Bretón Vrs. the Sacramento Teachers

 Sacramento Bee opinionnaire  Marcos Bretón offers up one of his frequent attacks on the Sacramento teachers’ union in today’s Bee https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article249152435.html.

It is the usual anti union diatribe filled with paragraphs cut and pasted from prior columns.  He purposes to deal with the issue of opening schools in Sacramento.  If you ignore all the hyperbole, you get down to the dividing issue – when should Sacramento City Unified re open schools.

There is substantive agreement between the district administration and the union except for one issue. 

Should teachers be given vaccines prior to returning to work.  That is the issue.

Bretón has one side; the union argues teachers should have vaccines first.  That's all.  The remainder in innuendo and name calling. 

Below  is an alternate view- with data citations. 

Re: Opening schools

David Dayen, The American Prospect  Feb.15, 2021

Last Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finally released a long-awaited set of guidelines for how to safely reopen schools. It really says what the data has said for a while: schools are generally safe when community transmission is low, less safe when transmission is high, and only really safe when following mitigation guidelines, which include masking, social distancing, frequent hand washing and things like not coughing out loud without covering your mouth, sanitation, ventilation, quarantine and isolation for the sick, and contact tracing. Many observers have put the lack of school reopening on teachers and particularly teachers unions, but the polling shows a different story, which plays directly into the above paragraph. If you ask parents whether they want to return their kids to in-person instruction, you see a significant disparity cut by race and class. In general terms, whiter, richer parents are more likely to want to return their kids to school; poorer parents and parents of color do not. And the difference is that, for the whiter and richer parents, their communities have not been as ravaged by COVID, and their schools can actually undertake the mitigation measures.

Black and Latino communities have seen a disproportionate level of death and suffering during the pandemic. Whether community transmission is high right now or not in their area, the accumulated impact makes it feel high. (In truth, community transmission has been high pretty much everywhere in the country since late fall, and only now is coming down to a manageable level.) But just as important, these parents have been battling their school districts for a basic level of quality in the places they send their kids for many years. These schools are simply not equipped for the kinds of adaptations necessary to minimize risk from COVID. That’s where the Biden relief package comes in. It should be considered, especially by those concerned about the size or unnecessary nature of the plan, as a make-good for decades of disinvestment. It’s as much an infrastructure package as anything. There are public schools in America without soap in the bathrooms. There are public schools in America, a shocking number of them, with no working air conditioning system. Lots of schools have no on-site nurses, and janitorial staffs are often inadequate. Countless students are jammed into too-small rooms with bursting class sizes. The Philadelphia Public Schools came up with the idea to put window fans on boards and have that serve as ventilation for one of the largest and poorest school districts in the country. Students and staff are headed back in the Philly schools next week.

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By contrast, this white person’s school district in Brookline, Massachusetts, where the median household income in 2019 was $121,949, is presumably not indicative of these realities. Some of the CDC guidelines will be difficult no matter what school people find themselves in. It’s hard to get kids to physically distance or keep masks on or cough into their elbow. And the latest anger from the open-the-schools set, that six feet of distance is "impossible" in schools, is mostly a cri de coeur against regulation itself, as usual for the libertarians leading the charge. (See this dystopic potential solution to the distancing problem, rather than, you know, distancing.)  But it’s clear that some schools cannot come close to providing a safe environment, really even under normal conditions let along during COVID. They don’t have the possibility for distancing, the ventilation, the medical personnel, or the sanitation measures needed. That’s why there’s $130 billion in the American Rescue Plan, which can be put toward making these necessary adjustments. It includes an "Equity Challenge Grant" intended to reverse historical inequities in schools and the impacts on students of color.

That could easily be put toward investment. How about getting an air filtration system with the highest-quality filters (a pretty low-cost option!) in every school in America? How about money for staffing nurses at every school, and ensuring a clean environment in every school? This could be an opportunity, not just to reopen, but to level the playing field in the built environment of our public school system. There’s a concern that states and cities will take the new money and drop out their share of funding for these schools, leaving them in worse position once the one-time funds are exhausted. Congress could work to try to prevent that, and should. Jared Bernstein, now on Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, championed an infrastructure program during the last recession called FAST, or Fix America’s Schools Today. He reasoned that upgrading the nation’s schools would create lots of construction jobs while improving learning long-term. A $50 billion program would produce about half a million dollars per school building in the U.S., with a focus on weatherization, better air quality, mold and asbestos abatement, plumbing updates, boiler and window replacement, and outdoor learning improvements. The American Rescue Plan can be a version of FAST, with effects not only for the pandemic but the future. And this is an area where we ought to be investing anyway. The concerns from the Larry Summerses of the world that we’re just "throwing away" temporary emergency spending (we’re not) are unfounded, because school upgrades are among the most necessary infrastructure spending options we can take. It’s long overdue.

 

 

The Sacramento Bee Misinforms About School Budgets

 Marcos Bretón today in the BEE,  describes what he thinks are the facts of   the SCUSD budget. Most of the data  are cut and paste from prior articles he wrote. , The title is deceptive.  It is not factual.

SCUSD is not going broke,  SCUSD  has  a $93 million surplus at the end of this year,

And, they claim they will spend $100 million on books and supplies.

They  usually spend  $ 10 million.  

I don’t 

I don't know if he wrote the headline.

This is irresponsible reporting.   The Bee supports the School Board incumbents. But, at least they  should accurately report on  the budget. 

 

California itself has a major  problem of underfunding of schools. They have been doing so since 1988.  This is on the ballot as Prop. 15.  See the Prop 15 video below. http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2020/10/what-is-prop-15-explained.html

The Sacramento  funding crisis is not in teachers’ salaries, or health benefits.

California under funds its schools  and that produces large classes- the largest in the nation. We have few counselors and  almost no school nurses. Lets talk about the real issue of California school funding,   

Bretón has it wrong- Again

Bee opinion columnist Bretón has a harsh column about the SCUSD budget crisis.
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/article238321423.html

Part of the problem is what he assumes.,

He argues teachers should take a pay cut, and that they should pay some of their health care. This is the essence of austerity.  He assumes that the way to fix the problem is to pay teachers less,

( You can see how well this works out.  The Bee now pays its reporters less. They have over 100 fewer reporters. The quality of the paper has diminished substantially.  It is no longer a substantive paper. see https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/growing-local-news-deserts-endanger-democracy-study-finds)

Why assume that cutting salaries is the answer?  Lets try an alternative.

Assume the teachers should be paid well.  Assume that teachers should have quality health care for themselves and their families.  This is what unions are fighting for all across the nation,. It could be called Medicare for All.

Well, if we need to pay teachers well, more money will be needed for schools.  Yes, we should tax more and adequately fund our schools.  We have not done that since the passage of Prop. 13.  Austerity, underfunding schools, is a lousy policy. Just fighting over who gets their salaries cut is avoiding the important issues.  Fund the schools.

Here is how.

A victory for the corporate "reformers" in the Vergara v California case

California judge Rolf Treu ruled Tuesday  in the Vergara  v.California case that California teacher tenure laws deprive students of their right to an education that is guaranteed  under the state Constitution and violates their civil rights. The decision is a major defeat for teachers’ unions and will presumably lead to challenges of tenure laws in other states.  The ruling overturned five state statutes giving California teachers firing protections and rights to tenure and seniority.

The implementation of the ruling has been stayed while under appeal.

The Sacramento Bee editorial board and Bee columnists Marcos Breton and Dan Walters, along with their candidate Marc Tucker each applaud the court ruling. Note what they say in their columns. They applaud this defeat of the teachers unions, they do not deal with the critical issue of adequate school funding.

What do the  sides  agree upon?

It is clear that many students in California receive a substandard education and that failing schools are concentrated in poor and minority neighborhoods.   The judge cites the long history of  successful law suites Serrano V. Priest I, II. III, and more that mandated changes in state funding to provide equal funding.  There is also general agreement that teacher quality is a significant factor in improving education.

The problem is that the remedy of the corporate “reformers”  and of  the court does not resolve the basic issues.  It deals with teacher placement, tenure, and freedom of speech, not the adequate funding of schools.   It may at most respond to the 1-3 % of  poor teachers in the classrooms.

California is one of a number of states that require  in their state constitution  that the state provide  adequate public education.  This has been reaffirmed numerous times in Serrano v. Priest 1,2,, 3 and cited again in this court ruling.  

Breton 2, Sacramento CTA 0

  But it is only the first inning.

This anti union tirade  by Marcos Bretón on page B-1 of the Bee today, leaves much to be desired.  I will leave aside the argument about Manny Virrael. Others have dealt with that.  And, Breton may even be right. But the rest of the article is lame.

What Breton does not say - we have an economic crisis.  Forty states have budget crises.  Almost all of the school districts in the state have budget crises. What caused this crisis ? It was caused by the greed and avarice of the financial class on Wall Street  and aided by the politicians of both major political parties.

Major banks and corporations looted the economy creating an international meltdown. The major bankers, finance capitalists in the U.S. robbed the bank last year  – and the federal treasury.  The Wall Street crisis crashed into main street.  People lost their jobs and their houses.  When they lost their jobs, they paid less taxes.  So, the schools and the states are in crisis.  Wall Street  took hundreds of billions of dollars .  The crisis was not caused by students, teachers, public employees  nor recipients of social security. 

 Teachers, like all taxpayers, are already paying for this theft.  What Breton does say.   Bretón thinks that teachers  should pay more through forloughs and cuts in benefits.  And, he thinks he knows best.  He inserts his views into the negotiations by publically condemning the teachers union and stirring up – or revealing- this intense teacher bashing exposed in the comments on the story.   Some people, like Steve Poizner, blame immigrants for the economic crisis.  Breton blames teachers unions.  In both cases it is scapegoating rather than looking at the evidence.

Breton of the Sac Bee reports graffiti

From the Sunday Bee:
Marcos Bretón: Conflict puts Sac State in a sorry state

By Marcos Bretón - Bee Columnist
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, May 13, 2007

The walls of a men's room are never good reading, especially when the message is:

"Never hire a beaner to do a white man's job."

Sacramento State President Alexander Gonzalez was the target of this vulgarity, which was discovered in late April scrawled near a Sequoia Hall toilet, and came to light last week in the campus newspaper.

Penned with black markers, the sentiment exemplifies the dark side of a caustic climate afflicting Sacramento's public university.

How caustic? When a call for comment went out to the chancellor of the California State University system last week, Charles Reed called back in minutes.

"That is totally uncalled for on a university campus," he said.

No one is saying there's a link between the racist graffiti smeared in anonymity in a Sac State bathroom and the professors on campus at odds with Gonzalez. Those Gonzalez opponents -- 77 percent of the faculty members who participated in a referendum -- went very public on April 27 with a vote of "no confidence."

"It was not about Alexander Gonzalez the man," Juanita Barrena, a professor of biological sciences and campus fixture since 1975, said of the vote.

"It's about what's happening inside the university."

Put more bluntly, it's about power.
+++++++
Note: Breton claims he is not linking the graffiti to the conflict with Gonzalez; but of course that is exactly what he did.
He printed graffitti as is it was news.
What a strange choice.