Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. In the summer of 2015, Alex Caputo-Pearl, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, gave a state of the union speech in which he alerted members to the dire necessity of raising dues by 33 percent. Without the increase, he said, UTLA would be “bankrupt or...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. California State Auditor Elaine Howle can’t be making too many friends among the state’s education policy establishment. After releasing a report concluding that the state’s system for financing public education “has not ensured that funding is benefiting intended student groups and closing achievement gaps,” Howle...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. Somehow I missed last month’s report from the California State Auditor on one of former Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature education policy accomplishments: the Local Control Funding Formula. The formula simplified the way the state funded K-12 education in local school districts, giving every district a...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report With 310,000 members, more than 400 employees and $200 million in annual revenue, the California Teachers Association is a large-scale enterprise. It wields great influence at the statehouse, but its presence is felt in the smallest communities throughout the state. Nothing happens in education or...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report The representative bodies of United Teachers Los Angeles have voted to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. UTLA is the first teachers union to endorse a 2020 presidential candidate, which is more of an issue than whether...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report The California Teachers Association recently named Joe Boyd as its new executive director, replacing Joe Nuñez, who was mysteriously ousted in July after six years on the job. Boyd was most recently the executive director of CTA’s counterpart, the California Federation of Teachers. The executive...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report For the next three weeks, United Teachers Los Angeles will conduct a campaign targeted at its own members. The goal is to persuade them to approve a UTLA endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States. Chapter...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report By all accounts, it’s a great time to be a California union activist. Statewide political offices are in Democratic hands. The legislature is solidly liberal. The state GOP shows no signs of life. Government revenues are up. Government spending is up. Where is there a...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report The School and Communities First ballot initiative might be the biggest and most expensive school funding campaign battle in California history. Or, it might peter out as so many other similar attempts have in the past. There is evidence to support either view. The proposed...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report As difficult as it may be to believe nowadays, when teacher unions deem charter schools their mortal enemies, there was a brief period of time when they took a different approach. Affiliates of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers once created their...