We're in this together

Victories in the primary election and an end to the grocery workers strike in Southern California: The roller coaster ride that is the 2003-04 school year continues, and teachers continue to come out on top.

On March 2, we held our second statewide election of this school year, and thanks to all your hard work, it was a good election night for students, teachers and public schools.

The win on Proposition 55 successfully accomplishes a CTA goal of helping to get teachers and students the facilities they deserve. Prop. 55 will provide $12.3 billion for local school districts and colleges to make needed repairs to run-down schools and to build new classrooms to relieve overcrowding.

This completes the state school bond package started with Prop. 47 in 2002, which provided $13 billion for school districts and colleges. We know clean, safe schools will improve student learning and help recruit and retain quality teachers. CTA led the fight for both these initiatives, and with your hard work in local school districts and communities across the state, we were able to get the job done.

Teachers once again made the difference in this election. You held news conferences, distributed fliers to parents, conducted local phone banks and made sure our voices were heard. As I've said many times, the power of CTA belongs to you.

The passage of Propositions 57 and 58 will also help protect our schools from additional state budget cuts. If the state had been forced to cut an additional $12 billion to $15 billion from the state budget, our students and schools would have suffered. The passage of these two initiatives also means local school districts have no reason to try and force midyear cuts or teacher layoffs.

The biggest disappointment of the night was the defeat of Proposition 56. This initiative would have provided the structural reform that is desperately needed to improve our state budget process - ensuring that the state budget gets passed on time and local school districts are not forced to guess about financing for the next school year. CTA will continue to fight for legislative reforms to the budget process.

The CTA-recommended presidential candidate, Howard Dean, bowed out of the race before Election Day, but I want to stress that it was Howard Dean who made education and particularly teachers' concerns with President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act part of the national debate. In November, we will be looking for someone who will continue to address these issues.

After five weeks on strike, grocery workers in southern California are back to work. This is good news for all of us. The workers held strong and won a key battle to protect health care benefits.

CTA's State Council of Education voted to support the striking United Food and Commercial Workers, and it was the right decision because we are all in this together.

The fight for adequate health care is facing teachers at almost every local bargaining table in the state. Affordable health care is a state and national issue, and that is why CTA used a small portion of our advertising campaign to support the grocery workers.

Did our ads make the supermarket companies uncomfortable? Yes, they did. But more importantly, our ads raised awareness about the health care crisis in this country and the need to protect health care benefits for teachers and all Californians.

CTA has been at the forefront of this fight for a long time and is actively working on the issue on several fronts:

• CTA staff has been trained on the latest cost-containment ideas for maximizing health benefits dollars and is working with local leaders at bargaining tables.
• CTA promoted the concept of jointly managed trusts and assists chapters and districts in developing trusts. Working through a purchasing coalition, these trusts have saved our members more than $32 million in the last 15 years.
• CTA is exploring the concept of a CTA prescription drug plan as an alternative to the prescription coverage available through existing district plans.
• And CTA has appointed the Medical and Insurance Analysis Workgroup to take a look at how we can address this problem in a larger setting. The workgroup is reviewing all state and national health care reform proposals and how they impact CTA members. A report will be presented to the CTA Board of Directors in April.

And finally, I want to remind everyone to collect their two signatures and turn in their petitions for the Improving Classroom Education Act. We have until April 7 to collect 1 million signatures to qualify the initiative for the November ballot. This initiative will bring much-needed resources to our classrooms and provide voluntary universal preschool to all children the year before kindergarten. Remember, two signatures really can make a difference.