Like other teachers, I have a high tolerance for frustration - if you don't know how to keep going in the face of serious difficulties, you'd better choose another profession. But there's one thing that really gets to me, no matter how often I have to cope with it.
Every year in Sacramento, teachers and CTA struggle to bring more money to the schools. During the ongoing battles that we have to fight, we get little or no help from administrators and school boards. Because we are politically strong, we are usually successful, which means increased funding for local school districts.
But when that new money shows up on the balance sheets, do the bureaucrats bow and say thanks to the teachers? Do they use that money for decent raises and improvements in benefits? No way. They all too often act like they personally inherited the money from a rich relative and guard it like the private gold of a miserly Scrooge.
Last year is a good example. We worked all year and spent millions of dollars of your dues money to pressure the Legislature to give more money to public education than the minimum called for by the state constitution and Prop. 98. (During the Pete Wilson years, California public schools actually got less than the guaranteed minimum.) We talked to every media person we could to explain how schools were underfunded. We pointed out the shameful fact that the United States, the richest nation in the world, ranked only 14th among the industrialized countries in funding for K-12 public schools. We told the media over and over again that California, with the seventh largest economy (now sixth) in the world, could manage to do better than its miserable 41st ranking out of the 50 states in funding our schools.
We kept at it, hammering away at the fact that we could afford more money for public education. Were the administrators at our side, adding their strength to our voices? Again, no way. There were no administrators around helping us.
We ran CTA radio and TV spots to help the public understand our underfunded status. We talked to every legislator about schools and how badly we needed funds to keep up with increased enrollment, to repair old buildings, to bolster professional salaries enough to bring in new qualified teachers and hang on to the ones we still had. We had several discussions with Governor Davis to be sure he understood our needs. I saw no administrative ads anywhere explaining anything.
We started working on a large rally in Sacramento to drive home the point on school funding. We did invite administrators to speak at our rally on May 8. We were optimistic: All of our hard work, coupled with a $12 billion surplus, made funding improvements a real possibility. You all know what happened: the Governor's opening offer in January 2000 was $500 million above the 40 percent of the state budget guaranteed to public schools. Then, following our work and negotiations, CTA succeeded in winning $1.84 billion above the 40 percent - in money to be ongoing, not just one-time, and for debt reduction. It paid off all the money owed to the public schools that Pete Wilson withheld.
That was a deal created by teachers. Administrators had nothing to do with it. I know. I was in the room, and they were not.
This 2000-01 state budget increased school funding by about 11 percent, all of which could be used for salary increases for those who do the actual job of educating the kids, the teachers. Many districts got the idea and, within a short period, they put through raises that their teachers deserved and needed. Some examples: Rialto - 10.96 percent, Riverside City - 10.96 percent, Santa Ana - 12 percent (which includes 1.5 percent for buyback days), Fullerton Secondary - 10.5 percent, San Leandro - 12.95 percent, and Oakland Unified - 13.95 percent.
That's the good news. But in districts where the superintendents think the money is theirs, that they brought it to their districts and thus have some special ownership rights, they are offering 3 to 5 percent with cuts or caps on fringe benefits.
These tight-fisted petty tyrants had nothing to do with the additional funding. Yet, they are given control over funds that teachers and their organization, CTA, brought to the district. This is just plain wrong!
Obviously, we need to change the law so it guarantees teacher salary increases that correspond to the new unrestricted money coming into the district each year. We need to put some realistic limits on the huge reserves some districts keep. Most especially, we need to control the funds so that superintendents have less to give themselves and their administrative buddies in huge raises (for example, in Los Angeles, some mini-superintendents are pulling in 30 percent increases this year) and less to use in creating more jobs for useless administrators, not to mention their perks in the way of cars, annuities, and all the rest of he cushions handed out for the non-teachers.
Make no mistake about it! We bring the money from Sacramento into the districts, and we teachers use the money properly for its real purpose: education in the classroom. We have earned raises and we have made increases possible. We are going to fight to put the money where it belongs, in the classroom, and stop feeding it to a bloated, overpaid California administrative bureaucracy.
