The Los Angeles-based Parent Revolution group, which focuses on improving education and increasing educational opportunities for poor minority students, analyzed 44 LAUSD schools with weak test scores last school year. At these schools, only 20 percent of students met or did better than state math standards and only 28 percent in English.

Yet last school year, 68 percent of teachers in these schools were not subject to official evaluations – either through oversight or via exemptions ordered by their principals. Of teachers who were evaluated, 96 percent were found to meet or do better than district performance standards. Over the past three school years, the figure edged up to 97 percent getting positive evaluations – meaning only about one in every 30 evaluated teachers is found wanting.

“We do see this in other districts, where almost everyone has a satisfactory rating and it’s disconnected from student achievement,” Seth Litt, Parent Revolution’s executive director, told the Los Angeles Times. “It shouldn’t be disconnected.”

The findings parallel those that emerged from the landmark Vergara v. California lawsuit, in which nine students from state public schools represented by civil-rights attorneys hired by the Students Matter group alleged five state teacher job protection laws were so powerful that they had the unconstitutional effect of keeping incompetent teachers on the job and funneling them toward schools in poor communities.

Evidence presented by the plaintiffs in the case showed that only 2.2 teachers on average are fired each year for unsatisfactory performance in a state with 275,000 teachers at its public schools.

The case’s primary focus was on Los Angeles Unified. In a twist that few expected, some of the most powerful testimony against the teacher protection laws came from then-LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy. He testified in early 2014 that even if a teacher were “grossly ineffective,” it could cost the district millions in legal bills to fire the teacher.

Later that year, state Judge Rolf Treu agreed with the plaintiffs that the five teacher protection laws unconstitutionally deprived the students of their right to a good public education. Treu likened the laws’ effects to those of segregation before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Treu’s decision was overturned on appeal on the grounds that the trial failed to clearly establish a factual nexus between student performance and the job protection laws.

3 state justices wanted to hear teacher tenure case

But education reformers were somewhat heartened by what happened next. Three members of the California Supreme Court wanted to hear an appeal of the appellate ruling, suggesting at the least some interest in Treu’s reasoning, which was mocked as novel and weak by attorneys for teacher unions. While they were voted down by the state high court’s other four justices, they could be a factor in future litigation.

As for Los Angeles Unified, litigation over school practices affecting minorities and high-needs students has been common for decades. In September 2017, for a recent example, the district reached a $151 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU over the improper diversion of Local Control Funding Formula dollars that were supposed to be used to help struggling students in poor communities, especially English-language learners.

LAUSD was also the target in 2010 of what a federal government statement called “the first proactive civil rights enforcement action taken by the Department of Education under the Obama administration” – prompted by what then-Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the district’s failure to adequately educate many Latino and African-American students. The case was settled in 2011 after the district agreed to make several substantial changes meant to improve these students’ performance.

But evidence presented in the Vergara case showed no subsequent gains by these student groups.

Los Angeles Unified has 640,000 students, making it by far the largest school district in California. Only the New York City school system, which has about 1 million students, is larger in the U.S.

The 2018 governor’s race got off to an informal start last week with candidate forums in Anaheim and San Francisco.

Former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom leads all gubernatorial candidates in polling and fundraising. A September Berkeley IGS survey showed he had support from 26 percent of likely voters, followed by Republican businessman John Cox with 11 percent. In campaign finance filings from July, Newsom had $5.3 million in donations this year, state Treasurer John Chiang $2.6 million, Villaraigosa $2.3 million and former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin just over $300,000. His fundraising advantage is even bigger when available funds from previous years are included, an August Los Angeles Times analysis noted.

In the San Francisco forum moderated by Chronicle editorial-page editor John Diaz, Newsom showed why he was recently endorsed by the California Teachers Association. He declined to discuss the specifics of the Vergara v. California case, which pose difficult questions for social justice activists. In the lawsuit, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge found in 2014 that the state’s teacher job-protection laws were unconstitutional because they had led to schools in poor minority communities being much more likely to have ineffective teachers and much more likely to face major layoffs in years with budget cuts. An appellate court threw out the trial court ruling.

Villaraigosa was the only Democratic candidate in the forums to support the Vergara plaintiffs, saying it had long been evident in Los Angeles that tenure and seniority laws hurt schools with heavy concentrations of English-language learners.

Newsom declared that the issues in the Vergara matter had been “litigated” and said that if tenure and seniority changes were needed, they could be collectively bargained. “In other words: They would not happen,” Diaz wrote tartly in his Chronicle column about the forum.

Worries about cost of single-payer dismissed as ‘specious’

On health care, all four Democrats support the concept of a single-payer system, the biggest issue of the California Nurses Association, which endorsed Newsom nearly a year ago. But while Villaraigosa and Chiang have said California needs to figure out how to pay for such a system, Newsom says concerns about cost are “the most specious argument” against a state health-care-for-all system. Senate Bill 562, a bill committing the state to single-payer, passed the Senate earlier this year but stalled in the Assembly after estimates that its annual cost could be $400 billion – more than double the entire state budget.

If Newsom and Villaraigosa finish first and second in the June “top two” primary and give voters a choice between two Democrats in November 2018 – as happened in California’s 2016 U.S. Senate race – teacher tenure/seniority laws and how to adopt and pay for single-payer could dominate the general election fight.

In the forums, there was little difference between the two men on other top issues. Both agreed with the need to build millions of new housing units, to resist Trump administration immigration policies and to provide much more money to public schools.

There is a possibility other prominent Democrats might get in the race. The filing deadline for the June 5 primary isn’t until March 9, and there has been speculation that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti might jump in. But Sunday, Garcetti said on Twitter that he was definitely not going to run for governor.

The issue involves the contentious matter of teacher job protections, which the union says are necessary to counter unfair and politically motivated firings. Education reformers believe such protections – tenure, a seniority-based layoff system, and the long and costly dismissal statutes – deprive some students of a quality education.

The main dismissal-related measure this year is Assembly Bill 1220, which extends the time period before teachers are eligible for tenure, at which point they can only be fired for certain types of misbehavior. The bill would extend the probationary period to three years for districts with more than 250 students and mandates an individualized improvement plan for teachers in their third year.

Currently, teachers are eligible for tenure after just two years, and they must be told whether they will receive tenure after only 18 months. That forces school districts to make tenure decisions rather quickly. The bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, and other backers argue that “districts would make wiser hiring decisions with more time,” according to EdSource, which recently analyzed 10 education-related bills that have passed the Assembly or Senate but still must be approved by the other house.

This is the latest bill that responds to issues raised in a much-publicized California legal tussle. In the Vergara case, nine public-school students filed suit against the State of California and the California Teachers’ Association claiming these policies violate the California Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. As Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu explained in his June 2014 decision, the plaintiffs argued that these protections “result in grossly ineffective teachers obtaining and retaining permanent employment, and that these teachers are disproportionately situated in schools serving predominantly low-income and minority students.”

Treu agreed with the plaintiffs. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience,” the judge ruled as he tossed out as unconstitutional teacher tenure and other job protections, including the “last in, first out” seniority system under which younger teachers are the first to go whenever districts must implement layoffs. The appeals court overturned the ruling in 2016, pinning most of the problems on poor decisions by the school district rather than the job-protection statutes.

Later that year, the state Supreme Court declined to review the case on a 4-3 vote, thus letting the appeals court’s decision stand. But the controversy didn’t subside. In direct response to the appeal court ruling, reformers introduced Assembly Bill 934 last year to extend the tenure process to three years and allow districts to negotiate an “alternative teacher dismissal process,” according to the bill analysis. The CTA opposed the bill, which died in committee.

The union likewise opposes this year’s bill. “AB1220 is the wrong solution to support good teaching and learning, and it’s disappointing that leaders in the Assembly refused to work with educators to improve the bill,” said CTA President Eric Heins in a June 2 statement. “Forty-six other states provide due process rights to teachers on day one. California is taking a step back by adding another year without any rights for our newest educators.”

Reformers argue that including new rights for probationary teachers from “day one” would make it even harder to get rid of those teachers who don’t make the grade. They note that 42 other states have probationary periods ranging from three to five years.

“California has one of the shortest times for a teacher to demonstrate classroom readiness and achieve permanent status,” according to a statement from Weber’s office. “A statewide survey of 506 teachers in traditional California schools found that 85 percent of teachers think that tenure decisions should be made after at least three years of classroom instruction. Only 15 percent of teachers found California’s current two-year timeline was sufficient.”

Backers of extending the probationary period point to statistics raised in Treu’s decision. The judge pointed to testimony suggesting that 1 to 3 percent of California public-school teachers are “grossly ineffective,” which amounts to 2,750 to 8,250 such teachers statewide. That’s a large enough number to have “a direct, real, appreciable and negative impact on a significant number of California students,” he wrote.

While AB1220 will be heard July 12 in the Senate Education Committee, another high-profile education bill this year has reformers concerned. It would ban for-profit charter schools, beginning in 2019. Backers argue that it’s a misuse of tax dollars to fund charters that have the goal of maximizing profits. Opponents argue the bill is part of a broader attack on charter schools and note that for-profit online charters provide needed services for a small segment of students with special needs or who are bullied in traditional schools.

There are other education measures that are still alive in the Legislature. As EdSource explained, they would “require more accounting for spending under the Local Control Funding Formula, mandate a later start time for middle and high schools and further restrict student suspensions.” But the teacher tenure and for-profit charter measures promise to be the most contentious matters for this legislative session, and the ones most important to track.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

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.”

On the heels of the reversal of the years-old Vergara decision, which had imperiled the Golden State’s protective teacher tenure standards in the name of civil rights, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco added to the controversy by ruling against plaintiffs claiming a right to a quality education. The divided court held “that California’s anemic level of school funding does not violate students’ constitutional right to an education of ‘some quality’ because no such right exists,” as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 

The 2-1 decision “upheld a judge’s dismissal of a suit filed by some of the state’s major participants in public education — school boards and administrators, the California Teachers Association and State PTA, and nine school districts, including San Francisco and Alameda,” the paper added. “The plaintiffs argued that a state that trails nearly every other state in per-pupil spending, staffing and student achievement violates California’s 1879 constitutional guarantee of a school system that encourages ‘the promotion of intellectual … improvement.'”

Wrestling with rights

For now, the decision puts California students and teachers in a precarious, and possibly untenable, position. On the one hand, the current Vergara ruling has denied that students have a right to an education that trumps teachers unions’ interests in protecting failing teachers.

“The appeals court suggested that any fallout from failures to oust bad teachers should be blamed on local school administrators, not the California laws that provide the framework for the system as a whole,” as the San Jose Mercury News recalled.

On the other hand, the new District Court ruling has denied that students — this time backed by unions — have a right to an education that meets some qualitative standard. In the wake of the shift toward implementing Common Core, the state’s educational bureaucracy has labored to impose and meet new quantitative educational standards. At the same time, activists have pushed for California’s educational system to expand and centralize even further, despite its current dysfunction and uncertainty.

A high-powered commission convened by Common Sense Media, a non-profit childhood advocacy group, recently urged “that all 4-year-olds in California have access to transitional kindergarten (a public school-based preschool program) or other high-quality preschool,” as Education Week noted. “All children 3 and younger should also have access to high-quality care regardless of their ability to pay, the commission’s report states.” Gov. Jerry Brown has doggedly negotiated against his own party in Sacramento to block the big budget allocations that such a new statewide pre-K regime would require.

Language changes

Complicating the picture yet further, a coalition of activists have placed the so-called Multilingual Education Act on the ballot this November. Amid persistent concerns that children in immigrant families can only be integrated fully into California society if they are educated early into English fluency, the ballot initiative would “substantially revise Prop. 227,” the 1998 Ron Unz-led measure that mandated English-language public school education, according to PBS. Part of the raft of new changes to the state’s Smarter Balanced testing regime, implemented in accordance with Common Core, saw officials embrace a more lenient attitude toward multilingual education.

“This year the Smarter Balanced test will allow students to control the volume and pitch on the computer program that reads a question to a student and that reads glossary words related to questions on the test. The test will also now provide Spanish language glossaries to help students who have a disability and who are classified as English Learners,” Southern California Public Radio reported. In March, Unz declared his candidacy to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., in order to rescue Prop. 227. “The primary factor behind this sudden decision on my part was the current effort by the California Democrats and their (totally worthless) Republican allies to repeal my 1998 Prop. 227 ‘English for the Children’ initiative,” he declared in a statement.

CalWatchdog Morning Read – April 15, 2016

By CalWatchdog Staff

Hello, everybody! A California appeals court on Thursday reversed a two-year-old landmark decision that upended teacher tenure laws.

The Vergara case challenged several state laws establishing layoff procedures based on seniority, dismissal procedures and how tenure (permanent status) was awarded. Presiding Justice Roger Boren decided the plaintiffs failed to show how the tenure laws “make any certain group of students more likely to be taught by ineffective teachers than any other group of students.”

“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,” Boren added.

The ruling is a big win for unions and is likely to be appealed. CalWatchdog has more.

In other news:
– In honor of Tax Day (which is Monday), a new Field Poll says that 54 percent of Californians think their income taxes are too high. Unsurprisingly, that sentiment is more popular with Republicans (80 percent said they pay too much) than Democrats (only 42 percent said they pay too much).

– Income taxes generate roughly two-thirds of the state’s revenue. Nearly 90 percent of that comes from the top one-fifth of taxpayers ($91,000 annually and above), which is the only group of taxpayers whose average income has increased over the last twenty years, reports The Sacramento Bee.

– Two more state lawmakers are asking for UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi to step down in response to several unflattering stories by The Sacramento Bee about outside positions she held and a six-figure effort to scrub the Internet of negative details of an 2011 pepper-spraying-of-students scandal. CalWatchdog has more.

– The legislature approved $176.6 million “to conduct testing and cleanup of lead contamination in the neighborhoods surrounding the closed Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

Assembly:
– Gone ’til Monday at 1 p.m.

Senate:
– Gone ’til Monday at 2 p.m.

Gov. Brown:
– No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com
Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp
New followers: @POLSAnnapolis @Perdi5en5

Read more

“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.

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System, one of the world’s largest pension funds, has found itself in the spotlight. Recently, state Democrats ensured that CalSTRS divested from coal and guns. But diminishing returns on investment have grown the pension fund’s unfunded obligations, according to a report issued by an independent auditor. “As of June 30, 2015, the net pension liability for the State Teachers’ Retirement Plan increased by $8.9 billion to $67.3 billion due to lower investment returns during fiscal year ended June 30, 2015 as compared to last year,” the report noted.

Drawing fire

Critics pounced on the news, characterizing it as effectively an off-ballot issuance of debt equal to what’s on offer this coming November. (“On school construction, a proposed $9 billion bond issue has qualified for the November ballot,” as George Skelton observed at the Los Angeles Times.) “The $9 billion addition is as real as any other debt. Arguably it’s more real because, as the Stockton decision demonstrated, bankruptcy courts are more likely to cut bond obligations than pension obligations,” warned Govern for California co-founder David Crane, referencing the recent high-profile determination that the city of Stockton would not renegotiate pension deals in order to help it emerge from bankruptcy.

“Including interest, this $9 billion debt will devour more than $20 billion that would otherwise benefit schoolchildren. Looked at another way, just one year’s interest on this debt is almost as large as the expected growth in state support for education in the current budget year.”

An uncertain future

But the debt forecast for 2016 has been uncertain. The school construction bond measure has run up against opposition from powerful forces to the left of center. Gov. Jerry Brown, for instance, “is opposed to more bond debt,” as Skelton noted. “And teachers unions don’t want a school bond on the November ballot to compete against their anticipated tax increase proposal.” The CTA, for instance, has so far opted not to take a position on the $9 billion bond. “But the union is working on an initiative to stop the scheduled expiration of some temporary taxes that voters approved in 2012 with Proposition 30,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. “Various proposals are in the works to raise at least $5 billion a year by extending some of those taxes.”

Schools themselves have not been immune from criticism. Seeking a culprit for the derelict condition of many state schools, U-T San Diego blamed “the Legislature’s decision during the Great Recession to suspend the state mandate requiring that districts spend at least 3 percent of their budgets on maintenance.”

“Some districts essentially gave up on such maintenance and have not ramped up maintenance to old levels now that school funding has rebounded. When there is little money in the operating budget for maintenance, some districts — including San Diego Unified — have used borrowed bond money to pay for routine upkeep.”

The controversy over the responsibility of school unions and public pensions for accumulating debt has played out at a time when the costs of CTA’s political influence have increased. “The CTA has become a force in Sacramento by pouring millions into influencing ballot measures and electing lawmakers, then millions more lobbying legislators after they take office,” the Mercury News recalled. “The union’s formidable political operation — spending about $200 million on campaigns and lobbying in the last 15 years — is funded by roughly 300,000 classroom teachers who pay approximately $1,000 each in annual union dues.” In 2016, the union will face two landmark lawsuits — one that has reached the Supreme Court, and another, in California, where the Vergara lawsuit is on appeal.

The tension has been on broad display in recent days as law enforcement unions and police chiefs react angrily to a new law signed by Gov. Jerry Brown that is driven by the assumption that officers routinely act in racially biased ways:

For civil rights activists, Brown’s action was a big step toward protecting minorities from racial profiling.

 

For many in law enforcement, the measure creates a massive new bureaucratic headache that will do little to illuminate the question of whether police treat minority groups fairly.

 

“It’s a terrible piece of legislation,” said Lt. Steve James, president of the Long Beach Police Officers Assn. and the national trustee for the California Fraternal Order of Police.

 

Written by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, in response to fatal police shootings of unarmed black men and other people of color, the legislation will require officers to collect data on anyone they stop, including “perceived” race and ethnicity, the reason for the encounter and whether arrests were made.

That’s from the Los Angeles Times’ account of the uproar over the new law. It is certain to be contentious going forward, especially given the likelihood that some departments will simply ignore it and say they don’t have the resources to spare.

Vergara suit based on claims of poor treatment of minorities

A potential for an even bigger rupture lies with the Vergara v. California lawsuit. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu ruled in 2014 that five state laws protecting veteran teachers’ rights were unconstitutional because they had the net effect of funneling the most troubled teachers to poor minority communities. Treu said this amounted to a de facto segregated school system but stayed his decision pending an appeal.

The deadline for filing “friend of the court” briefs in the appeal was Sept. 16, and the prominence of those who chose to do so reflects the high stakes in the case:

Parties filing in support of the two teacher unions, the California Association of Teachers and California Federation of Teachers, and the state, which are all co-defendants, were Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, Equal Justice Society, Education Law Center, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Advancing Justice-LA, according to a press release from CTA. …

 

Joining a list of education chiefs from around the nation, student groups, business organizations and others who filed briefs supporting the student plaintiffs was [Arnold] Schwarzenegger and [Pete] Wilson, who wrote, “At stake in this case is not only the future of California’s students, but also the future of California,” said the former California governors, both Republicans. “As students who learn from grossly ineffective teachers face lifelong setbacks, by extension, California’s future economic and social success is similarly impacted.”

That’s from L.A. School Report. What’s noteworthy is the absence of Latino groups either supporting or opposing Treu’s ruling, even though its most sweeping findings were largely based on the treatment of Latino students in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Former state Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, has been an outspoken critic of how public education works in California. She has long asserted that Latino state lawmakers are scared of taking on the CTA and the CFT, especially if they hope to end up in leadership positions. Whether that’s true or not, few Latino politicians beyond Romero and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have taken on the unions.

Black lawmaker leading Democratic critic of teachers unions

Instead, the most prominent Democratic critic of teachers unions is the same African American lawmaker who wrote the police profiling bill. Weber introduced a measure this spring that would have required teacher evaluations to include student performance. It was quickly killed in committee, prompting Weber to sharply criticize her fellow Democrats and their union backers.

A Los Angeles Times poll earlier this year showed support for the sort of changes sought by Weber and other reforms, in particular having teacher layoffs be determined by classroom performance, not seniority.

Weber and the California Legislative Black Caucus have also expressed concerns about the implementation of 2013’s Local Control Funding Formula, a state law championed by Gov. Jerry Brown that was supposed to directly help struggling students by providing them with more resources and attention. A January Legislative Analyst’s Office report looked at 50 California school districts, including the 11 largest, and found none had adequate safeguards in place to prevent LCFF dollars from going to teacher compensation or other uses.

The appeals trial in the Vergara case is expected to begin later this year with oral arguments. Plaintiffs have said they expect the appellate ruling by January.