Good Morning and welcome to our last state Council meeting of this year.

 

This has been a very busy year for CTA, a year that has been filled with one challenge after another.  I know that it has been a busy year for our locals and members as well. We have dealt with two statewide elections, including an unprecedented recall election of the Governor, which led to huge political changes in Sacramento.

 

And we have had to continue to deal with a state budget deficit that threatens to turn back the progress we have made in bringing new resources to our classrooms. Programs are being cut to the bone and beyond.

 

I know that our local chapters are also dealing with their own set of challenges.  Only about a third of our chapters have been able to finish bargaining this year, with many of you facing district attempts to roll back health care benefits.  And we had another round of demoralizing layoff notices.

 

Hopefully, like last year, many of these will be rescinded. I know that the CTA legal department is helping all local chapters.

 

The end of the traditional school year is usually a time to rest and recharge – and I can't think of another time when we needed to get some relaxation. But, tired as we may be, we still need to take time to reflect on lessons learned and to think about our hopes for the future.  And get ready—because we have a lot more to do next year.

 

As I reflect on what we have been through and what faces us in the future, I think we have to recognize one truth:  No one has ever given us anything. We have had to fight for everything that we have achieved.  And that is not going to change. 

 

Our existence as an organization is about struggle and about fighting for what is right.  And we are fighters.  We fight for our members, for public education and most importantly for those who often don't have a voice – our students.

 

Former Governor Pete Wilson found out about our fighting spirit the hard way, and that is why he referred to CTA as the "relentless political machine." 

 

Although we may struggle with it, and are sometimes even uncomfortable with it, our willingness to stand up for what we think is right brings CTA the respect and power that we now have.

 

Recently, we observed a major turning point in the history of our nation:  the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.

 

We celebrate that anniversary today at this Council meeting and soon you will hear from Cheryl Brown Henderson – the sister of Linda Brown for which the case is named.

 

The men and women who brought that case to the Supreme Court and who finally prevailed against great odds were fighters too and we can learn a lot from their example.

 

Brown v. the Board of Education was not the result of the actions of one person.  It was the result of many people working together over a period of years struggling to achieve the end of segregation in our public schools and in our country. 

 

It included the Browns and the 12 other families who had the courage to file the suit. It included the lawyers – and particularly a young NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall – who argued the case despite the Supreme Court precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson because they were convinced that segregation could and should be overturned. 

 

It included the families that came before them – like the Mexican immigrants in Lemon Grove and Westminster, California, which won key desegregation victories and helped pave the way for the Brown decision. And it included the thousands of children who stood up to the often violent white backlash against the ruling.

 

Today, these victories overshadow the failures. But they didn't always succeed.  In fact, they failed many times.  However, they kept fighting. They kept fighting because they had a clear vision of what they were after and because they were part of a network of people committed to achieving that vision.  They were willing to stand together and fight for that vision of a better America.

 

That's how I see CTA. We are fighters too.  We have a vision of California where every child – regardless of their race, sex or sexual orientation – receives a quality education and where teachers receive decent treatment and have good working conditions.

 

In another similarity, we have local chapters that work together to build a strong state organization to help us achieve those goals.

 

We have had some successes this year.  First, we passed a statewide school bond that means a total of $36 billion for local school construction and repairs over the past 10 years.

 

We have successfully reopened the debate on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and forced President Bush to make changes in his No Child Left Behind law.  He and his administration are on the defensive now and we need to keep them there. 

 

We were successful in reaching a state budget solution with the Governor that protected the base of education funding and will provide full cost of living and enrollment growth increases for next year.  We also protected the integrity of Proposition 98, so that any money below the minimum-funding guarantee will be paid back in future years.

 

We are still talking to the Governor about funding for our troubled higher education system. The deal cut without any input from CSU faculty is the worst higher education budget package in years. Increasing student fees means some children will not be able to afford college. We will keep fighting.

 

Because overall, we have achieved a lot in the past with our ability to fight.  We have stopped two voucher initiatives, turned back Proposition 54, and defeated Paycheck Protection. 

 

But I am not sure that being good at defeating bad ideas will be good enough for us in the future.  We are going to have to know what we are for, not just what we are against.

 

This past year we attempted to take the offense with an initiative to increase school funding by $6 billion dollars.  Two thirds of that money was for k-12 classrooms and one-third was for establishing universal access to preschool for all of California's children.  These are worthy goals and worth fighting for. 

 

Unfortunately, the time just wasn't right for our initiative.  Despite the fact that we had collected, with your help, over one million signatures and despite the fact that we had built new relationships with Rob Reiner and the preschool community, the ballot for November 2004 made the job of passing our initiative much more difficult.  As the Los Angeles Times pointed out, the November 2004 ballot will be one of the most complicated and expensive ever.

 

The CTA Board took a look at the situation and wisely decided that the risks were simply too great.  There is an old saying that, "If you are in a hole, it is time to stop digging."

 

That doesn't mean that CTA is giving up.  We remain committed to the goals of the initiative. In fact, without new school funding through the initiative process we are going to have to fight even harder. 

 

It's why you must encourage your local state representatives to pass the Governor's May Revision budget. It's why you must encourage members, family and friends to register to vote. We must elect candidates who support public schools and to get rid of the testing nightmare known as NCLB.

 

And it's also why we must get everyone involved in our local chapters.

 

I was recently given a copy of a letter written by one of our chapter presidents.  The letter was written to the teachers in Turlock who are voting right now on whether to be represented by CTA or the California Federation of Teachers.  The letter is such a perfect expression of what we can accomplish by working together that I want to read it to you:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That letter was signed by Ann Mooney, President of the Tracy Education Association.

 

There isn't much I can add to that.  I will just tell you that that is my vision of CTA.  Members, local chapters and the statewide organization, all working together to make things better for the students of California.  That is our vision and it is definitely worth fighting for.