The Struggle to Unionize Within LA’s Biggest Charter Chain
And the lengths that Alliance College-Ready Public Schools will go to stop it.
Last spring, announced their plans to form a union at Los Angeles’s largest charter school chain, Alliance College-Ready Public Schools.The news could not have come at a worse time for the , led by the Broad Foundation, whose unprecedented to make the district 50 percent charter was leaked a few months later. Alliance College-Ready, led by the Broad Foundation’s former managing director, was to be at the center of these plans.
A union breakthrough into the city’s largest charter operator, just as this expansion was supposed to begin, however, would fundamentally undermine the Los Angeles union-free vision for the nation’s largest ever charter school district.
Almost immediately after the announcement, Alliance’s private management organization crafting plans to counter the campaign. Only a month after the drive launched last spring, an internal memo was leaked, advising administrators on how to staff from unionization, candidly, “the goal is no unionization”.
Documents, obtained by The Nation, show that Alliance’s leadership has not only made efforts to discourage pro-union teachers, but also to pit parentsagainst these teachers. Emails from last May, for example, show that Alliance coached paid alumni students, hired through the California Charter Schools Association, to phonebank parents with an anti-union script and collect parent signatures against the union. The documents also show that Alliance has been working with top political consultants to mobilize “parent captains and parent supporters” against the union campaign.
Documents, obtained by The Nation, show that Alliance’s leadership has not only made efforts to discourage pro-union teachers, but also to pit parentsagainst these teachers. Emails from last May, for example, show that Alliance coached paid alumni students, hired through the California Charter Schools Association, to phonebank parents with an anti-union script and collect parent signatures against the union. The documents also show that Alliance has been working with top political consultants to mobilize “parent captains and parent supporters” against the union campaign.
According to one version of the anti-union script as of May 2015, former Alliance students were paid to call parents and read the following: “Having a teachers’ union would be a big change for the Alliance. It would end the independence that the Alliance has to make decisions on behalf of kids. And – I don’t know about your kids – but I chose to go to the Alliance because of the small class sizes, great teachers, and personalized attention. [Add any other reasons you chose to attend the Alliance.]” (emphasis original)
And though many teachers have cited large class size and over testing as their reasons for supporting the union drive, the script continues, “If UTLA unionized at the Alliance, UTLA would get involved in decisions about those things – like how to evaluate teachers and how much learning time kids get. Even class sizes – and a lot more – would need to be approved by UTLA.”After finishing the script and asking parents to sign an anti-union petition, the The Struggle to Unionize Within LA’s Biggest Charter Chain | The Nation:
