Defend Public Education!
No More Charters!

Our Public Community Schools Are Not For Sale!
Stop the Break Up of LAUSD!

Our Union Can Defeat the Charterizing/Privatizing of LAUSD
We Must Stand With the Community and Parents Instead of Supporting the Villaraigosa/Broad Public School Grab
UTLA Must Boycott the Cortines School Bid Process

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On Friday, September 25, LAUSD posted its final list of the public schools it intends to sell off to charters. The list includes both ALL the available new schools built to relieve the overcrowded conditions of East LA and South Central schools, that have forced tens of thousands of students to be tracked into completely unviable learning environments. The plan also includes the sale of several schools that have repeatedly rejected the Villaraigosa take-over efforts. This plan is being forced on communities and students who will fight to defeat it and can win easily if we support them.

If UTLA continues to sign on to the project of bidding for charter schools, our union will be abandoning the two most fundamental and progressive principles on which we have stood for forty years. First, we have always stood for the defense of public education; signing on to the charter plan means opening the floodgates for privatization in LA and across the nation. We must continue to defend the great democratic principle of public education and reject any invitation to join the current dishonest and cynical attack against it.

Second, for the past forty years UTLA has championed the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King in Los Angeles, supporting LAUSD's desegregation plan, standing with community and students in defense of the magnet school programs, the PWT (busing to the suburbs) program and the teacher hiring, assignment and retention elements of the desegregation order. LAUSD's highly successful magnet school programs have withstood not only legal challenges but the test of time. Now, in signing on to this project of removing from LAUSD all the new and many established schools located in LA's poor, segregated, black and Latina/o neighborhoods and placing them in a separate segregated racially and geographically isolating charter school system, we are forsaking these fundamental principles.

Over time, this whole charter school effort means the demise of the magnet schools, an end to the desegregation plan, and break-up of the district. The promise of Brown would be a dead letter; the old Jim Crow segregationist lie of "separate but equal" would be restored in the school district which has beaten back every right-wing attack against desegregation, only to find that the most dangerous enemies of school desegregation are the new Booker T. Washingtons and their liberal white benefactors and allies. We cannot forsake our fundamental principles for a bribe or a chance to "sit at the table."

The Villaraigosa/Cortines charter school scheme is meant to be as deceptive, confusing and seemingly inevitable as possible. The district's plan to sell off LAUSD public schools to charter operators is proceeding at breakneck pace, even as its outlines change day by day. Villaraigosa and his corporate charter school partner Eli Broad are intent on pushing the charterization of LAUSD schools through rapidly, because they know that every day their plan is open to examination by students, teachers, parents, and community, its falsity and anti-democratic character can only become more apparent.

This fire sale of LAUSD's precious new schools and older schools, including Lincoln, Garfield, and Jefferson, which have historically served as centers of community organization and unity, is being presented as school-based governance. The fact that outside "partners" and so-called "philanthropic" private interests will have enormous financial and policy-making power in these schools is never mentioned. Our own union never mentions the word "charter," but hides its charter plan under the euphemism "Innovation Division." The Villaraigosa dictatorship over his charter empire is presented as grassroots democracy. The fact that Education Secretary Arne Duncan is demanding that districts create charter school programs whether district constituencies want them or not, as a bribe to receive federal stimulus money, is being presented as "school choice." Why lie? Because the overwhelming majority of Americans support public education and telling the truth about this privatization plan would lead to mass resistance against it.

We can defeat this attack in LA and throughout the nation, but only if we stand on the truth and stop acting as if Villaraigosa's and Duncan's free market schemes for public education are viable, progressive and supportable.

UTLA must stop fostering the attack on public education by collaborating with it now. We are strong--not weak. Villaraigosa cannot and will not proceed without our support. Instead of throwing our union into supporting this harebrained, completely unpopular and dangerous school-bidding war, we should take the clear and uncompromising position supported by the vast majority of UTLA members: No Sell-Off of Our Public Schools! No More Charters! No Handing Over of New Schools to the Villaraigosa/Broad Charter Empire! Our Children Are Not for Sale! Stop the Privatization and Destruction of Public Education. Defend the Vision of Dr. King for America in Los Angeles.

We need to make a fight in UTLA for a change in policy. The policy of the Duffy leadership in collaborating with the Villaraigosa/Duncan attack on public education is a key prop for our enemies' success. UTLA-sponsored trainings on how to write school site reform plans are essential political cover for Villaraigosa and Duncan. They know that public education is enormously popular throughout LA and in the majority Latina/o, black, and poor neighborhoods that are being targeted in this initial round of attacks. Without UTLA support, their plan is dead before it starts. UTLA must stand on the side of our students and their families. We must say NO SELL-OFF!

We have a choice; between now and January we can organize our site-plans for submission – a sure path to takeover, concessions, and further attacks -- or we can organize our students, parents, and community and get our schools off the list entirely. The next few weeks and months are key. By organizing student and community actions – pickets, rallies, forums, and walk-outs in defense of public education and against the takeover, we can get all of our schools off the list altogether. We must urge parents and community members to boycott the pseudo-democratic process of "community/ school" votes to choose which privatizer gets the loot. These school-bid votes to destroy our public schools will make the recent elections in Afghanistan look pristine.

Our enemies are lying and they are in a good deal of disarray. This historic attack on public education cannot stand the light of truth. If we organize now to stand and act on the truth – students, teachers, and families – we can win a victory in LA that transforms and strengthens our national fight for equal, quality, integrated public education for all students. Attend the BAMN EON organizing meeting, Saturday October 3rd. Together we can win.

BAMN Equal Opportunity Now Caucus (EON)
(BAMN is the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary)