Gov. Newsom, answer this: How can you reopen schools with teacher unions blocking the doorways?
Dear Gov. Gavin Newsom:
Have you ever met John Borsos of the California Teachers Association? If you haven’t, you should know that he is going to block your lofty goal of getting public school kids back in their classrooms before the end of this academic year.
To state this bluntly, Governor, Borsos and his CTA colleagues have more to say about ending the damage that COVID-19 school closures have done to our kids than you do. Even before COVID-19, you and every other California Democrat seemed afraid of CTA and its money.
Now, I’m betting CTA will undermine your deeply flawed California Safe Schools for All plan that was released on Dec. 30 and promises to secure equal access to public education for all kids when COVID-19 restrictions start loosen.
Come on, who are we kidding?
The liberal hypocrisy of public school inequality in California is deep and far reaching and has many co-conspirators who smile and say the right things about caring for “the kids.” But for political and financial reasons, too many California libs care far more about the pay and benefits of public school teachers than they do about how badly we fail Black and brown kids in our schools every day.
Your plan to get kids back in school after nearly a year of widespread COVID-19 shutdowns is a case in point, Governor.
Here is what I’m betting is going to happen: Private, non-union schools, like the ones attended by your children, will keep right on rolling because they can, while many public schools will remain shuttered.
With the lifting of your month-long stay-at-home order in 13 California counties, including Sacramento on Tuesday, a return to campuses for more districts suddenly seems possible.
Also possible is that public schools in well-heeled communities with connected parents won’t be tolerating arbitrary delays in a return to campuses once more people are vaccinated and fewer people jam hospital ICUs.
But in high poverty, urban school districts such as the Sacramento City Unified School District?
Forget about it. Our kids, including my kids, will still be at home while your kids are back in school.
That’s because your kids won’t have Borsos and company blocking the door like my kids and all SCUSD kids will.
Back-to-school plan’s fatal flaw
You see, Governor, a fatal flaw of your return-to-school plan is that it hinges on districts with collective bargaining agreements to reach memorandums of understanding with their labor partners. Then they can access their share of the $2 billion in funds you are making available to re-open schools.
That’s not a problem where your kids go to school, Governor.
It’s less of a problem in districts such as the Elk Grove Unified School District, because EGUSD has a history of collaboration with its labor partners.
But at SCUSD? It ain’t happening. Borsos and his partners David Fisher and Nikki Milevsky, full-time labor organizers with the Sacramento City Teachers Association, aren’t into MOUs unless they dictate the terms.
Here is a trivia question: Name a public school district in California that wasn’t able to agree on an MOU for distance learning last fall? That’s right. SCUSD couldn’t get it done when every other district in the Sacramento region did.
Borsos, Fisher and Milevsky refused to guarantee that all kids in the district would be taught to state standards during distance learning.
Do your kids get taught to state standards, Governor? I bet they do. But because SCTA would only teach to standards “when possible” the district couldn’t guarantee equity in education standards for all of the more than 40,000 SCUSD kids.
But that’s not the half of it.
Inequity between teachers and kids
In 2017, the district and SCTA went into a fact finding process with the California Public Employees Relations Board over teacher salaries and benefits. The arbitrator called for compromise, SCTA ignored the PERB mediator and called a strike date instead.
What’s that, Governor? Why wasn’t the fact finding process respected by SCTA?
Great question. Here is what happened: SCTA threw the district into chaos with its strike call, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg brokered a deal the district couldn’t afford to avoid a strike, and SCUSD teachers became the highest paid in the region after already having the most generous health care plans here. Now, according to the state Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team, SCUSD will have a negative cash balance of $49 million by June.
Meanwhile, as The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board wrote in November: “Before the pandemic, we knew white students and students of color at SCUSD had unequal school careers. More than 60% of white students met or exceeded the standard in English, while less than 50% for Asian students did, less than 40% for Latinos did and less than 30% of Blacks did. There are also gaps in math.
Roughly 73% of pupils in SCUSD are children of color. This means tens of thousands of kids who started this year in distance learning – some have called it crisis learning – are already behind.”
Do you see the picture, Governor?
The fortunes of SCUSD teachers have gotten better. The fortunes of the district and of Black and brown kids at SCUSD have gotten worse. Why isn’t the Sacramento community up in arms about this? Because reform of public schools in California is impossible without having real talk with CTA. And that is not happening.
Any politician with any ambition is not going to get real with Borsos or his colleagues. Steinberg won’t and neither will Assemblyman Kevin McCarty. In 2019, McCarty – whose wife is on the SCUSD board – asked the state auditor to do a deep dive on SCUSD finances.
The auditor found longstanding structural deficits. The auditor recommended that everyone in the district take a modest pay cut and that health costs be controlled so programs for kids would not be gutted.
Has McCarty or Steinberg or anyone else insisted that the auditor’s recommendations be followed? Nope. Have Black leaders in Sacramento reacted forcefully to academic studies showing that Black kids at SCUSD and other county schools are suspended at among the highest rates in California? Nope.
Why? Because real talk about suspensions in Sacramento eventually involve the teachers doing the suspending and, again, that ain’t happening.
One person who tried was Jessie Ryan, the former chair of the SCUSD Board of Trustees. Guess what happened to her? Borsos et al. spent more than $200,000 to have her defeated last November. She was pelted with endless mailers and trashed on social media. It was horrible. It was no way anyone should be treated when running for a school board.
But you know what, Governor? The message was sent. The status quo of a chaotic culture where teachers win and students lose was preserved.
Dim prospects for agreement
So Governor, with that track record, what makes you think that Borsos, CTA and SCTA are going to come to an agreement with SCUSD over returning to school post-COVID-19?
That’s why seven superintendents of some of the largest districts in California – including SCUSD – sent you a letter saying your plan comes up short, favors the rich at the expense of the poor, and doesn’t set uniform standards that would dictate when school districts could open.
Without uniform standards for re-opening schools safely, the decision to open is subject to being hijacked.
“Once the state COVID standards for safety are met, schools then should be required to be open for in-person instruction,” the superintendents wrote in their letter to Newsom.
“No local stakeholder – whether a superintendent, school board, labor partner or community organization – should have an effective veto over the reopening of classrooms.”
But people like Borsos will have veto power and use it, Governor.
This is but one of the reasons why, last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District board voted to sue you and the state because your plan is unfair, unequal. I hope they do sue you and I hope SCUSD joins the suit.
I think the way you are leaving many California kids behind is a bigger scandal than your little French Laundry escapade.
Honestly, I don’t know how you can sleep at night when kids of privilege have such a clear, unfair advantage over our kids in SCUSD and kids in other high-poverty public school districts.
The system you are setting up will make it easy for affluent schools that already enjoy huge advantages to access state money and re-open while high poverty schools get left behind. That would be so like you, and so like California.
This story was originally published January 14, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
