Where Are We Going?

We are in the fight of our lives. As the second-largest local teachers union in the United States, we stand at ground zero in the fight for public education in America. So-called reformers are waging war against teachers nationwide. Theyre relentless, theyre coordinated, and have found major allies with Superintendent Deasy and Monica Garcia over the last few years. While the ground seems to be shifting in some favorable directions (recent school board victories, passing Proposition 30), UTLA is hardly moving from victory to victory. And make no mistake, the attacks will continue. Its clear after reading The Real State of UTLA, we need a plan. In order for UTLA to become a fighting unionone that is capable of winning victories for our members, our students, and the communities we servewe need to know what we want to achieve. Were not going to get anywhere if we dont know what we want for our profession, for our kids, and their families. We need to fight based on our own agenda. We need to ask ourselves, where are we going? We need to fight for our vision of what good teaching and learning. One of the reasons the so-called reformers have been able to paint teachers into a corner is by branding us as workers who only care about our pay and benefits, at the expense of our students educations. While having a union that fights for improved pay and benefits is of course important--and actually vital to help improve conditions for all workersthere is so much more we can fight for. UTLA needs to project the message that we are a union of educated professionals who absolutely do know the best ways to teach our kids. This has not happened over the past two years. We cannot continue to let our enemies paint us as being only for ourselves. We must actively promote what good classroom teaching looks like. We must advocate for a culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy in our classroomsgeared to our students backgrounds and communitiesto create meaningful relationships and academic engagement, because thats how human beings learn. We must fight for this as a union while also fighting for decent working conditions and fair pay. This fight must include educating the public about how dangerous the current focus on standardized tests really is. Weve seen some inspiring fight backs by groups of teachers against testing nationwide, but there is so much more to do. Using standardized tests to evaluate teachers and schools is dangerous, but its even more dangerous for our students to have the focus of their learning be about prepping for these testswhich only reward a specific kind of thinking. Over the last two years, our union has barely spoken to this issue. That needs to change. We need to fight for genuine local control of schools by parents and community members, working in concert with teachers, and other workers. In order to serve communities as diverse as those found in LAUSD, we need a union that encouragesand actively supports organizing with students, parents, and community members to use their legal rights to properly govern their schools. Weve seen some great work, mostly done independently of big UTLA, around the city with schools attempting, and even succeeding at doing thisand the sad, but predictable attacks by LAUSD that inevitably follow. Currently, teachers and schools stand alone, isolated, each tackling its own problem with almost no coordination. We have a union of thousands of members embedded in their communities. We can, and must do better.

We must organize with parents and community to build power as a union, to build the political might to win battles against the district for our kids and our profession. UTLA needs to make building long-term, meaningful alliances with community members and groups a top priority. We can build the kind of power that would have school board candidates genuinely wanting our endorsement, and fearing going against us because it would mean going against the communities they serve. We can become a force for social and economic justice in Los Angeles. UTLA must take actions to begin building power, instead of occasionally talking about it in the abstract. We need to begin a true, genuine, campaign to reopen the contract for negotiations, connected to our students learning. Members already passed the Schools LA Students Deserve Initiative which demands our union do this. In building this campaign, we can take actions around backward funding prioritiesiPads, breakfast in the classroom, increasing class size, while still doling out lavish contracts for private companies to write our assessments. Through a contract campaign, we can unite teachers and communities around a common vision of the schools our students deserve, instead of continuing to have each school and teacher fend for themselves. We can organize to reduce over-testing this year while our district shifts to the Common Core, and to make sure that the Common Core State Standards are implemented in the most just and equitable way possibleand not as another new mechanism to over-test our kids. UTLA supports the Schools LA Students Deserve Campaign (SLASD). SLASD is an independent, grassroots, organized campaign to improve education in LA that is made-up of students, teachers, parents, and community members. Big UTLA should formally commit to working with the SLASD campaign. If we connect what we fight for directly to our students, we both prove that our students are truly our first concern, and we create another way we, as unionists, can fight for social and economic justice for our kids and their communities. UTLA reorganizes to create a more democratic, genuinely bottom-up union. The current orientation of UTLA under President Fletcher is that of a strong president who pushes his own agenda, discounts (and often completely disregards) the democratic will of the rank-and-file if it goes against that agenda, fails to implement board, house, and membership resolutions, while leaving school sites to fend for themselves. This is no way to run a union. We need to elect a diverse, representative team of officers, area chairs, and board members committed to changing our direction as a union. We are in an existential battle against enemies who are trying to destroy us. If we dont create a genuine, bottom-up leadership responsive to its members that actually nurtures and supports school site struggles, we will lose this fight. We need new leadership. Until we realize that we have to ask where are we going? and decide on a direction and a plan, we have no chance to achieve any of our goals for ourselves or our kids. We will continue to be mired in endless one-off battles that gain us very little. PEAC is proposing a comprehensive fight back. We will be organizing forums around testing and learning and discussing the Common Core; we will be holding Evaluation Fairs to showcase innovative and critical and culturally relelvant teaching. We will be organizing actions when the union does not. We are supporting the Schools LA Students Deserve Campaign. We are fighting for a contract campaign around a vision of the schools our students deserve. We are moving forward to support a change in our union leadership. Join PEAC and get involved in the new direction for UTLA.
Leadership Conference Caucus Meeting: Logan Level 2 Saturday 5:45 PM First PEAC Meeting of the new School Year: August 15

www.progressiveeducatorsforaction.com