LAUSD board member Zimmer says stand with Beatriz against Vergara
Steve Zimmer
Just over a year ago, I won re-election to the Los Angeles Unified School District board. It was an unlikely victory in what may have been the most expensive school board race in U. S. history. The wealthiest of self-styled reformers – Eli Broad, Reed Hastings,Michael Bloomberg andMichelle Rhee’s followers – put in over $4-million to try and take over the L.A. Board of Education.
The stakes were high. Los Angeles Unified is by far the largest school district in the nation to be governed by an elected board. Our district has over 900,000 students, over 60,000 employees and an operating budget of over $7 billion. The reformers were clear about their goals. They sought to eviscerate the power of our teacher union by eliminating job protections, seniority rights, and tenure. They sought to link teacher evaluation directly to standardized test scores. And more.
Against this gale force, we were able to build an improbable coalition of families, teachers and classified employees, and community activists. We matched the billionaires’ money with authentic boots on the ground. We talked to people, and people listened. In the many struggles in today’s economy, battles often pit people’s interests against the interests of corporate America. This time the people won.
Or so we thought.
As it turns out, the election isn’t really over. It just shifted venues.
The same privatizers who funded the campaign to buy the school board funded the litigation here in Los Angeles that seeks to achieve through the courts what they could not win at the ballot box. Named for one of the student plaintiffs, Beatriz Vergara, the case heard closing arguments yesterday. If it is successful, the Vergara case will eliminate some teacher tenure protections, limit seniority, and diminish collective