Master teachers: effective evaluations of teachers and principals

Was it SDUSD Superintendent Cindy Marten (above)
who convinced reporter Mario Koran that student test scores are no
longer of any interest to anyone in San Diego Unified for measuring
teacher performance? Or was it one of Voice of San Diego's donors?

Voice of San Diego education reporter Mario Koran isn't a big fan of objective measures of teacher quality. In the story below, he gives the impression that the current, failed practice of having principals do subjective teacher evaluations is just fine. Just because one school can improve without reforming this policy proves absolutely nothing. There have always been some schools that did a good job--but those schools were successful in spite of, not because of, having subjective teacher evaluations.

“The [San Diego Unified] district is focused on finding a way to replicate success like Marshall after it grew disillusioned with the school reform movement,” VOSD’s Mario Koran reports, “which focuses intensely on test scores as a way to gauge progress, and is now looking for a measurable alternative.”

Wait a minute. "Disillusioned with the school reform movement"? The whole movement? Everything? That's a rather sweeping statement. It implies that the school reform movement is limited to using "test scores as a way to gauge progress."

I would suggest that the district use the test scores intelligently, focusing intensely on the 10% of teachers who get the best improvement in student scores year after year.

It appears that VOSD doesn't want to focus on highly effective teachers any more than CTA does; they both prefer power politics for deciding which teachers are listened to.

Schools don't know who the best teachers are. The current process of principal evaluations (that often involve no classroom observations) is highly lax and political. Bad teachers with influence often get good evaluations; good teachers who don't support the agenda of the principal are often not fully acknowledged.

Schools would benefit if they had clear, unbiased information about which teachers were fully effective. For one thing, the best teachers could do training of other teachers, saving the obscene costs of hiring consultants selling the latest gimmick is monstrous.

But unbiased evaluations would interfere with school politics--and district politics. It would allow people to advance who weren't necessarily popular and politically connected--people who might change things, disturbing the smooth surface that covers up the dysfunction in our schools.

SDUSD's initial proposal to teachers April 15, 2014: district offer: A new evaluation article and process, focused on fostering meaningful professional growth and development for all certificated personnel

Here's another VOSD story:

The Case That Could Blow Up Teacher Tenure
By: Mario Koran
Voice of San Diego
April 28, 2014

Comments

DDunn
District Tenure:
In reading the San Diego board meeting agenda item re: Central Office Reorganization. This is when and how the district moves and shuffles worn out people and positions to create the illusion that something is improving. However some of the names and faces have been around and moved around for years. Not much will change, except the job titles and pay grade - look a bit deeper.

As for teacher evaluations - what is in place via State Assembly Stull Bill is quite adequate. It's the follow through by administrators that fails. Specifically, if an administrator finds a teacher as "needs improvement" or "not satisfactory", that administrator is required by contract to develop a plan (with a stringent timeline) to bring the teacher up to satisfactory - and this can take up to 2 years, and few administrators actually know how or what to do. (see SDEA contract Performance Evaluations). Also, by contract, an administrator can opt for a Special Evaluation at any time - but the plan, timeline, and work involved is heavy.

Now for student/parent evaluation input. Professionals need to be evaluated by professionals. So, next time you're out for diner with the family and get a "How'd we do" card from your server, hand it to your 10 year old to fill out. And for parents - your child is not the same child in class as she/he is at home...Sorry!

Kathy S

@DDunn But that rich guy Bill Gates says.....Gates "wants the country to spend $5 billion for every teacher in every classroom in every district to be filmed in action so they can be evaluated and, maybe, improve."

The philanthropist has dedicated resources in the last few years to identifying and developing effective teaching. His foundation funded the $45 million MET project designed to determine how to best identify and promote great teaching. They enlisted the help of 3,000 teachers and many experts to determine the best way to do this.

In regards to teacher evaluations, the MET project concluded that a three-step approach is best. This includes: student test scores, classroom observations by multiple reviewers, and teacher evaluations from students.

And cameras....

As for the Gates Foundation, this idea has been brewing for quite some time. Thomas Kane, a professor of education and economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the director of the MET project, said in a 2011 interview with Education Next that there are a lot of advantages to having cameras in classrooms. He said:

One is it gives you a common piece of evidence to discuss with an instructional coach or supervisor. Second, it will prove to be economically much more viable because you’re not paying observers to drive around to various schools to do observations. If a teacher doesn’t think that their principal is giving them a fair evaluation because of some vendetta, they can have an external expert with no personal ax to grind watch and give feedback. (Thomas J. Kane, a professor at Harvard, testifies for the plaintiffs in Vergara v. California)

Maura Larkins' comment

I agree with you that administrators tend to be very neglectful when it comes to working with weak teachers. But another problem is the principal's original evaluation of a teacher. Principals are in a difficult situation: they are vastly outnumbered by the people they're evaluating. They can be bullied by teacher cliques. As a result of this, and as a result of simply being fallible human beings, many principals give good evaluations to teachers who are their friends or allies, and bad evaluations to teachers who disagree with them. It would make more sense to have evaluations done by unbiased individuals, and let the principals do the follow-up. Also, it would be easier for principals to help teachers improve if they weren't the ones who gave the bad evaluation in the first place. The teachers couldn't tell themselves that the evaluation was biased, and they'd trust the principal more.

Maura Larkins' comment: Principals are NOT chosen from among the most effective teachers. Principals don't ask for advice and support from the most effective teachers. Politics and effectiveness do not overlap a whole lot. How are principals chosen? By very subjective means, heavily influenced by politics.

Chief educator: Q&A with Cindy Marten
By U-T San Diego
May 10, 2014

...A: An evaluation process is something that should be highly relevant and meaningful to our most effective educators, as well as helpful for our educators who are struggling. I always look at evaluation as a tool and a resource. I look at what I call growth and development of our teachers. And do we have an evaluation system that allows us to give meaningful, relevant feedback on an ongoing basis. It shouldn’t be once a year or twice a year where an administrator comes in a room and sits in the back for 45 minutes. Feedback needs to be something that’s ongoing and a teacher finds it most relevant when the principal knows instruction, the principal knows what high-quality teaching and learning looks like, knows when you’re able to deliver a lesson that meets the needs of every learner in the class not just learners that are struggling or learners that are achieving at high levels. I expect my principals to be in classrooms all the time...

One other part that got a lot of attention was parents and students. I think that’s one that people are very interested in and that parents and students are a part of a system that gives meaningful feedback to our educators. Vision 20/20 (the district’s long-term plan) was adopted by the board before I even began. The mission and vision around that is to have a quality school in every neighborhood, and we’ve defined quality as more than the API score, more than a test score.

...When it comes to the formal evaluation, the principal is the one who’s the evaluator. The principal is the one who went to college, has the administrative credential, has been trained on formal evaluation processes, but we know that when teachers get to hear immediate and direct feedback from a student and from a parent, that changes and improves their practice.

Chicago teachers strike to avoid effective evaluations of teachers

I am disappointed in Chicago teachers. If they don't want student scores used in teacher evaluations, then they should have long ago come up with an effective teacher evaluation system. They simply don't want effective evaluations because they don't want to admit that some teachers are much, much better than others. Here's my idea for how to use teacher evaluations.

From Wall Street Journal:

"The two sides have been negotiating for months over issues including wages, health-care benefits and job security. The city has offered teachers a 3% pay raise the first year and 2% annual raises for the next three years. The average teacher salary in Chicago is about $70,000.

"On Sunday night, city officials and union leaders said the wage issues aren't the sticking point. Rather, the two sides are at loggerheads over a new teacher-evaluation system and how much of it should be weighted on student test scores, and over job security for teachers laid off from low-performing schools."

In contrast, teachers in San Diego Unified agreed to concessions in the face of revenue losses by the school district, as discussed in Voice of San Diego:

"The tentative agreement rolls back layoffs thanks to concessions from educators, who agreed to forgo a series of pay raises they were promised by the school board two years ago. Union members also agreed to continue taking five unpaid days off for the next two years.

"A more controversial aspect of the tentative agreement is a provision that calls for teachers to take up to 14 additional unpaid furlough days if voters fail to pass either of two tax measures placed on November’s ballot. That would shorten the school year by as much as three weeks."

Chicago Teachers Go on Strike
By STEPHANIE BANCHERO
Wall Street Journal
September 10, 2012

Chicago's public-school teachers hit the picket lines Monday, shutting down classes for about 350,000 students in the nation's third-largest school district.

The strike came after the city and the Chicago Teachers Unions failed to reach agreement on a four-year contract. The two sides had been negotiating for months and kept talking until late Sunday night before the union announced the strike would go forward. It is the first teachers strike in Chicago in a quarter-century and the first in a big U.S. urban district since one in Detroit in 2006...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel criticized union leaders for not delaying the strike, given the progress both sides said had been made in talks through Sunday. "This is a strike of choice," Mr. Emanuel said at a news conference Sunday night. "And because of how close we are, it is a strike that is unnecessary." Union leaders said the city's recent concessions were effectively too little, too late, after what they have characterized as bullying in talks in the months leading up to the deadline... The conflict comes amid broader tension during the economic downturn between public-sector unions and state and local governments trying to plug budget gaps.

The Chicago battle has pitted Karen Lewis, one of the country's most vocal labor leaders, against Mr. Emanuel, one of its most prominent mayors and the former White House chief of staff for President Barack Obama. The Democratic mayor has made efforts to overhaul the city's public education a centerpiece of his administration.

The two sides have been negotiating for months over issues including wages, health-care benefits and job security. The city has offered teachers a 3% pay raise the first year and 2% annual raises for the next three years. The average teacher salary in Chicago is about $70,000.

On Sunday night, city officials and union leaders said the wage issues aren't the sticking point. Rather, the two sides are at loggerheads over a new teacher-evaluation system and how much of it should be weighted on student test scores, and over job security for teachers laid off from low-performing schools...

Camille Zombro Lashes Out at Her Successor

Voice of San Diego has provided an insightful analysis of former SDEA President Camille Zombro's open letter to teachers in San Diego Unified School District attacking current SDEA President Bill Freeman.

See all Camille Zombro posts.

'Our Union May Be on the Verge of Accepting Deep … Cuts'
May 14, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

...2. Zombro Lashes Out at Her Successor [as President of SDEA]

When my presidency ended in 2010, I proudly passed the torch to Bill Freeman, a site Association Rep. who told all of us he believed in (and campaigned on) our model of strong, member-driven unionism. Unfortunately, it is increasingly obvious that Bill is no longer committed to that vision. Rather than lead an aggressive fight to hold the School Board accountable for their unnecessary layoffs, he is now taking dramatic and abrupt steps to systematically dismantle the very foundation of the powerful union we have built: our democracy, our transparent communication with membership, and our tough stance in defending our jobs and our contract.

The SDEA became increasingly hard-line and isolated throughout the tenure of Zombro and her ally, Leedham. Apart from some subtle hints at reconciliation with the district, however, Freeman hasn’t offered much to suggest publicly that there is the sort of rift at the SDEA that Zombro is alleging. He has appeared in public with Zombro and has continued to say at board meetings that concessions are not the answer to the district’s problems.

3. There’s a ‘Tug-of-War’ Going on at the Union

Zombro writes:

Those of us inside the SDEA building have seen this coming for some time, resulting in a tug-of-war within the office over the fundamental direction of our union. On one side of SDEA’s tug-of-war have been Craig and I and thousands of you, fighting to keep SDEA’s contract closed while saving our valuable coworkers’ jobs. On the other side are Bill, a portion of the SDEA Board and a portion of the SDEA staff who want to “collaborate” with the District, possibly open the contract, resulting in significant salary and benefit concessions in the hopes that the District will reduce layoffs.

Again, this is fascinating because it gives some insight into the decision-making going on within the union. The organization, which has prided itself on presenting a united front in the face of recent financial storms, is clearly wrestling with the latest round of bad news, according to Zombro’s account.

We’ve seen signs before that there is division within the union’s membership. Earlier this year, two teachers sent us an open letter calling for the SDEA to change its firm position against concessions.

This is the first public recognition that those divisions go all the way up to the top of the union.

4. Zombro Claims She and Leedham Have Been ‘Purged’ From the Union

She writes:

Unfortunately I am writing to you today because our democracy — the open and sometimes raucous debate that defines us — is being threatened as current SDEA leadership shifts the direction of our union while actively working to discredit those who are speaking up against these actions.

Further: The stark reality is that Bill is driving out the opposition — me, Craig, and anyone else who pushes back. Bill has led the SDEA Board to demand Craig’s resignation after two months of unexplained paid administrative leave, and threw me out of the meeting where the decision was debated. Despite a permanent, legally binding contract (much like the one you and I enjoy), and a perfect performance record, Craig is being forced out with no just cause or progressive discipline, no chance to tell his side of the story, and without ever even being told what, if anything, he had been accused of. That should horrify anyone who believes their contract protects their employment status.

For the last two months, I have also experienced a level of personal harassment and villification that I won’t detail, but that no worker deserves to experience in the workplace or in her union.

To recap: Zombro was voted out of office earlier this year in the union’s elections. Leedham was placed on administrative leave, and the union has been extremely tight-lipped about what, exactly, they claim he has done to warrant his removal.

I’ll be pushing the union for more details on Leedham’s ouster in the coming days, in the light of these accusations from Zombro.

5. A Pressure Group Has Been Formed to Push the SDEA in a Certain Direction

Zombro writes:

So how do we get through this with our union intact? We step up our involvement and we stay involved. I sent this email to just about every teacher in the District I personally know. I know a lot of people… and so do you! Forward this email, tell them to forward it, and follow up with conversations because, as I always say, a flier or an email are only as good as the conversations that go with them.

Link arms with other SDEA members — don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do! In just one example, a group of teachers from several schools across SDUSD have formed the “Breakfast Club” (which SDEA leadership will likely discredit as a “splinter group” or a “divisive force”). They are a passionate and articulate pocket of SDEA members who are working together to push back against layoffs AND concessions — the core of the SDEA agenda — and I will be proud to start getting involved with their efforts as they grow.

So, Zombro appears to be calling on her union brothers and sisters to step away from the SDEA and join this new group that she may be willing to lead...

[Zombro’s replacement [as vice-president of SDEA], Lindsay Burningham, has also made clear that she hopes to work more closely in union with the district.]

Top Labor Leader Lorena Gonzalez Hints at Teacher Givebacks

Be sure to click on the following link to get the original story with lots of links to other stories:

Morning Report: Top Labor Leader Hints at Teacher Givebacks
By Randy Dotinga
Voice of San Diego
May 25, 2012

In almost as many words, the top labor leader in the region yesterday told the San Diego teachers union to get off the dime. Lorena Gonzalez's message: It's time for movement already.

What kind of movement? Forgoing pay raises instead of allowing one of every five teachers to be laid off? Well, Gonzalez, the most powerful labor leader in San Diego, didn't quite go that far. But she got close.

"It doesn't make any sense to play a game of chicken, it's not going to work on either side," she said. Gonzalez didn't let the district off the hook, saying it's got to do more to explain the options that exist.

Meanwhile, the teachers union president told the U-T that he wants to survey its members about what to do over the next few days to see how to proceed.

For a quick explainer, check out our Reader's Guide on the district's financial crisis.

• In letters, San Diego teacher Joe Wainio says it's time for his union to negotiate. "To say that our raise is non-negotiable, standing by while hundreds of our fellow teachers and other staff are downsized and the quality of instruction is necessarily compromised, is irresponsible and short-sighted."

Camille Zombro goes off: she appears to want power for herself, and silence from rank-and-file teachers

See all Camille Zombro posts.

Teachers Union President: No Concessions Planned
Updated: May 25, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

Bill Freeman, president of the San Diego Education Association, just called to respond to claims made yesterday in an extraordinary open letter from Camille Zombro, the former teachers union president.

In her letter, Zombro heaped criticism on Freeman, saying the union was close to offering concessions on pay and benefits, and claiming she and a fellow colleague were “purged” from the union because they refused to follow Freeman’s agenda for negotiating an agreement with the school district to solve its fiscal crisis.

Freeman characterized Zombro’s comments as “sour grapes,” and said several of the claims she made are “absolutely untrue.”

“It’s very unfortunate that Camille Zombro would do this during such troubling and difficult times,” Freeman said. “To take this divisive measure is very sad, particularly for someone who has supported her for many, many years.” Sounding emotional and tired, Freeman said he would talk to me more tomorrow. But I managed to ask a couple of quick, specific questions.

I asked why SDEA Executive Director Craig Leedham was removed from his office. Leedham was placed on administrative leave in March and Zombro claimed that he had been forced out, with “no just cause or progressive discipline.” Freeman would only say that Zombro’s claims are “absolutely untrue.” He said he would elaborate Wednesday on Leedham’s removal.

I also asked about Zombro’s claim that the union is close to making concessions. He said that was not accurate. Freeman said the union’s representative council, made up of reps from around the district, voted overwhelmingly to open lines of communication with the district. Just because the union’s talking to the district doesn’t mean it’s going to make concessions, he said.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to have a more in-depth conversation with Freeman on Wednesday.

A couple of other follow-ups to the Zombro story:

• The Breakfast Club blog, which was started to put pressure on the SDEA, and which yesterday featured Zombro’s letter, has a new post. This one is from union secretary-elect Michelle Sanchez, who claims that free speech is being stunted at the union.

Sanchez raises concern that the union is effectively seeking to censor “subversive” groups within it by changing its bylaws.

She writes:

I honestly can’t believe what is happening to our union or that our leadership is spending time, energy, and money on this when we have more pressing issues to deal with like 1,700 laid off members! I assume that these bylaw changes are in response to Camille’s email, and the efforts of myself and a group of other SDEA members to found the Breakfast Club Action Group… A group we founded only after being told repeatedly at the membership meetings to go organize ourselves to fight against layoffs and keep our contract closed.

We are hardly “subversive,” as we have a public website, and have been explicitly organizing to pressure the School Board to recall layoffs while keeping their hands off of our contract. How can we be “subversive” if we agree with SDEA’s message of “No Concessions! No Layoffs!”?

Camille Zombro is gone, but it seems the top CTA brass in Burlingame have an unchanged agenda

No Signs of Talking, Yet: Checking Up On the Teachers Union
May 3, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

I’m checking up on various recent high-profile stories at the moment, to see how those stories have progressed since we first reported on them.

Earlier this year, I spent a few weeks researching and writing about the San Diego Education Association, the union that represents local teachers. I wrote about the union’s move towards a more hard-line, isolationist philosophy over the last few years, and I covered a couple of big shifts in leadership at the SDEA.

The union’s being watched very closely at the moment because of the dire fiscal situation at the district. San Diego Unified issued more than 1,600 layoff notices to employees in March in order to close a projected deficit of at least $80 million. District officials say the only way to avoid those layoffs is for all employee unions to make concessions on their pay and benefit packages.

A large chunk of that projected $80 million deficit is due to a pay raise currently owed to educators that the school board agreed to in 2010. It comes into effect later this year.

The teachers union is far and away the biggest of those unions, and the school board, teachers and parents are all waiting to see if the recent ouster of two hard-line leaders will result in a softer stance from the union. Let’s take a look at what’s been happening:

Where We Left It

In March, controversial union Vice President Camille Zombro was voted out of office. Zombro’s ouster followed the removal of SDEA Executive Director Craig Leedham from his position two weeks earlier.

Zombro and Leedham were the architects of the SDEA’s shift towards its more hard-line stance. Under their leadership, the union cut off almost all non-formal communications with the district, drifted apart from fellow unions and even cast off an affiliated group of retired educators.

As detailed in this story, the union’s shift worried several former SDEA officials, who considered the isolationist approach largely counter-productive and urged the union to work with the district to forge solutions to the current crisis.

With Leedham out and Zombro coming to the end of her term, I’ve been watching for a thawing in relations between the union and the district.

Incoming Vice President Lindsay Burningham told me in March that she wanted to push the union in a more “positive direction.” And SDEA President Bill Freeman began to soften his rhetoric.

What’s Happened Since

District officials and board members have told me there has been no movement when it comes to discussing concessions. The union is not meeting with the district to negotiate at all, they said.

Burningham confirmed this Wednesday. But she said there have been several other positive steps forward. Union reps are meeting regularly with district personnel to talk about a whole host of things, she said.

“We’re communicating about the budget, being able to ask and answer questions, and move forward in other areas,” Burningham said. “In some areas, the communication has opened up a little more, as people are more comfortable speaking with each other.”

There are also other recent signs that the union’s ready to start working with the district to find a solution to the fiscal crisis.

During two-and-a-half minutes of public comment to the San Diego Unified School District board meeting Tuesday night, SDEA President Bill Freeman used the phrase “come together” three times.

Retired Teachers Glad to See Union Director Benched

Retired Teachers Glad to See Union Director Benched
March 8, 2012
By Will Carless

A former faction of the San Diego Education Association that represents retired teachers is hoping the recent suspension of teachers union Executive Director Craig Leedham becomes permanent.

As I reported this week, Leedham has been placed on administrative leave. A divisive staff leader, he was credited by several former SDEA officials as pushing the union in a more combative, hard-line direction in recent years.

Two members of the retired teachers group said Leedham was the primary reason their group split with the SDEA.

Tim Jenkins, who acts as a liaison between the retired teachers group and the SDEA, said there are members of the union's leadership who don’t support collaboration between the union and his group. But Jenkins expressed optimism that, if Leedham’s removal becomes permanent, wounds could be healed between the two organizations.
"It remains to be seen if we could go back to where we were before, but we certainly hope this could move us closer together," Jenkins said.
Jenkins also expressed hope that he would no longer have to work with Leedham. In the years he has communicated with the executive director, he has found him to be extremely aggressive, rude and unprofessional, Jenkins said.
That jibes with what other people have told me about Leedham and what I have so far written about his leadership.
To make his point, Jenkins told an anecdote about a meeting his group held with SDEA leaders a couple of years ago. He said his wife, who is also on the retired group, tried to ask Leedham a question at the end of the meeting.
"He just started shouting and waving his hands in her face," Jenkins said. "It was completely unprofessional. She didn’t know what to say."
The retired group also put out a brief press release yesterday that sought to explain its position in the light of our recent coverage of the union’s inner workings. The release included a statement from Norma Heeter, president of the group.
Here it is in full:
San Diego Education Association-Retired has had a long and positive history with the San Diego Education Association for many years. Our members wished to maintain ties with our local, state and national affiliations by continuing to support public education and issues important to our active colleagues. Our members share the concerns of our active brothers and sisters in their efforts to support the physical, social, and academic growth of the children of San Diego.

The members of SDEA-Retired are very concerned and disappointed with the separation of our organization from SDEA. We fought hard to stop the efforts of a few current leaders to remove the retired educators’ representation in SDEA, but we ultimately lost the battle. Separation from SDEA has resulted in frustration for retirees, since we no longer have a venue or support for the voice of current and future retirees. We are concerned, because we have no advocates for issues of importance to retirees, such as health benefits, pensions, etc. Our efforts to represent ourselves on District committees that deal with health benefit issues including the Health Benefits Trust have been blocked by SDEA.

The members of SDEA-Retired hold the members of the SDEA in the highest esteem. After all, we helped build the organization, monetarily, voluntarily and intellectually.
Leedham’s permanent removal from the union would have consequences beyond the SDEA’s relationship with the retired group.
Currently, district leaders are calling on the SDEA to negotiate with them over possible concessions in teacher pay and benefits. District Superintendent Bill Kowba says those concessions are the only way to avoid laying off at least 1,000 teachers this year.
Under Leedham’s tenure, the union has withdrawn from negotiations or even discussions with the district and other unions. The organization has, as a result, become increasingly isolated in its stance.
Leedham, along with union Vice President Camille Zombro, have led the charge on this shift.
Zombro is up for re-election this spring and is being challenged by the union’s board secretary.
If Leedham’s removal becomes permanent, that election could be pivotal in determining the philosophical direction the union takes in the coming months and years.

Is San Diego Education Association (SDEA) President Bill Freeman the only reasonable man in the union?

When CityBeat interviewed board member Richard Barrera, he didn’t mention Armageddon as an option. Instead, Barrera expressed faith that the teachers and their union president, Bill Freeman, will eventually come around.

“I think that the majority— probably the overwhelming majority—of teachers wants the district and the union to figure out a solution to this budget crisis so that there’s not mass layoffs,” Barrera said. “I think that voice is certainly going to become louder and louder within SDEA going forward. I have, actually, quite a lot of confidence in Bill Freeman.”

That would suggest that there are formidable forces within SDEA that are aligned against the union president. SDEA will hold elections for board members in mid-March. Those elections could change the union’s stance.

For his part, Freeman declined to discuss the union’s internal politics, instead focusing on struggling teachers.


Feb 29, 2012
San Diego Unified: A lose-lose situation
District and its teachers union battle over an evaporating pool of education money
By David Rolland
City Beat

Scott Barnett is considering the nuclear option.

“I haven’t decided that that’s what I’m going to do,” he told CityBeat, “but I have to say, I’m seriously looking at that as a consideration.”

Barnett, a member of the San Diego Unified School District’s Board of Education, is talking about forcing the district to wave the white flag, admit failure and run itself out of money. Insolvency.

Right now, the school district is looking at a worst-case scenario of being short about nearly $122 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1. But that’s merely an estimate, based on how much money Gov. Jerry Brown has said he’ll spend on education. The numbers can change during the spring; the state doesn’t finalize its budget until June. So, school districts have to plan based on available information, and San Diego Unified is planning for a budget deficit that’s roughly equal to 18 percent of its discretionary spending.

It’s a huge hole. To get out of it, the district’s superintendent is proposing to lay off nearly 1,200—more than 15 percent—of its teachers, counselors, librarians and nurses and sell off $21 million worth of the district’s real-estate holdings, in addition to other cuts and budget maneuvers. The result of the layoffs would be extraordinarily high class sizes across all grade levels—as many as 50 students in high-school classes—which would certainly degrade the quality of education. Layoffs, for the most part, are based on a last-hired, first-fired system.

Would that be better or worse, Barnett asks, than giving up and allowing the state to send a trustee in to run the show?


San Diego Unified School District Board member Scott Barnett thinks it might be time for Armageddon.
Photo by David Rolland

“I’m at a point in my mind now that we are essentially insolvent today—if not legally, [then] de facto,” Barnett said. “We have been using tens of millions of dollars in one-time revenues, reserves and so forth to balance the budget—ba sically our piggy bank. And, next year, the staff’s proposing, for the first time, starting the selling of our assets to help balance the budget—one-time revenue.”

Put another way, imagine a family with seven kids booting the youngest child from the house and holding a yard sale in order to feed the rest of the family and pay the mortgage. That’s what it’s come to for San Diego County’s largest school district.

However, “San Diego Unified is no different than any of the 500-plus districts around California,” said Jim Groth, an educator in Chula Vista and a member of the California Teachers Association’s Board of Directors. “Everyone has taken [a total of ] over $20 billion worth of cuts over the last four years, and all districts are scrambling, trying to make sense out of what’s taking place.”

Roughly $39 million of San Diego Unified’s $122-million deficit is the result of a deal the district struck in 2010 with the San Diego Education Association (SDEA), the union that represents teachers. The teachers agreed to cut one week off the school calendar for two years (reducing pay by 2.7 percent each year); in exchange, the district agreed to raise pay a little more than 4 percent for the upcoming school year (2012-13) and another 3 percent in 2013-14 and add that week back to the calendar.

Gov. Brown has proposed a tax increase for the November election that, if successful, would net the district about $40 million; it’s one of three proposed tax measures that would increase education funding. But since that election comes two months into the school year and more than four months after the district has to set its budget, the district can’t count on that money. If it materializes, it’ll be rolled into the following budget year.

Most of the planned layoffs can be avoided if the teachers agree to not only say goodbye to the raises and continue taking the furlough days, but also accept pay cuts and healthcare-cost increases that would be rolled back if the tax measure passes. But the district is powerless to make that happen; the teachers union would have to volunteer to come back to the bargaining table. So far, the union has expressed no such willingness.

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So, as most of the players see it, there are two choices: mass layoffs or huge union concessions. Barnett sees his nuclear option as another route: Don’t lay anyone off and purposefully run the district out of money: “I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights trying to think of a third way. That’s why I’m seriously thinking that insolvency is a third way. But it has a lot of risk.

“In theory,” he says, “we could not do the layoffs, which is what the union wants, but then still come to an agreement with the unions on concessions—on salary cuts and so forth—if they don’t want a trustee to take over. In some ways, I’m wondering if the unions will ever seriously negotiate if they don’t believe we are going to go under. So, it’s truly an Armageddon solution.”

If he decides to vote that way, Barnett would need to convince at least two of his four colleagues on the Board of Education to do the same—a tall order because if the unions don’t buckle, it could amount to political suicide for the board.

“Obviously, as politicians, your career is over,” he said. “So, if you have interest in a career in the future, you’ll always be known as the person who brought San Diego Unified down.”

When CityBeat interviewed board member Richard Barrera, he didn’t mention Armageddon as an option. Instead, Barrera expressed faith that the teachers and their union president, Bill Freeman, will eventually come around.

“I think that the majority— probably the overwhelming majority—of teachers wants the district and the union to figure out a solution to this budget crisis so that there’s not mass layoffs,” Barrera said. “I think that voice is certainly going to become louder and louder within SDEA going forward. I have, actually, quite a lot of confidence in Bill Freeman.”

That would suggest that there are formidable forces within SDEA that are aligned against the union president. SDEA will hold elections for board members in mid-March. Those elections could change the union’s stance.

For his part, Freeman declined to discuss the union’s internal politics, instead focusing on struggling teachers. “I know 61 teachers right now that have lost their homes,” he said. “I know 38 teachers that have moved in with each other in order to keep from losing their homes.

“We don’t know whether the district has a budgetary problem. The district doesn’t know whether they have a budgetary problem— because we don’t have a budget,” he said. “We’re having to lay teachers off based upon this in-the-dark budgeting. That’s what’s frustrating to me.”

Freeman, like everyone in this drama, simply wants clearer information before having to make major decisions.

“Whenever the district has come to us with clean numbers and they had a problem, we have never turned our heads to them. And I don’t think that we will do that,” he said. “But I don’t want to open our pockets and say, ‘OK, you may have a problem. Here, take what you think you may need.’ What they think they may need isn’t something that would come back to us if they don’t need it. So, that’s not something I’m willing to do.”

March 15 is a crucial date for school districts statewide. That’s when the state requires districts to notify teachers that they might be laid off in June. If a teacher doesn’t get a pink slip in March, that teacher is safe for another year. The March 15 deadline is a big reason districts have to come up with a budget before they know how much money the state will give them. But, also, the county requires an interim budget from school districts in March.

Some relief may be on the way for San Diego Unified. At the urging of the district and the teachers union, state Assemblymember Marty Block introduced a bill last Friday that would allow the March 15 deadline to be moved to June 15— for San Diego Unified only. It must clear several committees in both houses of the Legislature and get affirmative votes from two-thirds of all legislators in order to impact the upcoming budget year, and that has to get done in two weeks.

“It’s going to be difficult to get it done by March 15 under the best of circumstances,” Block told CityBeat. “We’re going to try.”

SDEA’s stance on Block’s bill has been chaotic. After asking Block to introduce the bill, SDEA announced on Feb. 15 that it would oppose it unless the district first promised not to send any pink slips in March. But if the district were to give that promise and the bill were to fail, the district would lose the ability to balance its budget through layoffs. Eight days later, the union flipped again. “We have backed off,” Free man said, “and we have said that we will not oppose that legislation.”

The March 15 deadline is in place to give teachers time to look for work elsewhere. But because districts lately have had to send out more pink slips than they’ve ended up needing to, it’s created a different kind of anxiety for those receiving them. Last year, hundreds of pink slips were rescinded, although two board members—Barnett and John Lee Evans—voted against rescinding them.

“I think most teachers would say, ‘This process creates more disruption in our lives than if we had a chance to wait it out and not receive a pink slip in the first place,’” Barrera said.

Of course, all this tension is the demon spawn of hard economic times.

“It’s safe to say,” Barrera said, “that the relationship between the district and the union was the best that it had certainly been in San Diego Unified in a couple of decades prior to us issuing pink slips last March.”

Before that, he said, the two parties, along with individual schools, were collaborating on reforms that give schools more decision-making power, kind of like charter schools. “And then all that stopped when we issued the pink slips in March,” Barrera said, “and since then, the relationship has been, for the most part, just no communication.”

SDEA has become less talkative with the press, too. CityBeat called and emailed Freeman for two weeks before getting him on the phone. SDEA’s media message has largely been made up of confrontational charges of district misinformation and scare tactics. Freeman’s been represented in the press as believing the district will find money somewhere, and he’s pointed to the board’s decision last year to rescind layoffs as proof.

Barnett said that by calling back those teachers, the board, in a way, “enabled” the union’s hardline stance, “using money we didn’t really have.” He said the board’s majority, led by Barrera, has erred on the side of hoping that the economy will improve and the state will send more money down the pike, and he acknowledged that doing so is in the best interest of quality education. But, Barnett said, it’s still a gamble...

How isolated and hardline has SDEA become?

The San Diego Education Association since 2008 has:
1) stopped attending monthly meetings with district leaders;
2) left committees where it met with other unions;
3) barred union staff from meeting informally with district staff;
4) drifted apart from its retired members, forbidding them to hold meetings in the union building.

SDEA Executive Director Craig Leedham and Vice President Camille Zombro are believed to be driving the union's hardline stance. Of course, it's Emma Leheny, the CTA head counsel in Burlingame, who lines up the support at the highest levels of CTA.


Teachers Union Turmoil: San Diego Explained
Feb 23, 2012.
by Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

School district officials say the district’s finances will be made or broken by local labor unions in the next couple of years. Without concessions from the teachers union on pay and benefits, district officials say they will have to lay off more than 1,100 employees next year. With the concessions, district bean counters say they won’t have to lay anyone off.
Subscribe to the Morning Report.

But the prospect of getting concessions from the teachers union, the most powerful organization in local education, seems slim...


The Teachers Union Gets Tough, and Isolated
Will Carless
Voice of San Diego
February 6, 2012

The teachers union doesn't talk.

The San Diego Education Association's leaders once met monthly with San Diego Unified's superintendent. Those regular meetings no longer happen. Union workers used to meet routinely with district staff, but in 2008 the SDEA leadership banned them from doing so.

The teachers union has walked out on joint committees with other employee unions, and it's even drifted apart from its retired members' group, which no longer meets at the SDEA offices.

Its employees and board members have been instructed not to talk to the media. Its leaders won't answer questions. They won't even answer the phone. Apart from a threatening late-night phone call from union vice president Camille Zombro — "If you want a relationship with us going forward, you won't write this story," — the union's top leaders wouldn't comment for this story.

But former teachers union leaders and staff are talking. So are representatives from other unions that do business with the school district and whose members have worked alongside the SDEA. And so are district officials who have watched the union's attitude and stance thicken over the last few years.

Here's what they say: Driven by charismatically tough, old-school leaders, the union has metamorphosed into a hardline organization that's become ever-more confrontational.

Staff who stood up against the hardline approach have felt compelled to leave the union in recent years. That's left the SDEA increasingly deaf to criticism of either its politics or its methodology, former union officials said. In short, it's become a more insular, less reasonable organization, they said.

This shift in the union's philosophy couldn't come at a more critical time for San Diego Unified.

Late last year, mild-mannered school Superintendent Bill Kowba grabbed headlines when he announced the district might go insolvent. Despite surviving the fiscal year, district projections show a $150 million operating deficit over the next two years.

Almost two-thirds of that $150 million projected deficit is attributable to a union-negotiated deal that restores five unpaid days off and grants teachers a series of pay increases starting this year.

Concessions on these two points, the district argues, are its only realistic way out of the current financial crisis.

Talking is therefore essential, especially since the more-than-8,000-member-strong teachers union dominates labor negotiations. But at the district, there is little hope that the union will engage in negotiations any more in the crucial coming months than it has thus far.

"I think their answer is just 'No,' before they even know what the question is," said Donis Coronel, who spent years negotiating for the district and now works with the union that represents district administrators. "They've kinda become the bullies on the block."

The teachers union's shift has also been catalyzed by factors beyond its leadership.

A frustrating relationship with the district and a stagnating economy have led politically active teachers and parents to distrust San Diego Unified's ability to provide an accurate assessment of its budget.

For several years, the district provided inaccurate or untimely information to unions about the state of its finances. Suspicion has been exacerbated by the district's budget process, which leads to wild fluctuations between projections and reality. Teachers and parents have become tired of hearing predictions of doom and gloom that never seem to come true.

The teachers union has played to that distrust, galvanizing contempt for the district's bean counters and propagating a mantra that the district still has secret pots of money hidden away.

But for some former top officials at the SDEA, that message stopped ringing true a long time ago.

Forced Out by Dogma

Former SDEA Vice President Marc Capitelli stepped down from his leadership position at the teachers union about a year ago.

He said he couldn't keep repeating the SDEA's claims about the district's budget in good conscience.

For years, Capitelli said, the union's instant response to San Diego Unified's woeful budget projections has been to accuse the district of making up numbers and hiding money.

Bill Freeman, the SDEA president, used that line of attack in a September interview about the budget.

"They use fake numbers," Freeman said. "We don't know where the district is right now because of a lack of honesty providing data."

Last month, after Kowba sent out a district-wide memo spelling out the district's latest budget woes, the union responded immediately. In a letter to members, Freeman lambasted the superintendent for putting out misleading, premature forecasts that painted a worst-case scenario.

Capitelli said he doesn't think that's an intelligent or productive way to do business. Nor does he believe it's the truth.

The district is fiscally incompetent, certainly, Capitelli said. But he believes at this point it has also cut out most, if not all, of the fat it may once have had and is now deadly serious about its deficits.

"I could no longer honestly say that the district was hiding money," Capitelli said. "At one point, we had to realize that what the state had done to education funding was real. There aren't just piles of money lying around."

This stance put Capitelli at odds with the union's leaders. The message at the union was clear and rigid, he said, but he wasn't willing to keep trumpeting it. So he had to leave.

Increasingly, the union has been less willing to negotiate or even discuss realities outside its dogma, Capitelli said. It has gradually closed itself off from dissent, he said.

This shift started gaining steam in the mid-2000s. Former SDEA Executive Director Robin Whitlow said she remembers a time when the district and teachers union worked together to solve San Diego Unified's budget problems.

Throughout her tenure, Whitlow and the sitting union president held monthly meetings with the superintendent and other district committees. Whitlow said she was in constant contact with district staff, negotiators and leaders. They spoke every few days by phone, she said.

Will Surbrook, the district's former chief negotiator, concurred.

"Even in the worst of times we would have those monthly meetings," Surbrook said. "A lot of things were accomplished in those meetings, they were very productive."

That era of cooperation was fading fast when she left the union in 2006, Whitlow said.

A new wave of hardliners led by former teacher Camille Zombro had come to dominate the SDEA board, Whitlow said. She increasingly felt there was no place for her style of bargaining.

So she quit.

"They would've fired me if I hadn't," she said.

Whitlow, who is now the chief negotiator at the Administrators Association of San Diego, the union that represents school administrators, said she's watched in dismay as the teachers union has become further entrenched in its attitude of non-negotiation.

An education union's job is to educate its members about the financial realities facing the school district, Whitlow said. That means being honest with the union's members about what they can do to work with the district to forge possible solutions.

The teachers union isn't doing that, she said. Instead, Whitlow said, by reiterating the argument that the budget situation is fine and the district is being dishonest, it's keeping its members "enslaved" to inaccurate information, cheapening the negotiating process.

The Scorned Teacher
Photo by Sam Hodgson
SDEA vice president Camille Zombro at a board meeting in January.



Ask former SDEA leaders, other union representatives and current district officials where this shift started and they all point to one person: Zombro.

Several people who have worked with Zombro said her distrust of the district started back in the early 2000s, when she was still working as a teacher at Baker Elementary School in Mountain View.

Elected as the school's site representative for the teachers union, Zombro aggressively pursued workers' rights, falling afoul of both the school's principal and district leadership.

In 2004, she and eight other district teachers were involuntarily transferred from their sites to new schools. The move, widely considered a punishment for her activism, angered Zombro and forged a suspicion of the district that has stuck with her, said Don Crawford, who worked at the SDEA for 11 years before retiring in 2008.

"She was mistreated and that made her angry," Crawford said.

From those early days, Zombro worked her way up the union ladder, eventually becoming SDEA president in 2006. Her style of leadership became clear during a 2008 dispute between the union and the district.

After the school board reneged on an agreement with the union, a furious Zombro responded by canceling all meetings between the district's human resources staff and her union team. A letter was drafted for employees to sign, stating they would no longer be attending these regular meetings.

Those meetings had previously served as a useful forum for union and district staff to settle disputes in an informal setting, Crawford said. He refused to sign, saying the move would be counterproductive.

"That's indicative of an approach that's more directly confrontational," Crawford said.

A few months later, Crawford retired.

Soon after that, Zombro gained a key ally in the form of the SDEA's divisive new executive director, Craig Leedham.

'You're Either With Him, or You're Against Him'

In more than a dozen interviews for this story, people who have worked or still work with Leedham described him as "nasty," "aggressive," "profane" and "paranoid."

Leedham was hired in 2009 after the SDEA went through two executive directors in quick succession. He fit perfectly because his hardline political philosophy aligned with Zombro's, said Capitelli, who helped hire him.

"He has his view of the world. For Craig, it's either black or white. You're either with him, or you're against him," Capitelli said. "I wouldn't put him as my friend — ever — but if I was in trouble I'd want to have him on my side. You want the nastiest lawyer around, but you don't want to eat dinner with him afterwards."

Zombro stepped down as president of the SDEA in 2010 and now serves as the union's vice president. As executive director, however, Leedham has taken Zombro's fervor a step further, Capitelli and other former and current union officials said.

They said he has created an atmosphere of tension and even fear among union staff, who have been warned that they must represent the district's hardline philosophy.

That high-strung approach has at times spilled outside of the four walls of the teachers union.

At a union committee meeting in 2010, Leedham exploded with rage at a school district staffer who was whispering while he was making a presentation, three people present at the meeting said.

Leedham launched into a profanity-laden tirade at the staffer that shocked the union reps present in the room, the three sources said.

"I've been in this business for more than three decades, and I've never seen anything like it. It was totally unprofessional," said one of the sources, who did not want to be named because of their ongoing relationship with the teachers union.

Leedham and Zombro both declined to be interviewed for this story.

Fomenting Distrust
Photo by Sam Hodgson
San Diego Unified CFO Ron Little presents the district's budget to the school board in January.



If the SDEA's new direction has been driven by leaders like Zombro and Leedham, the wheels for that move have been greased by the district's own actions.

Through a combination of ineptitude, poor communication and a failure to properly explain its complex budget process, district leaders have given the SDEA fertile ground to attack their credibility.

School board trustee Richard Barrera remembers, for example, the budget negotiations of his first term in 2008.

"Literally, in one week, there was a revision of our numbers that made a $180 million problem turn into a $100 million problem almost overnight," Barrera said.

Revisions and recalculations like these cemented the view for the union's leaders that the district didn't have a good handle on its finances, Barrera said.

These budget faux pas were also being noticed by the union's members.

Deborah Hoeltgen, a current SDEA board member, said the notion that the union's leaders have pushed the union in a certain direction is false.

Hoeltgen said the power wielded by the union's executive director and president is overplayed. She said the organization is truly run by its members, who control the union's bargaining tactics. Those members have spent the last few years getting increasingly upset and frustrated with the district, Hoeltgen said.

Every year for the last few years, the district has issued hundreds of pink slips to teachers, only to then rescind the bulk of the layoff notices a few weeks later. That's grated on teachers, Hoeltgen said.

"They're pissed off," she said.

The rise of the union's new leaders also coincided with the ouster of controversial superintendent Alan Bersin, whose near-decade of reforms fueled dissent among teachers during the state's last financial crisis.

The "Bersin Era" as it is referred to in San Diego Unified circles, caused deep divisions between the district's leadership and its staff. Though many of the senior officials who served under him have now moved on, the wounds inflicted by Bersin's tenure are yet to fully heal.

More recently, California's complicated budget procedures have helped perpetuate the district's image among teachers as a bumbling, misinformed bureaucracy.

For each of the last four years, the district's initial budget forecasts have predicted doom, gloom and hundreds of teacher layoffs. Each year, thanks to a combination of risky budgeting by the district and financial shenanigans by the state, the eventual pain has been limited.

The union has responded by calling out the district's accountants as charlatans, arguing that the district has consistently lied about its budget in order to win public approval for layoffs.

That's resonated with teachers and parents alike, who often show up at school board meetings to boo and hiss as financial staffers make their presentations.

This atmosphere of distrust has reached fever pitch in recent weeks as the state has continued to cut into education funding and the school board has again produced a budget calling for more than 1,000 layoffs.

When Times Get Tough, Get Tougher
File Photo by Sam Hodgson
Current SDEA President Bill Freeman has issued strongly worded rebuttals to the district's latest budget projections.



Last October, as district officials started to raise the specter of insolvency, the union barely blinked. It's so far refused to come to the bargaining table and shows no signs of changing that stance.

Political consultant Larry Remer, who has worked extensively with the union, said its position has served it well. It's currently sitting on a contract that guarantees teachers raises as Gov. Jerry Brown threatens billions in education cuts.

And despite the district's threats, only a couple of hundred teachers have actually ended up losing their jobs, Remer said. Instead, the brunt of layoffs has been borne by classified employees like landscapers and custodians.

"The classified union has been a lot more reasonable and what good has it done them?" Remer said.

But as the teachers union remains silent, the chorus of voices speaking out against its dogmatic methodology, even within labor circles, has started to grow.

Jeannie Steeg, former executive director of the school administrators union, said the district's senior financial team isn't just frustrated, it's seriously worried about keeping the district afloat over the next couple of years.

"There's no hidden agenda," Steeg said. "The teachers union has to, at some point, realize that these numbers are real."

Whitlow, Capitelli, members of the school board, senior district management and even officials at the administrators union couldn't agree more. They said the time has come for the SDEA to stop pretending and to start engaging in the realities of the district's crisis.

For their part, the teachers union could be thinking the same thing.

But they're not talking.

Teachers outraged by intransigence of CTA elites in San Diego Unified budget crisis

Head Counsel Emma Leheny, the real decision-maker for California Teachers Association?

Who really runs CTA? Obviously, not Bill Freeman. He was forced by his superiors to renege on his agreement to pursue legislation to move back the date on which teachers must be informed of layoffs.

In my experience, ALL the "elected" officials in CTA are fronts for the people who truly run CTA: the lawyers CTA's head counsel is Emma Leheny. President Dean Vogel does what he's told.

Rumblings from Teachers After Union Backs Away
February 16, 2012
By Will Carless
Voice of San Diego

...Yesterday, the teachers union stepped away from that deal. Its stance has upset some local teachers, who say the union has botched an opportunity to mend fences with the district while at the same time pushing forward legislation a majority of teachers want.

Late last night, I got this letter from two teachers at Marshall Middle School who are concerned about the direction of the union at a critical juncture for the district. The teachers, who are meeting soon with SDEA President Bill Freeman, want to see more cooperation.

Here's a snippet (I've posted the full letter below):

As educators, we recognize that our classrooms and the learning within is most successful when we embrace the idea of working together to collaborate as we problem solve. Part of this respect comes from recognizing that each person within the classroom has strengths that they can offer in order to achieve the overall goal.

As members of SDEA, we are embarrassed to see that these simple ideas that go to the very core of what we try to foster and develop within our students, helping them become successful adults willing to work with and learn from others, is the opposite of the values SDEA has repeatedly shown in the last two years.

But the real eye-opener for me was the flurry of reader comments I've been reading today on last night's post. One comment, titled an "open letter to Bill Freeman," was left by Mary Laiuppa, an educator, union member, vociferous commenter and near-constant critic of the district.

This time, Laiuppa, whose past comments have praised the union's hard work, aimed her vitriol at the union president:

The union had a great opportunity here and it was just destroyed. Don't tell me the teachers voted against this. No, this was a decision made by the SDEA elites. Sorry but this foot soldier isn't going to roll over and kow tow.

And I'll bet I'm not the only one.

This was a BAD decision. And when it hits the fan I'll be the first to shout "told you so" when the fallout starts to bury the union.

Won't be going down to the offices to make phone calls, stuff envelopes, attend candidate meetings or walk neighborhoods...

Letter: To Survive, the Teachers Union Must Stay United

I don't think it's in the best interest of the teachers union to try to silence members who disagree with the actions of union officials. The demand for perpetual unity is authoritarian and unhealthy for a democracy. It actually reminds me a lot of San Diegans 4 Better Schools, which is also endeavoring to weaken the role of democracy in schools. If more teachers were to speak out, it might actually result in better decision-making by union officials--and administrators! Sadly, most teachers live in a bubble of silence. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif



Letter: To Survive, the Teachers Union Must Stay United
June 15, 2011
Jenny Rivera

I think SDUSD was quite successful with Ms. Mathy ("Teacher Implores Union to Renegotiate").

She has now pitted herself against more senior teachers, believing that the union is either for or against senior or junior teachers. She is representative of the effort to divide the union membership to fight against itself. This is the very thing that the union membership needs to vigilantly guard against, if we are to survive the continued underlying efforts to bust the union, destroy our professionalism and create teachers a disposable commodity.

I wonder if Ms. Mathy would feel differently if the layoff notices only went to the five-year mark. Would she be willing to disregard the fairly negotiated contract and take more concessions to her livelihood?

The union's point is that the district has stated that the layoffs could be rescinded, if we would only allow them to renegotiate, yet again. If the ability is there to rescind, then DO IT! Opening the contract would not only address the few issues stated in the press, but would open the entire contract to renegotiations. That is not an acceptable situation for our membership.

Jenny Rivera is a third grade teacher (24 years) at San Diego Unified. She lives in La Mesa.

Does the San Diego teachers union help senior members at the expense of junior members?

Don't you love this teacher's name?

Teacher Implores Union to Renegotiate
Jun 14, 2011.
by Emily Alpert

The big battle in San Diego Unified right now is whether to tear up pink slips for teachers and other school workers. The school board has pressed its unions to take more unpaid leave and put off promised raises, saying it could then afford to spare some jobs in the long-term.

The teachers union turned down that proposal last week, arguing it was an unnecessary concession that tried to pit teachers against one another. Almost all teachers that I've heard from loathe the idea, saying that San Diego Unified can just cancel the layoffs now that state financial projections have improved.

So I was intrigued to get this email from Sarah Mathy, a pink-slipped teacher who says the union is protecting senior members at the expense of junior ones. It's a letter that she sent earlier this month to Bill Freeman, the president of the San Diego Education Association. (That's abbreviated in the letter as SDEA.)

We often hear this debate between politicians. But how does this debate play out between teachers? I've asked Freeman to write back and he said he planned to do so. I'll post his letter when we get it.

Dear Mr. Freeman -

In early March, I emailed you to discuss my feelings about how the union could best act during this layoff process. You generously came to my school to meet with many of us on the day we received our first layoff notice. I appreciate your time and interest in our school and in us.

In March, I was asking you to negotiate with SDUSD so that many (all?) of the layoffs could be avoided. I called for things such as extra furlough days and opening the health benefits package negotiation. I wanted our union to get creative about the endless possibilities for solving this problem so that jobs are saved and kids are served.

But so far, all I have received are layoff notices #1 and #2 from SDUSD, and emails from SDEA calling me to more action and more rallies.

This is not what I want.

And the unspoken but clear message being sent to me from SDEA is that you are a union that wants to prioritize the interests of the senior, not junior, members. That when SDEA is not "winning" the battles with SDUSD, it will put the junior members out in the name of protecting the senior.

All along, it has seemed like a very logical fix to me to negotiate with SDUSD so that the weight of this budget crises is distributed on the shoulders of all SDEA teachers, not just on a few hundred. That is solidarity. That is "together we are stronger." I feel instead like SDEA's hostage and not SDUSD's (as you mentioned in a recent SDEA email blast).

So the questions become: "WHO is SDEA working for?" and "WHAT is SDEA working for?" Unfortunately for my situation, the WHO seems to be the senior members, and the WHAT is status quo for salary and benefits for those who will remain.

That will not work in this current fiscal crisis. You need to negotiate with SDUSD and launch a campaign to convince SDEA members that this is the best option.

I don't think you will have as much opposition to a contract re-negotiation as you may think. Many of my SDEA colleagues unaffected by layoff notices believe in some form of contract modifications so that we all can have our jobs. It will then be your work to collaborate with SDUSD and SDEA teachers to find a compromise that works for everyone. It is not black and white. There are gray areas of the contract where you can slide the scale and still have people satisfied with their level of pay and benefits, and pleased with their lowered class sizes and staff stability at work, and, as taxpayers, happy that the students are getting what they deserve.

We work in a dynamic profession with multi-faceted students, and I want my union to mirror that. With some salary or benefits alterations, we can all keep the jobs we love to do, live comfortably and take care of our families, and make sure that students get the most of everything. This has to be an AND situation, not EITHER/OR.

So I trust that with the same confidence and care with which you engaged my concerns in March, that you move SDEA into a new chapter where we can feel more like brothers and sisters, instead of the haves and have-nots.

Thank you for your continued work.

Sincerely,
SARAH MATHY
Teacher for 6 years at Central Elementary





COMMENT

Michael Dunn:

Unfortunately, this is typical in most unions. The unions say, "well, it is the district's right under Ed Code to layoff teachers when budgets are tight." Apparently, they feel there is nothing they can do since it is not a contractual violation. (In the name of transparency, I am a union organizer and leg rep and have sat in on several layoff hearings for colleagues).

What unions can do (but are generally unwilling to do) is take a much more aggressive position in defense of all their members, including the threat of striking to defend jobs, salaries, class sizes and educational programs.

By the way, they are not just throwing the younger teachers under the bus. UTLA's continued willingness to give up furlough days in exchange for reduced layoffs, forces all teachers to accept a pay cut and still throws some teachers under the bus.

I also think that unions have become so obsessed with playing politics and maintaining a seat at the table, that they have lost sight of their main function: organizing, educating and agitating their members. Veteran teachers are much more likely to already have an appreciation for their union. The younger teachers do not necessarily. They need to be listened to , supported, and encouraged to participate by the union reps, something that is shamefully rare these days.

San Diego teachers union: we won't improve education if you consider teacher layoffs

The SDEA thinks it can win by stopping efforts at improving teaching. I honestly don't know who's worse, the administration or the union. They both care more about the personal careers of the people in power in their various organizations than they do about kids.

School Reform Rooted in Working Together Grows Apart
April 27, 2011
by Emily Alpert

Last summer after San Diego Unified was criticized for turning away from federal school reforms, accused of being too close to its teachers union to seek change, the school board touted a new reform plan, rooted in collaboration with its teachers.

The school district dubbed it "community-based school reform," a very different way to fix schools than the national reform zeitgeist of evaluating or paying teachers based on test scores. Teachers would work together and share data on how kids were doing. Parents would get more involved. Everybody tied to schools would band together to come up with reform ideas of their own.

The teachers union chimed in, saying it would go to work for the reform push. The school board struck an agreement with the union and a nonprofit to test the plans at a scattering of pilot schools starting in March. The idea: model the simple process of getting people together to improve their schools, while putting the muscle of trained organizers behind it.

Now, with the district warning of teacher layoffs, the teachers union has cut off its every-other-week talks on reform with Superintendent Bill Kowba and other leaders. The budget crunch has pitted board members who have long been seen as labor allies — even derided as union puppets — against the same union that once championed them.

While many reforms are still going, the breakup between San Diego Unified and the teachers union has slowed their plans and stopped them from actually joining forces to improve schools, one of the most intriguing parts of the plan. The split has only exacerbated confusion over what, exactly, community reform means.

Some schools tapped as possible pilots are now unsure what will happen. Pacific Beach Middle School is one of them. Teachers there met earlier this year to talk about their vision for the school. Labor leaders met with Principal Julie Martel. More meetings were planned. Then came the pink slips last month.

"It came to a halt," Martel said. "It seems like it's been put on hold."

The question now is what reform will look like if the school district and the union each go it alone. Many of the efforts are still chugging along: The Equality Alliance, the nonprofit that is helping to bring parents together as part of the reform push, just wrapped up a parent survey.

San Diego Unified has tried to foster more community involvement through getting parents involved in "clusters," the schools that lead into each high school. And union leaders just met with parents and employees at Mira Mesa High School this week to talk about whether it could become a pilot school.

At Mira Mesa High, Principal Scott Giusti is excited about dreaming up new ideas with teachers, parents and anyone else with a stake in the school. But he worries about rallying teachers and parents behind a plan while the teachers union isn't talking to San Diego Unified about it. What happens, Giusti asked, if they come up with a plan and the school district doesn't like it? Or what if the union balks?

"I'm a little cautious because everybody isn't at the table," Giusti said.

Leaders on both sides say they won't let the freeze stop them from working on school reform, each in their own way. "The work can still be done without the district stepping up to the plate," said Craig Leedham, executive director of the union. "I think we'll actually accomplish more."

School board member Scott Barnett echoed their words on the other side. "The teachers union reform plan is in addition to what the San Diego Unified board is doing," he said. "Ours is going ahead."

The teachers union argues the district broke its trust by opting to warn more than 1,300 teachers of [possible] layoffs. San Diego Unified, with an estimated deficit of $114 million or more, says it had no choice. Labor leaders argue it could have used other money to spare teachers...

In SDUSD, who is "leading the chorus of fear-mongering"? Not Richard Barrera.

"Should the Board's absurd decision stand, our schools will simply cease to function."
--San Diego Education Association

The SDEA seems to be suffering from some mental confusion. If the sentence above isn't fear-mongering, then I don't know what is. So who is actually "leading the chorus of fear-mongering"?

I'm sure that the teachers union is happy about one thing: pink slips will be distributed to the newest teachers. Incompetent and mediocre teachers with tenure will be protected from losing their jobs. Your failure to promote effective evaluations of teachers is your real violation of the trust of the voters, Richard Barrera.

The way I see it, Barrera's decision to warn teachers of the possibility of layoffs was akin to President Obama's decision to bail out the banks. Some people are going to be agnry about these decisions, but they'd be even angrier later on if the whole system fell apart because of bankruptcy.

What exactly was Richard Barrera trusted to do? Apparently, many people trusted him to always obey orders from the teachers union.

But I'm sure that there were plenty of voters who trusted him to behave responsibly towards students. He hasn't violated that trust.

‘I Am Going to Violate Your Trust in Me Tonight’
Voice of San Diego
March 11, 2011
by Emily Alpert

The biggest surprise at the school board meeting Thursday night was that board President Richard Barrera — a labor organizer long seen as a union ally on the school board — ended up voting to warn teachers of layoffs.

Barrera himself told the crowd of teachers, counselors, nurses and other workers who packed the auditorium: "I am going to violate your trust in me tonight. I'm going to vote for the superintendent's recommendations. Doing so goes against everything that I believe in."

Teachers shouted, "So don't do it!" Barrera continued: "I don't think doing this is right. I don't think doing this is smart." And he believes the school district will end up canceling most or all of them anyway.

But school district staff warned that if San Diego Unified did not prepare for layoffs, the County Office of Education, which vets its budget plans, could stop them from borrowing money to pay its bills. That was what swayed Barrera to vote to start sending out pink slips. The teachers union has argued that the layoffs are unnecessary and based on faulty predictions.

"Shame on you Richard!" someone yelled from the back of the auditorium.

What makes this remarkable is that Barrera has been at the forefront of plans to avoid sending out pink slips, this year and in the past. Two months ago he was one of the board members who floated a bold and possibly risky plan that would bank on tax extensions or a quirk in the layoff laws to prevent warnings from going out. He has never voted for pink slips before. In earlier years, Barrera pushed to find other savings and dodged layoffs. From my 2009 story:

"I kept hearing (last year), 'We've done everything we can possibly do and we have no other options than layoffs,'" said new school board member Richard Barrera. "And from our experience this year, that wasn't true. We found more savings."

Conservative critics have long pegged Barrera as a labor lackey for backing a union pact on school construction and opposing Race to the Top, a competition between states for federal stimulus money that put a premium on tying teacher evaluations to test scores. Now Barrera has seriously upset the teachers union, which denounced the decision on its website last night:

In violation of the trust placed in them by parents, educators and the broader San Diego community, Trustees Richard Barrera, Shelia Jackson and John Lee Evans voted to issue more than 1,000 absolutely unnecessary certificated layoff notices, with Superintendent Bill Kowba leading the chorus of fear-mongering and bad advice supporting their poor choice. Only Trustees Kevin Beiser and Scott Barnett had the courage of conviction to do the right thing and vote against layoffs. Should the Board's absurd decision stand, our schools will simply cease to function.... Tonight Trustees Richard Barrera, Shelia Jackson and John Lee Evans violated our trust and took the easy way out.

Evans and Jackson are also being criticized, of course. Jackson tried to advance an alternative budget plan that would consolidate more central office departments. Evans also wrestled with the decision at the meeting Thursday, saying that while he agreed that the school district should resist the cuts, this wasn't the time to do it, since it would cost them the control of the district.

"This is actually a decision that makes me very sick," said Evans, who mentioned that he wore a black suit to the meeting because it felt like a funeral.

But Barrera was the surprise vote, the one that made people gasp in the auditorium...

Schools, Union Not Getting Anywhere

I recommend clicking on the link to the original article in order to see all the links in the text!

Schools, Union Not Getting Anywhere
Voice of San Diego
Scott Lewis
March 7, 2011

San Diego Unified School District is facing three scenarios that may lead to the layoff of 1,300 school employees including 500 teachers -- or worse. The first is what the school board hopes for: The governor is able to get state tax extensions on the ballot, and voters approve them, and the deficit they face won't be as breathtaking.

The second is what they seem to be preparing for: Those tax extensions don't pass. They aren't even guaranteed to get on the ballot. This would lead to 500 teacher cuts.

The third scenario is a nightmare: Those tax extensions fail and the state makes even further cuts to education.

The Union Tribune today touches on one potential program on the brink: music.

Newly elected school board member Scott Barnett persuaded his colleagues to open up talks with the teachers union. They've been working under a closed three-year contract. But it doesn't seem to be going well, Barnett reported on his Facebook page. He acknowledged that the school police have been willing to talk. But other employee groups?

"So far we have not had any real movement on any discussion with all the rest. This is ...so far a failure of both school board and union leadership which we are all responsible for. It takes both sides to lead," he wrote, in a discussion that opened up on his page.

Last week, education writer Emily Alpert and NBC San Diego took on the teacher layoffs for San Diego Explained. The so-called "last hired, first fired" rules mean that if the layoffs do come, they'll affect the least senior teachers and therefore usually lower income-area schools. Alpert touched on how a civil rights lawsuit in Los Angeles, which was supported by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has challenged the teachers union and the seniority rules.

[Maura Larkins comment: The San Diego ACLU has steered clear of any lawsuit against wholesale layoffs of teachers in low income schools. The Los Angeles ACLU is taking up the slack. San Diego ACLU attorney David Blair-Loy believes in being extremely polite to school attorneys. He says litigation is the "worst" option. For his excessive politeness, he was awarded a "civility" award by the San Diego Bar Association. See all Blair-Loy posts.]

The New York Times explained that issue Friday.

Camille Zombro is wrong: schools need to do something about substandard teachers

It's not necessary to fire weak teachers; they can be useful, but they shouldn't have full charge of a classroom.

School Board Election Comes At Precarious Time For District
By Ana Tintocalis
June 2, 2010

...The powerful union has thrown its support behind Scott Barnett, a Republican who used to be the head of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association.

Zombro believes Barnett will reign in school spending so that it focuses on the basics and not on big reforms.

“(Quality education) is not a flashy program or a big consultant or a big splash. What it takes is a positive place for children to learn, for parents to interact with their schools, and for teachers to teach.”

Whatever the outcome, the board will have to manage the second largest school district in the state with a lot less money. It will also have to push for better academic results while dealing with a persistent achievement gap.

Bill Freeman is the new president for San Diego Education Association

Bill Freeman spent a few years helping children, and now he is rising in a remarkably undemocratic and secretive organization. It remains to be seen whether this move will be beneficial to children--or to Mr. Freeman himself. Mr. Freeman was elected by a very small number of people to head the San Diego local affiliate of California Teachers Association (CTA), which elects its president and vice president by a group voice vote behind closed doors. It’s a top-down organization in which getting ahead means doing what you’re told and not asking questions. Perhaps this will go well for Mr. Freeman since he has military experience and is therefore accustomed to taking and giving orders without explanations. Mr. Freeman will be working with (and under) local CTA director Jim Groth, who believes all teachers should stay "on message."

Sadly, school administrators are just as adamant as the teachers union that teachers not think for themselves, or, if they do think for themselves, that they not talk to anyone about their thoughts. No wonder students don't learn to think critically, and don't learn to participate fully in our democracy.

New President for Teachers Union
March 26, 2010
Voice of San Diego
Emily Alpert

The San Diego Unified teachers union has a new president-to-be: Bill Freeman, who teaches third grade at Porter Elementary in Lincoln Park and now serves as union treasurer.

Freeman has taught for 12 years in San Diego Unified; he chose to teach in elementary school because he mentored middle and high schoolers while serving in the military and decided that he needed to intervene earlier. He was Elementary School Teacher of the Year in San Diego Unified last year.

Freeman will replace provocative teachers union leader Camille Zombro, who is termed out this August; Zombro will become vice president of the union and return to teaching full time. Both were elected through an online vote that Zombro said was unfortunately low in turnout, though she didn't have exact numbers available this morning.

Like Zombro, Freeman isn't a fan of No Child Left Behind, which he said "will totally eradicate public schools" unless it is seriously revised. But he said he would differ from Zombro by making the teachers union more visible in the community, to improve the public perception of teachers...

Four SDUSD Democratic board members find the courage to stand up to the teachers union

John De Beck always had the courage to criticize the teachers union; citizens can rejoice now that Richard Barrera, John Lee Evans and Shelia Jackson have done the same.

Camille Zombro and Jim Groth of the San Diego Education Association (SDEA) might want to pull their heads out of the ground and realize that its time to acknowledge the real world: there's a limit to how long citizens will continue to bow to the arbitrary demands of CTA.

Pressing Labor for Cuts Triggers 'Surreal' Shakeup on School Board
Voice of San Diego
Feb 11, 2010
By EMILY ALPERT

After another plan failed to dig up enough savings, San Diego Unified is now under even more pressure to squeeze employees to balance its budget.

The prolonged budget crisis has put some board members at odds with the same unions that helped to elect them -- and jumbled the usual dynamics of the politicized board.

Longtime labor ally Richard Barrera is seeking deeper concessions from the teachers union, along with John Lee Evans, who was elected on a pledge to protect teachers. John de Beck and Shelia Jackson, who have often disagreed on labor issues in recent years, are both pushing the idea of progressive salary cuts that fall harder on employees who earn more...

Come back to fight the good fight, Jimmy Groth, Jimmy Groth

California Teachers Association's director from the San Diego area, Jim Groth, is missing in action. He seems to have quit writing his column for San Diego Education Association last May. Here's his last post.

Jim has, fortunately, left us with some wise words that we would do well to take to heart:

1. "Solutions used since 2001 will no longer work."

[I'm wondering if perhaps Jim took his own advice, and he's off trying to figure out a new approach to his job as a union official. The approach he came up with in 2001, and stuck with for the last seven-and-a-half years, has not worked particularly well.]

2. "Together we must educate the public about.. the need for leadership to find a better way."

[I'm 100% behind you on this one, Jim. I hope my website has helped let the public know that leadership--in Sacramento and Burlingame (headquarters of CTA)--has shortchanged the public in a catastrophic way, and needs to start looking for a better way. Have you made any progress, Jim?]