California’s funding of education has gone from $50.4 billion in the fiscal year that ended in 2012 to $74.5 billion for the current fiscal year – a

Nevertheless, this summer has seen a steady stream of stories from school districts up and down the state warning of tight budgets, coming layoffs and worse. Ron Bennett, CEO of School Services of California, which advises more than 85 percent of the state’s nearly 1,000 districts, told the Bay Area News Group that one-third of districts face deficit spending in the 2018-19 school year and two-thirds do in 2019-20.

The common problem facing all districts is the phased-in cost of the 2014 bailout of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers agreed to a plan in which school districts would increase their contributions by 132 percent from 2014-15 to 2020-21 – picking up 70 percent of the cost of the bailout, with the state general fund and teachers covering the rest. This is accomplished by gradually raising district’s pension contributions from 8.25 percent of teacher pay to 19.1 percent of pay, which sharply increases compensation costs that already go up annually no matter what because California teachers typically get “step” raises of 3.5 percent to 4 percent in 15 of their first 20 years in the classroom.

The next most common problem is declining enrollment. ADA – average daily attendance – is the fundamental formula determining how much money the state gives each school district. While California’s population continues to inch up, in December, its birth rate fell to a historic low. Urban, suburban and rural districts have all been buffeted as a result.

Teacher pay raises add to fiscal stress

Exacerbating these two structural problems is the fact that after the state’s 2008-2012 revenue recession ended, politically powerful local teachers unions won substantial pay raises in many districts.

The most telling example: In the state’s largest district, Los Angeles Unified, United Teachers Los Angeles was given a 10 percent pay raise in 2015.

This has added to budget and management problems that have led one prominent educator, former Long Beach Unified and San Diego Unified Superintendent Carl Cohn, to call for LAUSD to be broken up.

District officials tried to put up a happy front after its 2017-18 budget was adopted last month. But a Los Angeles Times review of long-term spending plans suggested district officials were not taking serious steps to deal with a 2019-20 deficit expected to be more than $400 million. It noted that while L.A. Unified’s enrollment, now 514,000, continues to drop, the district has more administrators than ever.

Similar problems are seen throughout the Golden State.

Once adjusted for district size, Rim of the World Unified in the Lake Arrowhead area of San Bernardino County is in among the worst binds of any district in the medium term. The 2017-18 budget is not expected to run a deficit, but huge cuts are certain in 2018-19, when the six-school district has to deal with a projected $2.1 million deficit, and schools may have to close or consolidate in 2019-20, when a $4.5 million shortfall has been forecast.

In the affluent Silicon Valley, districts are also being pinched. The San Jose Unified School District needs to cut 150 jobs before its 41 schools reopen next month. Cupertino Union School District and its 25 schools, which made $2.6 million in cuts this spring, are sure to need another round of layoffs by next spring, when a $5.6 million deficit is expected.

The Napa Valley Unified School District, facing a $12.4 million shortfall in a $167 million 2017-18 budget, laid off 50 teachers who hadn’t gained tenure yet and eliminated 60 classified positions. Trustees are already warning of even worse cuts in coming years.

Such budget bloodbaths are the norm across California.

One of the relatively few bits of good news on the school finance front comes – unexpectedly – from Washington. After Donald Trump won the White House, some Democrats expected Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to seek huge cuts in federal education aid to states – especially liberal ones like California.

But EdSource reported in May that the Trump administration’s budget plan would reduce annual federal education funding for the state from about $4 billion to $3.64 billion – a cut of less than 10 percent. The proposed cuts would be proportional – meaning Trump didn’t single out states he lost for less generous treatment.

It was reportedly the first raise in eight years for the rank and file, and the negotiations were handled by United Teachers Los Angeles.

According to an L.A. Times story on the payout:

The tentative three-year deal would cost $875.3 million for all employees, about $285.6 million more than the district’s original offer, according to a memo from Supt. Ramon C. Cortines to board members. Included in the increased amount is an additional $31.6 million for other employee groups, such as administrators, whose contracts entitle them to more money if other bargaining units negotiate better deals than their own.

Teachers unions in Los Angeles and around the state have battled for raises over the past year.

In San Diego, teachers seek a 10 percent wage increase over two years. In San Francisco, teachers obtained a 12 percent raise over three years. And teachers in a San Jose high school district got a 5 percent raise earlier this year.

Many of these teachers are members of either the California Federation of Teachers, the state affiliate of the national American Federation of Teachers; or the California Teachers Association, a chapter of the National Education Association. Together, the two represent 445,000 members.

The CFT files an annual financial disclosure with the U.S. Department of Labor. An analysis of the CFT’s annual labor department filings shows that yearly dues have increased 33 percent since 2005 – about the last time the L.A. teachers got a raise – from $361 annually to $482 last year. Dues have not increased since 2011.

Meanwhile, membership has increased from 51,712 active members in 2005 to 55,647 last year.

Among other findings in the analysis, which was done by accessing reports through this Department of Labor portal:

• The salary of the secretary/treasurer has increased 40 percent, from the $116,786 received by Michael Nye in 2005 to the $163,812 paid to Jeffrey Freitas last year.
• Pay to the president of CFT dropped from the $121,170 paid to Mary Bergan in 2005 to the $84,274 paid to Joshua Pechthalt last year.
• The federation added a salary to the upper ranks: $80,000 to Jim Mahler, head of the Community College Council.
• Overall, total officer disbursements rose 60 percent between 2005 and 2014, from $333,126 to $536,604.
• Employee disbursements, including political organizing, went from $3.6 million in 2005 to $4.9 million in 2014, an increase of 36 percent.
• Loans payable at the end of 2014 were zero compared to $3.2 million in outstanding loans in 2005.
• In 2005, the federation paid $62,000 to Sacramento PR ace Stephen Hopcraft. While Hopcraft’s website says he is still working for the federation, no payments to him were reported for last year. Instead, it reported spending $113,000 with Senders Communication Group in Canoga Park.
• For in-house lobbying at the statehouse, the CFT paid $248,781 in 2013-14. In 2005-06, it paid $329,260.
• The federation now has an unfunded pension liability of $5.1 million compared to zero in 2005. Total liabilities are now $30.1 million compared to $6 million in 2005. The growth has been driven by new accounting rules that require broader reporting of liabilities coupled with a steady creep in unfunded pension benefits.

The data shows a strong performance for the union in a state that has maintained its organized labor base while the rest of the country has seen an explosion of successful right-to-work legislation – Michigan and Wisconsin notably – and an increase in non-union workplaces.

Union membership in the U.S. has dropped from 24 percent of workers in 1973 to 11.1 percent in 2014, according to unionstats.com.

Membership in the public sector, though, has remained in the 30-something-percent range since the late ‘70s, settling at 35.7 percent last year.

In California, membership has remained above the national average since 2004, with 17.5 percent of workers represented by a union last year compared with 18 percent in 2004. The state ranked fifth in the U.S. for overall representation behind Hawaii, New York, Alaska and Washington.

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com. His website is www.Avalanche50.com

Photo of school bus by flickr user Kevin42135, used via a Creative Commons license

But this in some ways is a sad day for the good guys. To a degree that many didn’t expect, Deasy has taken on the United Teachers Los Angeles, the union chapter that is so powerful that it dominates the broader strategic thinking of the California Teachers Association, the most powerful force in Sacramento. And it is the UTLA, not Deasy, that is primarily responsible for the long list of scandals and anti-student spectacles in Los Angeles Unified.

There could be 15 entries. But here’s the top three:

1. The Vergara case. In June, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge who analyzed the effect of teacher tenure laws on education in LAUSD’s struggling schools concluded that they resulted in treatment of minority students that was so unacceptable that it violated California constitutional guarantees of access to a quality education. The neediest students, Judge Rolf Treu held, usually had the weakest, least experienced teachers.

Minority mistreatment, as it turns out, is a theme …

2. The Mark Berndt debacle. The veteran white teacher at a 99 percent minority south Los Angeles elementary school was caught in 2011 feeding semen to his students, but the district had to pay him $40,000 to get him to resign — thanks to extraordinary job protections the UTLA demanded and won for teachers.

3. The L.A. Times’ expose — which came out two years before the Berndt scandal — of all the teachers who not only didn’t get fired but stayed on the job even after their depraved behavior was exposed.

Taunting a suicidal student? What’s the big deal?

The anecdotal lead on the first story in the expose was absolutely wrenching:

The eighth-grade boy held out his wrists for teacher Carlos Polanco to see.

He had just explained to Polanco and his history classmates at Virgil Middle School in Koreatown why he had been absent: He had been in the hospital after an attempt at suicide.

Polanco looked at the cuts and said they “were weak,” according to witness accounts in documents filed with the state. “Carve deeper next time,” he was said to have told the boy.

“Look,” Polanco allegedly said, “you can’t even kill yourself.”

The boy’s classmates joined in, with one advising how to cut a main artery, according to the witnesses.

“See,” Polanco was quoted as saying, “even he knows how to commit suicide better than you.”

The kicker: Polanco was a UTLA official, not just a member. And, after he got a vigorous defense from the UTLA, Polanco received only trivial punishment from LAUSD.

A teacher taunting a suicidal child is no big deal in a district run by a teachers union, you see.

In California, where unions have long wielded more influence than in most states, the protests took an interesting turn. That is, Los Angeles teachers mostly just focused on themselves — not students.

Los Angeles teachers, who are relatively powerful, drew light to a very specific issue, one they are facing heat for (even from Democratic legislators). The Los Angeles Times reported that United Teachers Los Angeles members protested “against the conditions under which the L.A. Unified School District handles teachers who are facing allegations of misconduct.”

L.A. Unified teachers are represented by both the CFT and the larger California Teachers Association.

The union members held “vigils” for teachers who were spending time in Los Angeles Unified School District offices because of their impending misconduct cases. The union focused on defending teachers plausibly accused of wrongdoing — from sexual misconduct to aggressive behavior against students.

One teacher, explaining the protest, asked the Times, “What kind of school district removes a teacher from the classroom if a 13-year-old said so?”

The protests are a response to a crackdown on misbehaving teachers. After the district was forced to pay Miramonte Elementary teacher Mark Berndt — who sexually molested countless children and photographed them ingesting his bodily fluids — $40,000 to settle his case, the district opened up hundreds of cases against teachers. Those protesting said that the district had gone too far and was no longer defending students, but attacking teachers.

Context

In order to understand why Los Angeles teachers would focus on such a specific issue, particularly on a day meant to focus on broader educational problems, one should understand the context of just how powerful teachers unions are in California.

A report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute ranked teachers unions in California as the sixth strongest in the United States.

The report noted several interesting facts about the influence of California teachers unions in politics. Teachers unions gave 4.3 percent of all money received by political parties in California.  And more than 12 percent of all members of the California delegations to Democratic and Republican national conventions were members of teachers unions.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the University of Southern California School of Policy, Planning and Development, told CalWatchdog.com that teachers unions, which typically align with the Democratic Party, “basically own the Legislature.”

Further, California teachers unions have the strongest bargaining power of any state in the entire country.

“California has the most union-friendly bargaining laws in the nation,” the report noted, making Monday’s protest all the more perplexing.

The report concluded:

The Golden State’s teacher unions are quite powerful; in a state that does not spend much on K-12 education, they’ve gathered considerable internal resources (and do not shy away from dedicating those resources to state politics — with apparent success, given their present reputation for influence). Although charter and employment policies are not well aligned with traditional union interests, California is exceptionally permissive when it comes to teacher bargaining rights.

Jeffe added that, while teachers unions are already very powerful in California, they will likely see their clout increase even more in the coming years.

“The power of the teachers unions may only increase, because the power of Republicans in the Legislature has already begun to decrease,” she said. “The Republican Party in this state is losing registration and losing clout.”

By Chris Reed

I have frequently referred to the Mark Berndt/Miramonte Elementary School case while blogging, including just yesterday. Los Angeles Unified officials concluded protections for teachers were so strong that it couldn’t get rid of Berndt without first paying him $40,000 — even though there was loads of evidence he fed sperm to his grade-schoolers.

The United Teachers Los Angeles must have been proud. The CTA and its affiliates block crackdowns on pervert teachers at the local level as well as Sacramento. But thankfully the Berndt case had a scared-straight effect on LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy and LAUSD board members. They’re pushing back. A package of stories in the Los Angeles Daily News details the crackdown.

300 teachers ousted, nearly 300 more may be

“Under the zero-tolerance policy that Deasy enacted after the Miramonte Elementary sex-abuse scandal erupted in February 2012, the school board has voted to dismiss more than 100 teachers for misconduct, and accepted the resignations of at least 200 others who were about to be terminated. Nearly 300 additional teachers accused of inappropriate behavior remain ‘housed’ in administrative offices while officials investigate the complaints.”

The Daily News offers up examples of the nauseating misconduct that UTLA members believed they could get away with almost certainly because they had got away with it for years.

 “‘God, how do I even explain this?’ Deasy asked, before recounting that a Westside elementary teacher in his early 60s ‘trained’ his students to give him a full-body massage for 20 minutes every day while he ‘rested.’ Youngsters, including some special-education students, later told officials that he shouted profanities, spanked them and hit them with rolled-up papers when they misbehaved.

“The initial incident was reported by a classroom aide assigned to help the special-ed students.

“That’s also how the district learned about a teacher at a San Fernando Valley elementary school who disciplined youngsters by locking them in a bathroom or barricading them in a corner using tables and chairs. ‘Maybe this will teach you a lesson,’ the teacher reportedly told the kids as they cried to be released.

“And that an Eastside elementary teacher used clothespins to pinch the ears of youngsters who weren’t paying attention to the lesson. The same teacher also discouraged thumb-sucking by putting nasty-tasting disinfectant on kids’ fingers and forced students to scrub their desks using cleanser and their bare hands.

“A rash of sex-related complaints were made in the weeks after the Miramonte scandal broke, including allegations of tickling and fondling, and inappropriate and vulgar comments made in class. One high school student said a female teacher inexplicably took her along when she went shopping for sex toys in Hollywood. … Nearly a dozen male teachers were fired for pornography found on their district-issued laptops.” 

Too many teachers seem to like hurt kids

Want some more? Here you go. Try not to get sick.

“Parents took their son to the hospital after he came home from his East ESC elementary school with blisters on his palms. Investigators found that the teacher forced the boy and a classmate to crawl back and forth on the pavement because they were late for school. The teacher, born in 1952, had several prior warnings about misconduct. He was fired in February 2013. …

“A teacher at a North ESC middle school twisted a student’s arm, with photographs taken to record the injuries. He’d been accused in 1999 of throwing a shoe and striking a child; in 2001, of throwing the contents of a desk at a girl who couldn’t complete an assigned task; in 2003, of violating a doctor’s orders that a student have limited activity; and in 2004 of throwing a clipboard at one student and hitting and pushing another. The teacher, born in 1961, was fired in February 2013. …

“A student complained that a male teacher, born in 1960, had deliberately touched him on the buttocks during class at a South ESC high school. Administrators found inappropriate posters and photos, including images of recreational alcohol and drug use, on the classroom walls. He was fired in January 2013. …

“A male teacher at a West ESC middle school was accused of showing students images of naked children and of adults wearing skimpy outfits. As the investigation evolved, he was accused of possessing a knife on campus and forging administrators’ signatures on purchase orders. The teacher, born in 1968, was dismissed in February 2013.”

A proud, proud day for UTLA and CTA

This is a proud, proud day for the UTLA and CTA. Union leaders must be puffing out their chests that these fine dues-paying members lasted decades before being found out.

Remember this key point. Most of the teachers forced out for appalling misconduct were at least middle-aged. That means they probably got away with this depraved behavior for decades — before the LAUSD board finally decided it would take on the UTLA.

Good for Deasy and the L.A. school board, and the L.A. Daily News as well.