Thanks for your excellent post on CTA’s consistent failure to fight the ongoing, and devastating, cuts to public education and virtually all other vital public programs and services in California. I’m going to add a few points that I suspect you omitted for lack of space:

(1) Unlike CTA, CFT (California Federation of Teachers — the state’s AFT affiliate) called for rejecting the disastrous budget deal, instead advocating for no cuts to any vital public programs and for increasing revenue by progressive means (e.g., closing corporate loopholes; increasing corporate property taxes; raising state income tax rates at the high end). The budget deal was likewise opposed by most public employee unions, including the California Nurses Association, AFSCME District Council 57, and SEIU Local 1000. By aggressively lobbying for the rotten budget, CTA — which has 340,000 members — split and effectively neutralized labor’s opposition to the budget.

(2) The CTA leadership has relied on a legislative strategy of appealing to (mainly Democratic Party) “friends” in the state legislature, rallying around the cry of “Protect Proposition 98″ (as you explained, Prop 98 guarantees 40% of general fund revenue will go to K-12 education). This strategy hit the wall when the real estate bubble burst and the general fund shrunk as property tax and other state revenues dropped. CTA’s strategy has broken down — the dispute in Sacramento between Democrats and Republicans is not about whether to cut, but rather how much to cut. And while the Republicans have stonewalled for no tax hikes and savage budget cuts, most Democrats propose raising taxes on working people together with large but not quite as severe budget cuts.

(3) So how do we get out of this mess? Is there a road forward? I think so, but it requires a sea change for us all — not just the CTA leadership, but even for those of us (like you and me) who have focused on getting the money that’s needed to provide quality public education and the other vital services all people need and deserve. I still think that a good part of the revenue we need can come from corporate taxation — but, because of the economic slump, not as much as we need. It seems to me that we need to call on the Obama administration to prioritize people before banks — we need a second (and much larger) stimulus package to bail out all the vital state programs that are being shredded around the country. This can happen — but it won’t happen without a large movement that demands it. I believe that such a movement will begin to develop over the course of the next year.

Jack Gerson

How can we members raise enough fuss so that CTA changes its modus operandi and actually tries to be a Union that fights for public education?