Council turns up the heat in effort to pass bond, elect friends of education

Public education in California faces crucial times over the coming year, given the downturn in the state economy and a state election that could have a dramatic impact on its future, warns CTA President Wayne Johnson.

At CTA's State Council of Education meeting in October, he implored the 770 delegates to work for the re-election of Governor Gray Davis even though CTA has had its differences with him. "The next few years are going to be hard for public schools. Without our recommended candidates, it will be horrible."

Johnson also discussed his forecast for the next session of the Legislature.

"This year, CTA will be involved in many legislative battles in Sacramento," he warned. He expects fights over bills arising from the education Master Plan, especially those intended to weaken collective bargaining laws. "We have already put the author of the Master Plan report, Sen. Dede Alpert, and the Legislature on notice of our opposition to any legislation along these lines."

Johnson also promised more legislative battles over testing and professional rights for teachers. "It is time - past time - that we stand up for our professional rights as teachers. And it is time again that we stand up and fight to reform this standardized testing mess we have in California."

Syndicated newspaper columnist and television commentator Molly Ivins had Council members rolling in the aisles as she shared her particular perspective on politics.

Despite pokes at President George W. Bush, the Texas legislature, H. Ross Perot (pronounced pee-rot in Eastern Texas, she assured her audience) and others, Ivins observed that everyone should pay attention to politics because "it is everything about our lives and it impinges on our lives every day in hundreds of ways - from how deep you will be buried, to the qualifications of the people who prescribe your eyeglasses ... to the textbooks your children read in school.

"Even though our political system has been corrupted by money ... the fact is that we still own this country! The people in Washington and Sacramento are just the people that we hired to drive the bus for a while, and they have to go where we tell them to," she said.

"If you take your vote and get five others to vote as well, you have leveraged your power, just like the people in Washington and Sacramento."

Taking a few pages from a recent script from television's "The West Wing," CTA Executive Director Carolyn Doggett quoted the drama's President Josiah Bartlet (played by actor Martin Sheen) in her address to Council. Bartlet, who is addressing NEA delegates at a meeting supposedly set in Michigan, decries the shortage of people in the teaching profession. There aren't "enough teachers in our classrooms, and there isn't nearly enough, not nearly enough, not nearly enough money in our classrooms and we can do something about that."

To which Doggett responds, "There's something wrong when a television writer can recognize things that the politicians cannot see or acknowledge. When we must fight every day to get funding enough to keep our students safe and our schoolrooms supplied with teachers and textbooks. And what is wrong can only be fixed when we make our voices heard - when we take up the cudgel and the banner and make sure that we get people out to vote in all the general elections every time!"

Doggett then urged State Council members to vote and to get others to vote - particularly for Prop. 47, which will provide matching funds for school construction and renovation. More than half of California's schools are at least 30 years old, and 1,200 schools must be built in the next few years to keep up with enrollment growth.

"The major weapon at hand in this battle for our students is Proposition 47." Again quoting the television show, Doggett said, "Please get out there - and 'rock the vote!'"

State Sen. Jack O'Connell made an appearance at Council to urge teachers to support his bid to become superintendent of public instruction on Nov. 5. The author of CTA's class size reduction legislation said, "It's an election some pundits say will bring a low turnout. Well, if it's a low turnout, we must work to make sure it's the correct turnout."