UTLA is backing Steve Zimmer and Imelda Padilla (bottom row pictured above) for LAUSD School Board in the May 16 run-off against candidates backed by big money from Eli Broad and former Myor Riordan, who seek to take over the Board and turn the majority of LA public schools into charters.
The Privatizers’ Masquerade, Profiteers Want Your Schools
by Neil Chertcoff, 19-year retired LAUSD Teacher, UTLA Member neil1947@sbcglobal.net
UTLA is the 2nd largest teacher union and LAUSD, the largest Unified School District in the US, both plagued with corruption. Once again LAUSD had a school board election, where the incumbent president was seeking re-election. These folks are often former UTLA board members who term out, then run for the LAUSD board with special political funds collected from UTLA members beyond their mandatory dues!
Sadly, these LAUSD elected board members are sly fakers, gung-ho Charter enthusiasts in practice. For example, this incumbent LAUSD board president favors Charter Schools, yet is supported by the union.
Like most Board hypocrites, he claims the (fake) left-liberal “progressive” mantle! Like so many of today’s Democratic neo-libs pols, this is claptrap. He has voted for nearly 200 of the LAUSD’s present charters, voted 3 times for mass teacher layoffs of near 8,000, in 2011, 2012-13, and a few hundred more in collateral damage in June 2015 . His pro-charter voting record is near 95% approval. He also voted to purge-out many hundreds of teachers in ‘Teacher jail ‘ between 2010-15 without giving due process to about 90% of these. So LAUSD has the ignominious title of charter school capital of the US.
He was downright hostile to activists who attempted to get signatures to qualify a State Prop in 2016 to ban all the privatizers and charter profiteers under-the-table deals and profit grabs at the expense of students, parents and teachers.
Yet this LAUSD president is a darling of UTLA and SEIU sell-outs who even provide security for him at meetings where angry teachers, aides or janitors show up to protest due to loss of community workers jobs and reduced pensions. The GOP backs a more open crude brew of Charter gung-ho parasites ruling over schools! His opponent is a CCSA political hit man, who never saw charter PAC $$$ he didn’t grab!
So we have here a typical rotten bourgeois election between neo-lib Dems backed by $$$ from Union PACE donations vs. billionaire-financed advocates of en-masse privatization and MORE charters moving in like cancers, wrecking many traditional public schools that are being drained of site worker jobs and special needs programs, funds — hence a Bi-partisan fulfillment of capital needs to cut back Educator//classified pensions and health plans.
They make sure billions in CA tax $$$ are siphoned into charter schemers; big and small – many who eventually get to put up mere fractions of now stolen capital, to ‘purchase’ public schools for profiting at fire sale price deals, supported by both Dems/GOP-and their $Charter donors working thru legislators in Sacramento.
The key is NOT to accept these candidates’ false promises of ”Controlling charters” (more slick deals for investors) but rather to OPPOSE the charters thru organizing teachers, site workers, parent mobilizations, meetings, against ALL racketeer scams, neo-libs and neo cons…
