7:00am | As mentioned here, and here and here, thousands of teachers, students, parents and community members gathered at Cal State Long Beach, Long Beach City College and Wilson High School on March 4th ostensibly to protest cuts in public education funding. The Wilson event attracted some 2,000 protesters. The rallies in Long Beach were but a part of a larger “Day of Action” that took place on the same day throughout California and was organized by the California Teachers Association (CTA). A group called “Unite for Education”, which was described in a press release and on its Facebook page as “…a coalition of parents, teachers, nurses, librarians, students, and community members” organized the rallies in Long Beach.
I give these rallies a passing grade in the subjects of “Community Activism”, “Political Activism”, “Labor Activism”, “Media and Public Relations”, Music Appreciation” and “Art”. If the one goal was to instruct LBUSD students in community, political and labor activism, these protests were a fine example of each. Organizing a successful statewide protest of this type is a daunting task and the CTA is to be commended for pulling this off so well although it appears that they forgot to mention to some of those protesting in Oakland that they were supposed to comply with the law while doing so. 150 arrests later, I think those folks have gotten that message loud and clear, courtesy of Oakland (and former Long Beach) Police Chief Batts and the OPD.
Is it just me or does the fellow in the foreground in the L.A. Times picture, the gentleman with one hand holding a banner and the other raised in a fist, look like he’s smoking a joint? Perhaps he was doing double duty and protesting medical marijuana laws at the same time. But I digress…
Let’s try to think more critically, for a moment, about what the CTA and TALB are.
The CTA boasts 325,000 members across California. It was founded in 1863 and claims on its website to be one of the “strongest advocates for educators in the country.” Sounds good. Who, after all, would not want to advocate for educators or have a problem with any organization that helped to do so? What CTA appears to mean by this, however, can also be found on its website if we dig just a little deeper:
Here’s what their website has to say about membership benefits:
“As a CTA member you have at your fingertips access to a variety of benefits and programs to enhance your life and your career. Check your eligibility information and learn about the benefits for new members and retired members to see what’s available to you. In addition to the vast number and variety of benefits, CTA offers to you a special website – CTAinvest.org – where you can find investment and retirement calculators and other helpful tips and tools.”
Here’s what their website has to say about their political activities:
“CTA’s political clout was evident in both the February and June 2009 primaries. All but one of the statewide initiatives was successfully decided for CTA. CTA members working on behalf of recommended candidates were also instrumental in key legislative primaries throughout the state. On local ballots, CTA regional political teams won school bonds, parcel taxes and elected new members of local school boards. Over 93% of all candidates and issues were won by CTA at the local and statewide level.”
CTA seems quite proud of its many political lobbying successes, and rightly so, because that’s in essence what CTA truly is, a labor union and a powerful political lobby that advocates at the State level for an increase in pay and benefits for educators under all circumstances and at all times. Note that nothing in the quoted excerpt mentions anything about what all of the statewide initiatives; school bonds and parcel taxes actually cost the people of California or the limiting effect these costs are on the funds available in local School Districts for things like classrooms, books, computers, supplies etc.
Like CTA, TALB is also a labor union, representing “all Child Development Center, Head Start, K-12 teachers, nurses, librarians, program facilitators and resource specialists” working in the LBUSD. TALB’s published mission statement is simple:
“Protecting teacher’s interests & improving teachers working conditions in order to improve students’ learning conditions through aggressive advocacy & providing information and training to its members.”
TALB might have further simplified its mission statement and aligned it more closely with truth if it had simply stopped at:
“Protecting teacher’s interests & improving teachers working conditions”
Because, thinking critically and being completely honest, if “improving students learning conditions” was a true priority for that organization, it would not be demanding raises and improved working conditions for its membership at a time when severe cuts are being proposed elsewhere in LBUSD’s budget.
If there is any doubt about what TALB considers to be its “primary purposes”, let’s read them, in their entirety, from its own website:
1. Protect our members
2. Promote teachers’ professional and legal rights
3. Organize its membership for influence & power
4. New leadership recruitment & training
5. Inform members of benefits
Note the conspicuous absence, here, of any mention of improving students’ learning conditions, increasing student achievement and academic excellence, decreasing student drop-out rates or any other purpose not completely and entirely member-centric.
On the other hand I give these rallies a failing grade when it comes to helping our community and, more importantly, our students to better understand why public school funding is being cut; the critical and complex inter-relationship between what public education, as an institution, is costing us as compared to what it is delivering to us; the very basic realities of publicly funded budgeting and the direct correlation between poor student performance and a consistently declining and devolving society.
Look, I think good educators should be among our highest paid public employees and I think they have every right to collectively bargain for the best wages and working conditions they can get, just like anyone else.
What I object to, however, is rallies like these, organized and hosted as they are by labor unions that characterize such events as “pro-education” and “pro-student” when, in truth, what they are really about is advocating that teachers, all teachers, good or bad, keep their jobs and never see their pay or benefits cut.
So let’s stop kidding ourselves, shall we? The CTA’s statewide “Day of Action” and TALB’s “Unite for Education” was about neither “education” nor “students”, it was about protecting teachers’ jobs, pay and benefits and about protesting the funding cuts that are necessarily impacting each.
I very much welcome your questions and your comments.