By Christine Young
Since 2000, the California Teachers Association (CTA) has spent more than a quarter of a Billion Dollars funding Sacramento politicians and ballot campaigns to protect their special interest agenda.
That makes CTA the biggest political spender in California…by far.
The union leadership gives more money to politics than corporations like AT&T and Chevron. And between 2000 and 2009 they spent roughly twice the amount of the next biggest spender, the Service Employees International Union.
Here is a list of needed reforms that the CTA used its political weight to defeat:
- CTA Stopped Legislation that Would Have Made It Easier to Fire Teachers Who Molest Children (Senate Bill 1530 in 2012)
- CTA Stopped Legislation that Would Have Expanded Access to Medication for Students Who Have Seizures (Senate Bill 1051 in 2011)
- CTA Denied Local School Boards More Authority to Fire Bad Teachers (Prop 75 in 2005)
- CTA Denied Local School Districts More Authority to Improve Low-Performing Schools (Assembly Bill 1403 in 2007)
- CTA Stopped Student Performance from Being Part of Teacher Reviews (Prop 8 in 1998)
- CTA Prevented Teachers from Having to Pass Credentialing Exams (Prop 8 in 1998)
- CTA Stopped Parents of Kids in Failing Schools from Having a Choice to Send Them to Better Schools…Twice (Prop 174 in 1993 and Prop 38 in 2000)
- CTA Helped Fire a Reform-Minded Principal from a Watts School Because He Wanted to Make It a Charter School. Due to his efforts, the dropout rate drastically decreased, while the graduation rate and students pursuing higher education skyrocketed (Locke High School, 2007)
- CTA is Part of Lawsuits and Efforts to prevent the “Parent Trigger” – Which Allows Parents of Low-Performing Schools to Take Control and Make It a Charter School. They’ve even gone so far as to intimidate parents at meetings and demand that they resend their signatures asking for a change. (McKinley Elementary School in Compton, 2010 and Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto, 2012)
Please join our Facebook Group “California Parents for Reform” where we discuss this and other issues facing our schools and families.
And check out what Prop 32 really says and sign our petition to the CTA.
