Good morning, CharterFolk.
Lots of work right now, and I have been telling Amy this would be a spring break week, but I’m behind on posts and I’m eager to keep cranking out material for those of you who will put up with it.
So I forge on.
I’ll get this one off to you today. I then intend to get some shorter posts off to you later in the week about red state dynamics and a piece about Philly which I’m still researching. That will tee me up for a couple more exploratory pieces I’d like to publish as I start some new podcasting with Andy Rotherham in April.
Let’s get to it.
A Strike Ends Now In Linked Arms, But Don’t Bet on It Happening Again.
Word that a new deal was reached in Los Angeles a day after the strike ended made national headlines.
In one of the world’s most expensive cities …
… where more than 400,000 people have moved out in the last two years …
… and where there is little indication that progress is being made on the heart of the matter …
… where, in fact, the heart of the matter is only being allowed to get much worse …
… what is there to feel other than empathy for some of the most affected people who have now been provided a modicum of relief?
The thing I find most interesting, and most telling, about the way the deal was announced was the focus on personalities …
… rather than on the substance of the deal that was negotiated.
You can find descriptions of what SEIU won overall, but there is virtually no discussion about what substantive progress, if any, SEIU was able to make through the strike. Indeed, the only coverage I can find …
… suggests SEIU got very little new at all.
Which explains the photo-op ending showing SEIU’s president linking arms with the mayor and the superintendent.
Superintendent Carvalho, the Daily Breeze reported, was …
… “pleased and relieved” by the terms of the deal, suggesting the district didn’t feel like it had given up much.
Which then begs the question:
If SEIU was going to settle for essentially what the district had already been offering, why go through the strike at all? Why make kids endure yet another week of learning loss?
The answer, I’m afraid, has little to do with SEIU, and everything to do with who really calls the shots in Los Angeles Unified these days.
As we have described on several occasions here at CharterFolk …
… the breakthrough change in political dynamics that allowed education reform to move forward in Los Angeles since the emergence of Antonio Villaraigosa as a political force in the late 90’s …
… was the schism between SEIU and UTLA born of the reality that SEIU members tend to live and send their kids to school in the same neighborhoods where they work, whereas UTLA members do not, making SEIU members much more frustrated with the poor education that the district is offering than UTLA is.
But this last election cycle, when the UTLA candidate defeated the SEIU candidate in Board District 2 …
… the scales tipped in a once-in-a-generation way back toward a UTLA-controlled board.
So heading into 2023, SEIU was in the weakest position relative to UTLA that it had been in for decades.
And yet, 2023 became the year that UTLA decided to make a solidarity stand with SEIU that was trumpeted by UTLA’s past president in a celebratory op-ed in the Nation this weekend.
What do you think motivated that solidarity stand?
Some sudden recognition and contrition for the fact that their historical selfish negotiation of special benefit for their own members had fundamentally compromised the district’s ability to offer decent compensation to its other employee groups?
Not so much.
It’s actually all about …
… UTLA’s own upcoming negotiations.
And now that one employee group, an employee group that comprises 40% of the district’s employees but only 10% of the district’s total employee costs, has gotten its now broadly advertised 30% raise, it will make UTLA’s demands for the same seem all the more reasonable. And they will be able to make those demands with full confidence that SEIU is ready to reciprocate with another solidarity walkout should the district fail to give UTLA what it wants. It primes UTLA to seek pay concessions from LA Unified gargantuan enough to consume the entire reserve of one-time covid-relief money the district has built up so that the district ends up postured on the brink of fiscal insolvency, thereby imposing even great desperation on the district’s board to take back enrollment and revenues from Los Angeles charter schools.
Because if you look at enrollment trends in Los Angeles public schools over the last six or seven years, what is incredibly striking is that Los Angeles charter school enrollment has stayed essentially the same …
… while the district’s has fallen off a cliff.
Since 2015-16, charter schools have increased enrollment by 5000 students while the district has lost nearly 100,000. In terms of percentage of students served, charter schools have grown from serving16.9% of Los Angeles students seven years ago to 20.7% today.
UTLA knows that this trend is likely to endure far are into the future.
And UTLA further knows that while policy makers and virtue-projectors may say one thing during a strike, when it comes to really making a stand that would demonstrate true support for UTLA priorities …
… the voters just aren’t there.
It’s yet another reason that UTLA understands that, as is happening in large urban school districts across the country …
… a rough beast is slouching toward Beaudry Street to be born. And their only real strategy is to continue forward with its …
… hostile takeover.
Meaning the chance we see this next UTLA negotiation with the district end with parties linking arms and professing how “pleased and relieved” they are at the outcome is essentially zero.
Meanwhile, the underlying laws of the public education universe remain the same. LAUSD is not coming close to achieving its mission of serving the students and families of Los Angeles well. And the new agreement that UTLA is certain to impose on the district in the weeks ahead will only make things incalculably worse.
With that being the case, parents will continue turning to charter schools for the same reason they ever have.
Hope.