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CER NOTE: The following is an important accounting of the latest attack on the autonomy of California’s charter schools.
Charter school freedom just entered the "two step back" phase, I fear.
On Wednesday, April 7, San Francisco Democrat Carole Migden introduced AB 842 (see www.ca.sen.gov for full text). The legislation would make all California charter school staff employees of the sponsor district and subject to the sponsor district's collective bargaining agreement. This bill passed the Assembly Education Committee (the bill passed in a Democrat controlled legislature).
I can't begin to describe how devastating this bill will be to California's charter schools. It is stupidly written. It would technically make charter schools the ONLY public schools subject to MANDATORY collective bargaining in California (in California teachers and other classified staff vote district-wide on whether they want to be represented or, in the event they already are covered, whether they want to "decertify" or opt out of a previously imposed agreement).
California charter schools have been enormously innovative in their governance and management/labor arrangements. California education labor unions in particular have expressed the desire for "shared governance" (between bosses, workers, parents, and even students). Charter schools have made that wish a reality ("principal-less" schools, parent/teacher co-ops).
Several powerful community organizations (Conservation Corps, Urban League, Delancey Street in San Francisco, which supports ex-convicts and their families) operate as not-for-profits and sponsor charter schools. Teachers in these schools are employees of the not for profit. Many charter schools have governance structures where teachers and other employees serve on the governance committee or board.
Under collective bargaining laws and most district contracts, these arrangements would be banned.
"It would take away probably the most important freedom that charter schools have," said Eric Premack, director of Charter Schools Development Center in Sacramento, "It would not only force them to bargain collectively, but to bargain as part of the existing bargaining units," Premack said.
"If this passes, we're dead," said Yvonne Chan, the nationally recognized principal of the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center (the school was visited by First Lady Hilary Clinton and members of the U.S. House of Representatives). "If this passes it will be the districts and the unions that run charter schools."
NOT ONE SINGLE SUPPORTER OF MIGDEN'S bill asked whether California's current charter law, amended last year, has been good for students. Politics – not the welfare of students – proved uppermost on their mind.
Glendale Democrat Scott Wildman, a former organizer with United Teachers Los Angeles, said that the bill "will bring the charter school movement into the regular educational process."
Wildman is right, and that is precisely the problem.
The recent NAEP tests reinforce the problem because it placed California virtually at the bottom in reading scores, below Mississippi and Louisiana.
BUT, in the midst of all this gloom in California, I got a little boost and a reminder of why I bother with all this. (The voucher movement in California got a few more supporters from charter school ranks given the shenanigans in the California Assembly this week. "We might as well close all charter schools and start fighting for vouchers," says Yvonne Chan.)
The Oakland Unified School District passed SIX charters this week, five sponsored by one of the most dynamite community organizations in the nation, the Oakland Organization of Community Organizations, an affiliate of the Saul Alinksy-inspired Pacific Organization of Community Organizations. The Organization of Community Organizations got me involved in the charter movement in the first place, when they fought the battle for one of California's first inner city charter schools, the Jingletown Academy, a middle school for Latino youngsters (over 50%, including girls, say they were members of gangs at one time).
The first five are a partnership between the Organization of Community Organizations and the San Diego-based School Futures Research Foundation, which operates five other charters in California's inner cities (Watts, East Palo Alto, etc) and several in Washington DC. This "outside" sponsorship riled the Oakland NEA affiliate (outside money and rumors that families and teachers will have to buy from Wal-Mart, etc., etc.) Oakland IS a union town and several OUSD school board members expressed dismay that this community group, one of the most powerful community organizations, was at odds with one of the most powerful unions. (The Organization of Community Organizations brought out a force of more than 200 parents, children, and family members to the school board meeting, a quantum amount over the number that normally attends OUSD school board meetings, and a move not lost on the OUSD school board members).
As one progressive board member recounted, "I began to think about why I was here . . . it is for the parents and students, for high student performance, small and safe schools…" The same board member went on to list all of his priorities for Oakland children (including toilet paper in the school bathrooms). He ranked all of his concerns ABOVE any concerns that were expressed by the teachers' and classified unions.
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Pam Riley is Director of the Center for School Reform at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, and can be reached at 415-989-0833.
The Center for Education Reform is a national, independent, non-profit advocacy organization founded in 1993 to provide support and guidance to individuals, community and civic groups, policymakers and others who are working to bring fundamental reforms to their schools.
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