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!”

Fight the Big Fight, CTA

You and I pay our taxes dutifully whether we have a good year or bad year, but California corporations only pay meaningful taxes (more than the minimal franchise tax) if they show a profit. And it only takes a few accounting tricks to erase a profit. Angry? Me, too. Now, let’s organize.

With estimates of this year’s budget deficit soaring to $24 Billion, state legislators are already shredding every bit of human decency and good government that is left in the state budget. California needs a fair tax policy and a new budget process. CTA is the organization that must lead the fight.

We can almost repeat like a mantra the things that are wrong with California’s political process: two-thirds budget requirement --  two-thirds local property tax approval requirement, Prop. 13, and no taxes on internet sales --  all wound up in an impossible constitution. The truth is that CTA can’t defend public education unless we fight for fair taxes and a fair budget process in California.

Of course, the anti-tax crowd is big and powerful. Beyond the Republicans in the legislature and the Howard Jarvis people who brought us Prop. 13, California corporations have been benefiting from our broken budget process and maligned tax policies for years, and won’t give up their legalized thievery willingly.  San Francisco Assessor Phil Ting wrote that the property tax contributions from corporations have declined steadily and dramatically since Prop. 13 was passed.   Meanwhile, the California Budget Project shows that both corporate income tax collections and the state sales tax collections have been steadily declining.

CTA might be the only statewide organization that has a strong enough core of local activists and staff in every community to take on these anti-taxers. With the strength of this grassroots base added to its powerful media and lobbying machine, CTA can move a political agenda like no other organization in the State -- if the fight strikes a chord with members.

The good news is that we have the moral high ground here. How can a state with so much accumulated wealth fail to provide quality education, health care, housing and transportation to all of its people? But we have to act fast to solidify our base of supportive legislators, then go on the attack and expose every indecent loophole and dysfunctional mandate in California’s budget process. One thing that is clear, there are a lot of outraged CTA members who are willing to fight this fight in their local communities. That is the most important asset we have.

Our state does not have to be broken. The fundamental fight on California’s tax policy is more important to teachers in California than any policy-wonk assessment-and-curriculum discussions being heard by any legislative committee.

For the sake or our schools, as well as our transportation systems, hospitals, senior care networks and the well being of our environment, the people of California need CTA to lead a fair tax and good government fight.

An Open Letter to the San Leandro School Board

Don't be THAT School Board

As you may know, the San Leandro Superintendent and the Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources are maneuvering to reduce the traditional staff calendar by one day.  The impact of such an action would effectively lower teachers' pay by more than one-half percent, finally making San Leandro teachers the LOWEST PAID IN ALAMEDA COUNTY.

They pulled the old "bait and switch" on the SLTA's bargaining team, coming to a deal with us at the table; then pulling the deal out from under our noses.  The Assistant Superintendent explained that you, the Board, had instructed him to pull the 186-day calendar, and negotiate a calendar that had one less staff development day.  When we asked him about the Board's decision, he admitted that you, the Board, had actually not taken such an action.  These tactics are arbitrary and capricious.  The administration is trying to shove a pay cut right down the throats of teachers.

No other neighboring school districts have enforced a furlough day for teachers.  And with School Services telling districts to restore services, they're not likely to.  The Assistant Superintendent has already told us at the table that he expects to withdraw most, if not all of the R.I.F. letters.  In addition, there is enough money coming in to restore cuts to the counseling programs and restore Class Size Reduction to 20-1 in K-3.  With the $1.6 million that the Superintendent found, the $2.25 million available in Tier 3 sweeps, and the $800,000 coming in from the federal bailout package that can be used to protect programs and jobs, you will still have a budgeting cushion in this difficult year.

Ultimately, however, the Administration cannot take this action without your approval as a Board.  Do you really want to be the board that cuts staff development and knocks  San Leandro teacher salaries to the lowest in Alameda County?

As the Board, the decision is yours.

Prop. 1A -- Frog Soup, Anyone?

You know the story of the frog who is thrown into a pot of water.  If the water is too hot at the beginning, the frog jumps right out.  But if the water is comfortable enough at the beginning, but then the temperature is slowly increased, the frog will stay in the water until it is boiled alive.  That's exactly what Californians will be doing if we vote for Proposition 1A -- slowly, but permanently destroying public education and public services in California.

Proposition 1A, and all of the little attachments, is bad for our schools and bad for the people of California.  Whatever short-term benefit we get from the state's budget-rescue package pales in comparison to the long-term disasters that await education and other important programs which are supported by the state.

I'm having a hard time getting the "spending cap" to make sense in my mind when I also realize that there's no "human-dignity floor," or a level of human-needs services that we also agree never to go below.  We've already cut many of our state programs so severely that the next step is to eliminate many vital programs altogether.  The state budget is already rigged so that it's impossible to get new revenues and new programs in place, so every cut is permanent.

The other dynamic is that the fastest growing part of the budget is prison funding, carrying with it a host of mandated funding increases.  With mandatory sentencing laws and 3-strikes laws on the books, along with federal court mandates to dramatically improve its abysmal prison health care program, the prison-funding part of the budget can only increase.  Which means that with a spending cap, the rest of the budget can only go down.

And, we're locking in the spending cap at a shockingly inadequate funding level.  Our schools are already the most poorly funded schools in the country.  Sure, the temporary pay-off in Prop. 1B will keep us at 48th or 49th out of 50 states for a few years, but that's as good as it will ever get!   Mental health programs have already been decimated, and Prop 1E will take more.  Prop. 1D is going to tap into children's services.  We're robbing our own kids, and this is the best we can do?

I'm also deeply dismayed that my own union, CTA, is endorsing this package.  Remember the good ole' days when CTA used to fight against Schwarzenegger's hare-brained ideas.  Thankfully, the California Federation of Teachers is opposing Prop. 1A, and so is the California Nurses Association, SEIU and an expanding group of other wiser labor unions.  

California needs a better deal.  Let's scrap California's budget process altogether, with its un-democratic two-thirds majority requirement for new funding, get rid of Prop. 13, and  write a new state constitution.

Please vote no on 1A.

Racial Impact of RIFs

Lost in the outcries over the state budget and the painful cuts to our schools is the racial impact of those cuts.  If the youngest teachers in California are given pink slips, who will the students see in their classrooms?

 

Teachers of color are more likely to lose their jobs than white teachers.  San Leandro is not unlike most districts in California. More than 70 percent of the students are people of color, but more than two-thirds of the teachers are white.  Yet, at a CTA-hosted meeting of San Leandro teachers receiving RIF (reduction in force) notices, 23 teachers showed up, more than half (12) were people of color and 21 were women.

 

Of course, the RIF lists are determined by a combination of factors, especially seniority and appropriate credentials for the teaching assignment.  But older teachers are more likely to be white, and teachers of color tend to be younger, with less tenure.  So after the cuts are finalized, our kids of color (the majority throughout California) are more likely to see teachers in the classroom who don’t look like them.

 

The bad news is magnified when you consider that the schools likely to see the greatest turnover are the schools with the least-tenured teachers.  Those schools tend to be more urban, more diverse, and more impoverished. The bigger the district, the bigger the impact. 

 

So in schools where talented young teachers of color have stepped into leadership roles, many of those students will now see older, whiter teachers fill those classrooms, teachers who haven’t established relationships with the students or their parents.

 

The truth is that students will be seeing less of whichever teacher they have, with the dramatic increases in class size that are coming from the budget cuts.  No surprise, that impact will also be greater in schools with more kids of color.

The New Debate on Merit Pay

It seems like everybody is crying out for this teacher merit-pay idea, if only it weren't for the big, bad teacher Unions who are in the way.  Apparently, the Unions' only real interest is in protecting a bunch of miserable older teachers who can't teach, and only show up because they're after the free money.

Well, I'm not buying it, mostly because I don't know any teachers who are like that.  The truth is that most miserable teachers who hate kids and hate teaching get out of the profession.  It's not exactly a low-stress job.  I think the life span on a bad teacher tops out at about one year.

Too Little, Too Late?

CTA President David Sanchez called me last night.  He wanted to make sure I got his invitation to one of the "Pink Friday" events being coordinated throughout California, a series of vigils to mourn the loss of public education in the Golden State.

I didn't get to speak with him because I hadn't arrived home yet, so he just left a message on the answering machine.  All right, I know it wasn't actually the real David Sanchez, but I appreciated the robo-call reminder.  It was the second big reminder.  CTA had sent me a pretty pink sticker advertising the event a few days earlier.  They must have spent a lot of time and money putting this series of events together.

I guess CTA has the money to spend now because they saved up so much during the actual budget fight, when the Union basically didn't show up while legislators were taking the wrecking ball to our schools.  Okay, I'm being a little harsh and bitter.  There were those nice holiday cards I dutifully sent off to assembly people and senators when our CTA staffer came to one of our local meetings.  CTA paid for the cards and the postage.  Then there were those radio ads.  And I noticed the TWO pages of the "California Educator" magazine dedicated to saving Prop. 98.  That must have taken hours for a CTA organizer to write and edit.

But the truth is that I heard more about the fight to save our schools from the school administrators association.  They at least coordinated a series of legislator visits during the last months of the budget fight.  I mean, where were the teachers?  Where was the largest, strongest political organization in California when the impact on its own members would be so devastating?

CTA should have been targeting the districts of those Republican assholes who were leading the "no-new-taxes" fight.  They should have been running ads in all the local newspapers about what the cuts would mean to public education -- with the intent being that we would never let the cuts happen.  They could have created an ad campaign so that voters in every Republican's Senatorial district would see what 50 kids in a classroom might look like with no books and supplies.  They could have led a series of "work-to-rule" days throughout the state to demonstrate what it looks like when our schools lose all that funding.

I guess CTA was too busy to do all of that because they were planning the "Pink Friday" vigil.  I love a good funeral.

My only hope is that it's not too late to get started on our fight to ward off the next round of budget cuts.