CTA: Turn up the LOCAL Heat on the State Budget

It’s been great to see CTA stepping into the fight on California’s budget.  With 9,000 teachers marching to the Governor’s office in San Diego, or joining our sister Unions in the series of rallies on Wednesday at the Governor’s five regional offices, there is finally something to cheer about.  CTA’s website is also becoming a little more user-friendly for writing a letter to the governor and state legislators about the state budget.

Of course, news from Sacramento is still deeply disturbing.  If the only question is whether or not to suspend Prop. 98, we’re still going to lose.  Status quo keeps us behind.  For the future of California schools, we have to lend our voices to efforts to close the Prop. 13 loophole, end the two-thirds budget approval mandates, and build a progressive tax system.  Ultimately, we won’t win the state budget fight unless we bring it home into our local communities.  Legislators need to feel the heat from the people who will work to re-elect or un-elect them.  

This is the time of year when our local CTA activists are planning their Union activities.  We all know the strategies that work when we fight our districts for our contracts.  We use these strategies because they work, so we should use the same strategies for fighting our legislators that we use when we’re fighting for fair contracts.  Here are a few grassroots strategies that CTA locals can use to have an impact in the budget fight:

1. Letter writing/ Phone campaigns (Very Easy): Use leadership meetings and site meetings to write letters to legislative leaders and local media.  Start with a sample letter and addresses.  Then encourage each of your leaders to repeat that activity at their school sites.

2. Picket/protest/lobbying meeting at your legislators’ offices (A little more planning): Host a picket/protest at your legislator’s home office.  Democratic legislators should be encouraged to harden their stance on the need for more revenue.  GOP legislators should be cajoled into giving up their “no-new-taxes” pledge.  Invite the local newspaper, radio station, TV station or blogger.

3. “State Budget Crisis” forum (More planning… but really effective): Invite teachers, parents, media, community leaders and legislative staff.  Find a few teachers for the “panel” to talk about how budget cuts have already hurt “our” school and “our” community.  Make the case that more budget cuts will hurt more.  End the meeting by recruiting audience members to get involved with ongoing campaigns coordinated by CTA, the California Labor Federation, Close the Prop. 13 Loophole, and your local Union efforts.

4. House Parties:  Find members to invite neighborhood folks into their homes.  Share local stories about how the cuts have hurt our students so far.  Show CTA commercials and UTLA radio spots.  Raise money that can be used to air these ads in cities with targeted legislators.

Ultimately, the fight has to be fought at home.  The only way that legislators will move is when they feel the heat from their local community members.  But our locally fought efforts will be more productive if they are coordinated by a strong state organization. 

Take Action Now: Close the Proposition 13 Loophole!

Finally.  Someone is taking on Proposition 13.  Led by San Francisco Assessor Phil Ting, a new organization called “Close the Loophole” packed the house with more than 100 activists for its first organizing meeting in San Francisco last night.

The Close the Loophole campaign seeks to change Prop. 13 so that corporate land owners are forced to pay their fair share in taxes for the first time in 31 years.  The idea is to split the property tax roll so that grandma next door isn’t taxed out of her house.  But land owned by old monster corporations who never sell and never die will be reassessed so that they are forced to pay taxes at a level which is fair in 2009 dollars. 

It has almost become monotonous to talk about the impact of California’s budget crisis, but the devastation of our social programs has already begun.  The Split Roll change would raise at least an additional $7.5 Billion every year for California public services, which is a step in the right direction.

Many important Unions were there, including CNA, AFSCME and SEIU.  There were also a lot of community organizations.  And while there were a number of teachers in the crowd, California Teachers Association was notably missing. 

While teachers and students across the state are sweating out yet another devastating budget, CTA is still waiting to jump into the fight.  The good news is that there are a lot of allies who recognize the need to change California’s unfair tax policies, and they’re already doing the groundwork.  All CTA and its local leaders have to do is get on board.

Like all historic movements, it looks like this one has to start at the grass roots.  So, local Union activists, go to www.closetheloophole.com, and sign up.  Get the word out to the members in your local.  Facebookers can get recruit their friends by becoming a fan at www.facebook.com/ClosetheLoophole.  Then, encourage your CTA staffers, board members and state council representatives to take up this fight on a statewide level!

Many of you remember how powerful CTA was when working with the Alliance for a Better California to stop the Governor’s attacks on public services.  If so, you can imagine the incredible impact that we could have with a coordinated statewide effort to plug our members into this campaign.  It’s the right fight, and with 27,000 RIFs looming, it’s time to jump in.  

Dear Progressive California Legislator

California desperately needs a few courageous progressive legislators to take the “no more cuts” pledge.  If the Republicans can hold the whole state hostage and threaten to scrap our social fabric with their “no new taxes” pledge, then it’s time for a few equally stubborn progressives to refuse to play their game.

The last budget compromise was a disaster.  The cuts were devastating, and the proposed solutions were so deeply laced with poison pills (like the spending cap) that they didn’t have a chance.  Without a fair tax policy, one that features progressive taxes and cancels the loopholes that allow corporations to be virtually untaxed, the only California dream will be a recurring and deepening nightmare.

So, dear legislator, please…  take the “No More Cuts” pledge.  What have you got to lose, anyway?  When you ran for office, you promised your constituents that you would protect their well-being.  You talked about education, health care and the environment. You talked about building bridges between our diverse communities.  If you support the budget that’s being promoted by Democratic Leadership, all of those things will be torn apart.   

That’s not why you ran for office.  It’s not why we voted for you, and it’s not the legacy you want to leave when you’ve been termed out.  So, dig your heels in and stand up for California.  Your constituents (neighborhood folks, teachers, nurses, bus drivers, parents and their children) are paying attention.  Don’t agree to any budget that doesn’t significantly raise revenue.  Or at the very least, don’t agree to any compromise which doesn’t alter California’s undemocratic two-thirds mandates or the inequities of Proposition 13.

The money is there, even though the media, the Governor, the Republicans and the compromisers want you to believe that it’s not. California AFSCME found creative ways to raise $44 billion in more revenue.  Sure it won’t be easy to get it.  Yes, you need to somehow come up with two-thirds of the votes to pass a budget.  But THEY also need two-thirds of the vote to pass an almost-all-cuts package.  Without your vote and the votes of like-minded colleagues, it will be equally difficult to pass a cuts-only package.  That’s right, the rest of your legislative colleagues have to listen to YOU.  So hold out for a real solution.  And be loud about it.

I know what’s on the line.  The government will likely go through a partial shutdown when things don’t get neatly resolved by the end of June.  It can honestly be said that lives are on the line.  As a teacher, I know my paycheck is on the line.  And, you might lose a few legislative perks when the party leadership is trying to sell out the state on another doomed compromise package.

But if the leadership doesn’t come to grip with the need for more revenue, fairly extracted from the Californians who can afford it the most, then what are you, dear progressive legislator, in store for?  More years with more cuts.  California losing its once proud public education system.  Walls, both real and metaphorical, separating rich from poor.  More kids without the skills to join the workforce or pursue college dreams.  More people dying because health care services were cut.  A very ungreen environment.  Every year, again and again.  Until some group of progressive legislators finally stands up and says, “NO MORE CUTS!”

Wrecking Ball or Dynamite?

Seven years ago, George Bush's Department of Education drew up the demolition plans for our schools with "No Child Left Behind."  The crane with the wrecking ball in now in place, but now there is a race between Bush's "slow-death-by-testing" and Governor Schwarzenegger's dynamite, the proposed 11% across-the-board budget cut to our schools.

This month, teachers at my school sat through a briefing where got a doomsday glimpse of how Schwarenegger's budget mandates would tear our school apart, should the state legislature allow him.  In general, 80% of the cost of a school is paying for the people who work there.  An 11% cut would be almost entirely realized by eliminating the jobs of the people who work directly with our kids, especially teachers and support providers.

I teach in one of the most diverse communities in the nation.  The demographics span the American experience.  The income disparity runs from quite wealthy to very poor.  Along racial lines, we have roughly equal numbers of Latino, African-American, Asian and White students.  There are nearly 20 different primary languages spoken by students who attend our school.

Our principal was instructed to present the budget news to us as a menu of potential cuts.  We were asked, what programs could we live without?  For instance, we could cut library services.  (Libraries are so old-fashioned, anyways) or counseling services (middle school kids will just have to learn maturity on their own).  We could cut educational aides.  These are the people who give one-on-one support to English Language Learners (25% of our school population)  and kids with learning disabilities (5% of our population).

We could choose to live without campus security.  After all, by middle school, a thousand kids eating lunch with each other really should know how to be nice to each other.  Never mind that our campus security folks also serve as tutors, backup counselors, big-brother or big-sister, and sometimes provide the first smile of the day.

I suppose if we wanted to, we could increase class sizes a little more (35 teenagers in one classroom isn't already enough), or reduce prep periods for teachers.  The test-performance mandates which threaten to have our school taken over haven't been amended, but nobody's telling us that we get a free pass on that.

All I know is this.  The politicians love blaming the failure of our schools on teachers.  They love writing "accountability" measures into the law.  But where is the accountability for the politicians who would force our schools to even consider such institutional devastation?

Wrecking Ball or Dynamite?  Make way for the strip mall.