Dropout Nation

SEIU vs. AFT, L.A. Unified Edition: Last month, Dropout Nation detailed how the Service Employees International Union was emerging as an influential player in education policymaking — and the impact of its growing clout on the influence of the National Education Association and, especially, the American Federation of Teachers in the school politics arena. The latest example of how SEIU’s interests are running up against those of the AFT can be seen in Southern California as both unions backed different candidates in a special election run-off for an Los Angeles Unified board seat.

Last week, SEIU’s Local 99 endorsed the bid of Alex Johnson, a former New York City Department of Education official who is now an aide to longtime L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, for the board seat vacated last December by the death of Marguerite LaMotte. The move by the reform-minded SEIU local ran counter to that of the AFT local, United Teachers Los Angeles, which is backing the bid of George McKenna, a former L.A. Unified bureaucrat (and occasional foe of Supt. John Deasy) best-known for being overseeing Miramonte Elementary during the tenure of the notorious former teacher Mark Berndt before he was indicted last year on 23 counts of criminal abuse of children at the school.

Certainly the move by Local 99 to back Johnson sets up a battle over advancing systemic reform. After all, Local 99 has long-backed Deasy’s efforts (and that of former L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa) to overhaul the district. Kathryn Torres, the sister of the Local 99’s president, and the head of the union’s political action committee, is planning to run against Bennett Kayser, the AFT’s errand man on the L.A. Unified board next year. Over the past three years, the SEIU unit has successfully backed Monica Garcia, the leading reformer on L.A. Unified’s board, and has unsuccessfully backed reformers such as Villaraigosa protege Antonio Sanchez, who lost to former AFT local honcho Monica Ratliff last year.

Given Johnson’s backing for expanding charter schools, as well as his ties with Ridley-Thomas (who has his own, albeit scant, reform bona-fides), Local 99’s endorsement is once again pleasing to Southern California reformers. Considering McKenna’s ties to the scandal-plagued Miramonte, whose entire teaching and administrative staff was replaced two years ago after the Berndt scandal (along with allegations of lewd conduct against another teacher at the school) came to light, Johnson could end up winning the seat to the delight of both SEIU and reformers.

But for SEIU, backing Johnson isn’t just about supporting Deasy’s systemic reform efforts.

As the primary bargaining agent for L.A. Unified’s janitors, cafeteria staffers, and other classified workers, Local 99 wants to put itself in the best position to ensure that the district provides its rank-and-file better compensation packages. Currently, the union is negotiating with L.A. Unified on a new contract, asking the district to increase wages by 15 percent over three years and offer a $15 minimum wage. Johnson, being the smart player that he is, enthusiastically backs the SEIU’s request.

Local 99’s demands come just as the AFT local is also pushing the district to increase teacher pay by 17 percent over a two-year period. Considering L.A. Unified’s woeful financial condition — including a 19 percent increase in its retired teacher and school employee healthcare costs between 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 (from $4 bilion to $4.8 billion), according to its most-recent annual report — the district is no position to grant double-digit pay raises to both teachers and classified workers. SEIU has already won a victory this month by getting L.A. Unified to hike wages for classified workers so they can make their full contributions to the California Public Employees Retirement System. For SEIU, a successful run by Johnson for the board seat furthers an already-strong negotiating position and puts the AFT, its biggest competitor for the district’s scarce resources, into a weaker one.

Meanwhile Local 99’s backing of Johnson also strengthens its ties to his boss, Ridley-Thomas, who is emerging as Southern California’s most-powerful black politician. This is a fact that the AFT local learned the hard way last December after LaMotte’s sudden death. Looking to replace LaMotte, who did its bidding on the L.A. Unified board, with another errand person, the union teamed up with Congresswoman Maxine Waters to push the board to appoint McKenna to the vacant seat. But Ridley-Thomas and his allies among Southern California’s school reform crowd, successfully forced the board to allow the seat to be filled by special election. By backing the wrong power player in Southern California black politics, the AFT weakened its own hand. That, by the way, magnified an even bigger loss earlier in the year when Deasy and his reform allies successfully stared down the union’s allies on the board.

A successful bid by Johnson helps SEIU, Ridley-Thomas, and reformers (especially Villaraigosa, who is still looking to eventually run for California statewide office). The big loser: The AFT local, for a loss means the loss of influence over the nation’s second-largest school district. But don’t think the AFT’s national headquarters isn’t paying attention to this race. A Johnson victory mean another prominent loss for the union in the nation’s largest state just after the Vergara ruling dealing an end to near-lifetime employment laws that sustained its influence.

Yet the AFT’s national office, along with the local, will have to tread carefully in opposing Johnson (and, ultimately, Ridley-Thomas). After all, the AFT’s relationship with blacks, troubled since the Ocean Hill-Brownsville battle in the 1960s, is even more so because of the strong support for charters and other reforms that ultimately help black children. Just because the AFT has bought the support of old-school civil rights leaders and groups such as Jesse Jackson and the NAACP doesn’t mean it can count on strong black support, especially when it means going up against a black candidate.

Whether or not Johnson beats McKenna in the run-off, two things are clear: That SEIU’s emergence as a force in L.A. Unified will come at the AFT local’s cost. And that this pattern will be repeated in every district throughout the nation.

And John Deasy Wins Again: Back in October, your editor predicted that one of the consequences of L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy’s successful push-back against traditionalists on the district’s board (and the AFT affiliate with whom they share common cause) is that he would get his way on some of initiatives he holds dear. This was particularly clear last week when the L.A. Unified Board approved a plan that is a key step to Deasy’s goal of embracing a weighted student funding approach to budgeting, handing more dollars to schools serving poor and minority children while allowing principals to manage their own budgets.

The approved plan technically directs Deasy to develop so-called “equity-based index” — a version of the poverty indexes used by states such as Indiana — to direct $800 million in so-called supplemental funding coming from California state coffers to district’s neediest children. The move was driven in part by the Golden State’s senseless move last year to ameliorate the effects of effectively ditch full state funding of districts and schools and go back to the old approach of local property-tax based funding. But in the process of dealing with that change in state funding, traditionalists on L.A. Unified’s board effectively gave in to Deasy on an issue on which they had steadfastly opposed him.

Last year, fresh off of a string of victories that included replacing reformer Nury Martinez with more-supportive former AFT local honcho Monica Ratliff, the AFT successfully convinced traditionalists on L.A, Unified’s board to mandate the district to hire more teachers, guidance counselors, and other staff across the board regardless of the needs of the schools and the children they serve. This ran counter to Deasy’s plans to restructure the district’s budgeting process toward a weighted student funding approach, which would effectively direct more money to schools serving poor and minority kids. Not only did Deasy declare that he would ignore the board’s demand, traditionalists were criticized by allies, including the Los Angeles Times‘ editorial page, for engaging in fiscal and educational fecklessness.

But traditionalists had their way until both moves by the state government and their own politically-hamfisted moves gave Deasy the advantage.

First came Gov. Jerry Brown’s successful move to eviscerate the state’s school funding approach and end the status it shared with Indiana as the only state to fully fund district and school operations. Your editor thinks that Brown’s move was wrongheaded for a lot of reasons (including the fact that districts are now empowered to oppose any efforts to expand charter schools because they can now claim that it takes dollars out of their coffers). But the one beneficial effect of the overhaul is that it has given reformers and children’s rights advocates the potential to push districts into embracing weighted student funding formulas that best-serve the poorest kids. This happened in L.A. Board as the Advancement Project and other groups teamed up with Deasy’s chief ally on the board, Monica Garcia, to push for the plan.

But the effort wouldn’t have likely succeeded if not for the failed effort last October by L.A. Unified’s board president, Richard Vladovic, and traditionalists backed by UTLA to force Deasy out of the superintendent’s office. Deasy would have likely resigned if not for his well-played leaks, which then rallied reformers in the City of Angels and the rest of the nation to force Vladovic and his crew to back down and sign Deasy to a new contract. Because traditionalists, especially the AFT local, lost so publicly and badly, Deasy now has a stronger hand to get what he wants. At the same time, Deasy can beat back those funding initiatives that traditionalists demand. This was made clear on Tuesday when Bennett Kayser, who is the AFT’s most-steadfast ally on the board, withdrew a request to spend $44 million more over the next three years on the district’s early childhood education programs.

Deasy still hasn’t shown to your editor’s satisfaction that he will be bolder in advancing reform than he has been throughout his tenure. But in moving closer to a weighted student budgeting formula, Deasy is doing the right thing by the most-vulnerable children in L.A. Unified’s care.