Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. Campaign season came a little early in Los Angeles this year, with the open District 5 school board seat and Measure EE, the parcel tax proposal to fund city schools. United Teachers Los Angeles is devoting its sizable war chest to these elections, and its union allies...

Southern California’s job market is hot right now. But unless something changes, many Los Angeles-area high school students won’t be ready for it when they graduate — especially if they don’t go on to earn a bachelor’s degree — which many of them won’t. For as long as anyone can remember, American high schools have mostly failed to provide...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. Another California school district in financial crisis is facing a teacher strike, but Thursday’s one-day walkout in Sacramento is something different than what we’ve seen so far this year, and it might not be legal. But that’s not stopping the Sacramento City Teachers Association from hinting at...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. Delegates to the California Teachers Association State Council elected E. Toby Boyd as the union’s next president last weekend in Los Angeles. Boyd defeated CTA’s sitting vice president, Theresa Montaño, for the position. It is rare for an incumbent union second-in-command looking to move up to be...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. The California Federation of Teachers has a new president for the first time since 2011. Delegates elected Jeff Freitas to the position at the union’s biennial convention in Los Angeles this past weekend. CFT is the smaller of California’s two statewide teacher unions, with approximately 85,000 members....

In 2013, when I was elected to the Lynwood Unified School District Board, we voted to renew a partnership that had recently lapsed with an organization that recruits idealistic leaders of all ages to become teachers: Teach For America. Five years later, I can say that this decision has greatly benefited the students of our...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. After teacher strikes in Los Angeles and Oakland, union leaders see districtwide job actions as the perfect tool to check off all those boxes on their wish lists. The next venues appear to be Santa Rosa and Sacramento — for different reasons, although increased funding is behind...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. *Updated March 15 Things are definitely looking up for teacher unions, especially in California. Membership losses were less than feared after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus ruling. A wave of teacher strikes led to settlements with more funding. The 2018 elections went well, with a friendly governor...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report. The Oakland teacher strike came to an end after seven days with another “historic” contract agreement. As was the case in Los Angeles, the previous Oakland contract had expired in June 2017. The strike lasted the same amount of time. Both were settled after mediation by outside...