, the case linked up high principle with the practical matters that most often animate change in the education system at the local level. “The main thrust of the suit’s argument was that students’ academic performance would improve if school officials were more easily able to fire bad teachers,” as UPI recalled.

“The plaintiffs challenged five statutes that offer teachers protection — including one that gives tenure after two years and another that makes it more complicated to terminate educators. Such protections have been in place in California and the rest of the United States for decades as a measure to bolster an often shallow candidate pool.”

At first, plaintiffs prevailed. But as the case made its way through the courts, trouble arose. “Los Angeles Superior Court ruled in favor of Vergara in 2014, but an appeals court overturned that decision in April,” the wire added, “which sent the matter to the California Supreme Court.”

Sharp dissents

Despite the majority’s decision, however, three justices dissented, warning that the scope and force of the claims in Vergara required the state Supreme Court at least to review them. Both Goodwin Liu and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar — “ardent advocates for the rights of minority children as law professors before Gov. Jerry Brown nominated them to the court,” as EdSource noted — insisted “that the appeals court set too high a threshold in concluding that an identifiable group of student, with common characteristics, had to be harmed – the basis for bringing a challenge involving a fundamental right to an education under the state Constitution.”

“Difficult as it is to embrace the logic of the appellate court on this issue, it is even more difficult to allow that court’s decision to stay on the books without review in a case of enormous statewide importance,” wrote Cuéllar, with Liu asking “whether the education clauses of our state Constitution guarantee a minimum level of quality below which our public schools cannot be permitted to fall.”

“At issue were five state laws that established layoff procedures based on seniority, laid out dismissal procedures and awarded teachers permanent status, known as tenure, after two years on the job,” as EdSource recalled.

Although teachers unions hailed the reversal, an appeal was all but certain, keeping California’s beleaguered education system in uncertain waters for possibly years to come.

The court rejected Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu’s holding that California’s teacher job protections “deprive poor and minority students of a quality education or violate their civil rights,” as the New York Times reported, “reversing a landmark lower court decision that had overturned the state’s teacher tenure rules.”

“In reversing the trial court’s decision, a panel of three appeals judges wrote that if ineffective teachers are in place, the statutes themselves were not to blame because it was school and district administrators who ‘determine where teachers within a district are assigned to teach.’ The laws themselves, the judges wrote, do not instruct districts in where to place teachers.”

Justice Roger Boren, writing for the court, concluded that the Vergara plaintiffs “ultimately failed to show that the statutes themselves make any certain group of students more likely to be taught by ineffective teachers than any other group of students,” as Southern California Public Radio observed. “Administrators — not the statutes — ultimately determine where teachers within a district are assigned to teach,” he went on. “It is clear that the challenged statutes here, by only their text, do not inevitably cause poor and minority students to receive an unequal, deficient education.”

Uncertain futures

The ruling immediately threw into question the fate of pending litigation around the country. “Parties on both sides viewed the Vergara decision as a bellwether for the nation,” the Los Angeles Times noted. “Similar litigation was filed soon after in New York; and on Thursday, just before the release of the appellate decision in California, another lawsuit was filed in Minnesota.”

“The case was being closely watched across the country by those who argue that allowing administrators to more easily fire bad teachers would improve schools and student performance. Right now, there are a series of job protections that can be invoked before school districts can remove a tenured teacher.”

Battle lines harden

Teachers unions and their supporters rushed to applaud the ruling, which spared them a politically dangerous humiliation; as the Sacramento Bee recalled, until Vergara, they had “easily batted back legislative challenges from groups seeking to overhaul the public education system by eliminating tenure and adding test scores to teacher evaluations.” As the Los Angeles Times noted, “union critics turned to the courts because teachers — ranking among the state’s most powerful interest groups — have been able to block substantial revisions to laws that protect them.”

“From the start, many Vergara supporters saw victory as a long shot but reasoned that the effort at least would keep teacher unions and their allies on the defensive — and call attention to parts of the system they wanted to change.”

But officials in the state GOP also spoke out fast, showing little concern that their political momentum had truly been blunted. Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes, R-Yucca Valley, expressed hope that the case rose quickly to the state Supreme Court. “Although I disagree with the court ruling, I know the fight to better our children’s education doesn’t end here,” he said in a statement. “Our children have a civil right to a quality education, and it is disappointing to see that the appeals court doesn’t agree.”

“Although this ruling is a disappointing win for the failing status quo in California, I am committed to continuing the fight to provide every child — regardless of background or zipcode — with a top-quality education that will set them up for success in the classroom, in the workplace, and in life,” said Education Committee vice-chair Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen, R-Riverbank, in a statement.

“Californians trust their public school teachers and want to spend more money supporting public schools, according to a recent poll. […] California voters also say they oppose the state’s strong tenure laws and believe that all public school teachers should be held accountable through regular performance evaluations, according to the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll, released this week.”

The results were seen by analysts as a danger sign for teachers unions, which have long tied the success of public education to their own strength. A growing consensus that the two have fallen out of sync would make it harder for unions to maintain the status quo, which has famously protected even bad teachers from losing their jobs.

“It’s worth watching what happens in California,” University of Oregon education scholar David T. Conley told the Wall Street Journal. “If a new model emerges it’s going to attract a lot of attention around the nation.”

Demographic differences

The poll also suggested that some sharp demographic differences persisted in how Californians perceive other controversial efforts at public school reform. The implementation of the new Common Core standards, for instance, has provoked outrage and resistance across the country — but not always from a strong majority.

In California, the poll indicated, opinion was divided over standardized testing of the kind Common Core favors. “A majority of Latino voters, 55 percent, said mandatory exams improve public education in the state by gauging student progress and providing teachers with vital information,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. But roughly “the same percentage of white voters said such exams are harmful because they force educators to narrow instruction and don’t account for different styles of learning.”

Life after Vergara

The political and legal weakness of California’s teachers unions was laid bare by the Vergara decision, which struck a strong blow against protective tenure practices by deeming them an infringement of students’ constitutional rights. “The case has produced a lot of headlines but very little movement inside the state Capitol,” as KQED observed. “And yet the new poll suggests real skepticism among the public. Just 7 percent of those surveyed believe the current two-year tenure threshold is the right level. And a whopping 82 percent believe that performance should play more of a role in deciding which teachers to keep and which ones to fire.”

One reason for Sacramento’s inaction: the final impact of the Vergara ruling has yet to be decided by the courts. As CalWatchdog.com previously noted, one recent Supreme Court holding on public housing law did give the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers some reason for optimism. Vergara‘s fate could hinge on a higher court’s determination as to whether it properly applied the so-called “disparate impact” standard:

“The analogies between Texas public housing laws and California education laws are not precise. But if [Supreme Court Justice Antonin] Scalia’s framing of what constitutes unconstitutional racial discrimination — conscious, intentional, consequential bias in the crafting of a law — holds for a majority of the high court, then the California education status quo is likely to survive the Vergara case.”

Private challenges

But in the interim, in Vergara‘s wake, unions have faced a wave of follow-on litigation. In addition to a broad challenge against collecting dues from all teachers, four state teachers have taken the unions to court over their use of dues “for political activities,” the Washington Post reported. “The plaintiffs argue that unions are violating their constitutional right to free speech by forcing them to either support union-favored causes and candidates or lose access to important job benefits. At stake are tens of millions of dollars in dues collected by the state’s two largest teachers unions,” the CTA and the CFT.

Although union leaders have responded to the litigation by portraying its backers as part of a broader crusade against unions of all types, the USC Dornsife/Times poll suggests that Californians are inclined to think of the role and power of unions at public schools as an issue distinct from broader debates over the strength and purpose of organized labor in America.

On one side are Democrats who favored the increases, including UC President Janet Napolitano, formerly President Obama’s secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; Regent Richard C. Blum, the husband of long-time U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; and the school’s overwhelmingly Democratic faculty, who seek the tuition hikes to fill their pension plan that is $25 billion underfunded and would benefit from the extra money taken from students.

Napolitano insisted the UC system could not maintain its “vitality” or “stability” without more money from students.

In the 14-7 vote, among those seven opposed were some heavy-hitters in Democratic state politics: Gov. Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins and State Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson — all just re-elected to their offices; and former Speaker John Perez. Also in this camp would be many students who have protested the increases.

Brown went to the extraordinary length of offering his own counterproposal, falling back on the traditional idea of convening a panel of experts to recommend a policy.

Although the split among Democrats has dominated the news, tuition has not been the only issue to introduce party fractures in recent months.

State Democrats previously divided on education in the wake of the Vergara ruling, wherein Judge Rolf Treu ruled that California’s teacher tenure system unconstitutionally violated students’ civil rights. The controversy helped tee up a close and rancorous race between union-backed incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and his challenger, Marshall Tuck. Both are Democrats.

But a broader range of issues also proved problematic. Environmentalists chafed, for instance, at Brown’s diversion of cap-and-trade fees into the costly high-speed rail project, which wouldn’t help reduce statewide emissions for years.

An open secret

The pensions crisis, however, has been quietly pushing Democrats apart. Outgoing controller and incoming Treasurer John Chiang, encouraged by Gov. Brown, developed a reputation for laying bare the abuses of pension funds like the California Public Employee’s Retirement System, whose pension-sweetening machinations recently drew the ire of the governor.

Chiang’s relatively bold stand has led some observers to speculate he could upset an anticipated struggle between Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris to replace Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate two years from now. For the moment, however, Chiang has helped drive a wedge into the Democratic Party by giving political cover to Democrats willing to object to California’s pension burdens. And though the pension issues at the heart of the UC tuition increase have been an open secret, they have yet to receive a commensurate amount of media attention.

As Bloomberg recently reported, the UC system operates an independent $90.7 billion pension fund, underfunded by about 20 percent. The state of California covers the employer’s percentage of pension costs for most state employees, but not for UC teachers.

Nathan Brostrom, UC’s chief financial officer, put the problem to Bloomberg in blunt terms. “Frankly, if the state were to pay that, we would not be proposing a tuition increase,” he said.

But Bloomberg pointed out, “Brown’s budget office says the pension system is independent and lawmakers have no input into how it is structured or the level of benefits provided. If the state were to pay more toward the university’s retirement costs,” Brown’s administration reasoned, “It would essentially be the same as giving them more funding.”

Given Sacramento’s current level of pension obligations — and the fraught politics surrounding the outcome of pension-fueled municipal bankruptcies in cities like Stockton — state Democrats have not been motivated to take on the UC’s massive pension obligations.

Student frustrations

Confusion and a sense of powerlessness among students have deepened the political impact of UC’s pensions.

At San Francisco’s UC campus in Mission Bay, where the regents gathered, “hundreds of students” staged angry protests, with some, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported, breaching “metal barricades and police security lines.”

Ry Rivard at Inside Higher Ed recounted the judgment of Student Regent Sadia Saifuddin, who told Regents she’d been obliged to take on four jobs to cover her schooling costs. Saying “students have always been taken hostage,” Saifuddin claimed “students have always had to pay the price of economic mismanagement by the regents and the state.”

The unions’ strategy of spending tens of millions of dollars — all of it ultimately snatched from taxpayers, who pay for the teacher salaries that fund union dues — on political ads paid off.

That means there’s little chance of immediate reform of the country’s most sclerotic public-school system, which perennially scores near the bottom on national test scores. As almost always in California, the unions win, the kids lose.

Still, things are developing in other areas. The Vergara court decision found that union seniority rules severely discriminated against disadvantaged kids — the very students the unions claim their political dominance helps. Torlakson backed the unions, natch. Tuck sided with the kids.

Latinos also are getting more upset every year with a system that just is failing their kids at every level. More Latinos are taking activist roles. One is former Democratic state Sen. Gloria Romero, who authored the “parent trigger” law, under which parents can fire an entire school administration for bad performance.

Tuck also is well positioned for 2018, should he decide to run again. Torlakson will be term-limited out of office. And California’s schools will be even more in need of reform.

John Deasy’s recent resignation as the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District ends three years of controversy. But a cloud of chalk dust remains over the mammoth district’s future.

Deasy conceded his policies sowed sharp disagreements. And a conciliatory statement by the LAUSD School Board acknowledged “academic achievement rose substantially despite severe economic hardships, and the students of the district have benefitted greatly from Dr. Deasy’s guidance.”

The LAUSD Board of Education tapped his predecessor, Ramon Cortines, 82, as an interim replacement, giving it time to find a longer-term leader who could take the troubled LAUSD in a new direction.

Deasy’s rocky tenure culminated in dual controversies — his emphasis on quantifying education improvement through testing and his strong personal push to increase the use of technology in the classroom. In the first case, critics said, Deasy contributed to a climate of stress and inadequacy for teachers unprepared to meet higher testing goals. In the second, critics blasted Deasy for overreaching with a rushed and ineffective $1.3 billion program to give iPads to all the district’s 650,000 students.

Testing trouble

Deasy’s reforms upset the L.A. status quo on a number of levels. As the Los Angeles Times observed, Deasy made waves with “a teacher evaluation system, stricter bars for gaining tenure, a classroom breakfast program and a stronger embrace of alternatives to turn around struggling schools — including charter schools and the complete replacement of staff.” Though most of these measures threatened to take control away from teachers unions, Deasy’s desire to hold teachers accountable through student testing drew the most ire.

Among administrators, Deasy wasn’t alone in taking that approach. Its prominence in the Common Core system, which is being implemented in California and many other states, led a growing number of unionized teachers to speak out in opposition.

Previous to his work with the Los Angeles schools, Deasy served as deputy director of education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Common Core has been closely associated with Bill Gates, who almost single-handedly fueled the initiative with millions in funding and closed-door lobbying.

With that background, few were surprised when the testing reforms Deasy advanced were “fought by teacher unions and some community activists,” who opposed “so-called corporate reform because it often involves data-driven performance reviews that can affect high-stakes personnel decisions,” according to the Times.

The limits of technology

In the worst ordeal of his time as superintendent, Deasy tried to swiftly implement a plan that would make iPads a classroom standard. Although a LAUSD investigation concluded Deasy did not act unethically, his effort became an albatross amid technological failures, vendor problems and student hooliganism.

As Time reported, some students “hacked the devices — which the district had said were meant solely for academic work — to enable more general use. And when the program began, some schools did not yet have proper wifi infrastructure that would allow all their students to be online at the same [time].”

On the positive side, the hacking crisis did show LAUSD kids were more adept in the growing high-tech economy than district officials suspected.

A brewing crisis

Deasy’s departure summed up a broader trend in education reform battles playing out nationwide. It pitted traditional allies against one another, including Democrats and their teachers union backers.

Democrats’ flagging credibility on education has been exacerbated this year by election-year politics and the Vergara ruling, which held California teachers union tenure protections unconstitutionally infringe on students’ rights.

But Democrats — like many pro-corporate Republicans — turned to a small network of wealthy, successful elites to respond to the nation’s systemic education problems. GOP heavyweights like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett lent their support to Common Core in an effort to broaden Republicans’ appeal — despite the opposition of many of their conservative allies.

And Democrats embraced the Gates and Deasy approach as a way of taking the focus off of teachers unions. Gates, the world’s richest man, is a Democrat.

Those reformers discovered, however, that the public education system could not be transformed effectively through testing or technology.

Deasy’s exit again puts LAUSD policy up for grabs, with potential reforms including the perennial proposal to break up the nation’s second most populous school district to make it more responsive to voters, parents and students.

The catalyst was the Vergara v. California case. Education scholar Joshua Lewis summarized it in the Washington Post, “In the most explosive education-related court ruling in a generation, [Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu] invalidated several laws dear to California teachers unions, including statutes that provide their members generous tenure rights and seniority protections and specify elaborate and costly procedures required to fire a teacher.”

In the decision, the judge held special protections for teachers “impose a real and appreciable impact on students’ fundamental right to equality of education and that they impose a disproportionate burden on poor and minority students.” He specifically cited two famous cases that prohibited segregated schools, Brown v. Board of Education by the U.S. Supreme in 1954 and Serrano v. Priest by the California Supreme Court in 1971.

For decades the CTA has enjoyed unparalleled influence and support among California Democrats. Now its unanticipated trouble has come at a moment when evidence suggests the CTA has concluded its political back is up against the wall.

The Vergara fallout

From the moment in June when Treu issued his sweeping ruling, policy observers warned the political tables were turning. At the state and federal levels, Democrats quickly divided, some lining up in defense of unions, others spinning the Vergara ruling as an urgent opportunity to improve education.

In a statement, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan took the latter approach. Calling the student plaintiffs “just nine out of millions of young people in America who are disadvantaged” by the current education system, he called Treu’s ruling “a mandate to fix” the system’s flaws. “This decision presents an opportunity for a progressive state with a tradition of innovation to build a new framework for the teaching profession that protects students’ rights to equal educational opportunities.”

California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, a codefendant in Vergara, is appealing the ruling. For years he has received strong CTA support.

Torlkason holds an officially nonpartisan position. But he has been challenged in his re-election bid by a fellow Democrat, former charter schools executive Marshall Tuck, who supports Vergara. Associated Press reported that Tuck, if elected, immediately would withdraw the superintendent’s office from the Vergara appeal.

Moreover, Tuck cautioned that teacher tenure should not be granted until at least four years on the job, instead of the current two. And he vowed to assemble a panel of education professionals and experts to propose revisions to California’s rules and regulations.

Another defendant in the case is Gov. Jerry Brown, who is running for re-election as a Democrat. He also is backing the appeal of Treu’s ruling.

Brown’s opponent is Republican Neel Kashkari, who said in June, “I applaud today’s ruling by Judge Treu, which recognizes that every student in California has a Constitutional right to a quality education but that their rights are being violated by failing schools.”

More legal trouble

The Vergara decision has proven to be just one challenge faced by the CTA. Leaked PowerPoint documents recently revealed the union has begun to reckon with the possibility that it will lose the ability to impose mandatory dues. A lawsuit brought by California teachers opposed to that dues scheme may soon be decided against the union.

As the suit moved forward in January, CTA president Dean Vogel told Fox News in a statement that the lawsuit’s aim was “to weaken unions, and the workers they represent.”

The recent PowerPoint slides indicated the union looks on the end of mandatory dues is a matter of “not if, but when.” At City Journal, Larry Sand observed the PowerPoint “offers a candid assessment of emerging legal ‘attacks’ in the wake of Harris v. Quinn,” a recent U.S. Supreme Court case holding the First Amendment exempts some part-time workers from involuntary union fees. “The high court is likely to take up Friedrichs v. CTA, a much wider-ranging lawsuit now pending before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals alleging that compulsory dues to public-employee unions are flatly unconstitutional.”

Looking for a firewall

CTA leaders have struggled even to rely upon the California state budget. Traditionally a place where CTA influence was freely wielded and powerfully felt, budgeting has now become a more complex and unfavorable process — despite the Legislature’s continued dominance by Democrats.

The Nov. 4 ballot includes Proposition 2, which boosts the state rainy day fund to 10 percent from 5 percent of general revenues. It is supported by many Democrats, including Brown. But the CTA has mounted a campaign to sink it.

A Sept. 16 poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found Prop. 2 leading by a comfortable margin of 43 percent to 33 percent, with 24 percent undecided. Voter passage of Prop. 2 would deal another blow to CTA.