Teachers unions put imprints on suburban school boards

By Joseph Popiolkowski | News Staff Reporter | @JoePops44 

June 5, 2016

Backing brings majority to largest school districts

Christine Cavarello is a PTA mom, proud graduate of Kenmore East High School, and concerned about how changes in education affect children and their love of learning.

She is on the steering committee of two local groups leading the opt-out movement to shift the emphasis of education from testing to learning.

In short, she’s the perfect candidate to win the endorsement of teachers – and she did. And she’ll join the Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda School Board on July 1.

Cavarello is one of 35 candidates out of 38 endorsed by teacher unions in Western New York who won election to a local school board last month, according to New York State United Teachers, or NYSUT.

Candidates endorsed by teachers unions in Erie County’s three largest suburban districts – Ken-Ton, West Seneca and Williamsville – won by overwhelming margins. In the last five years, 75 percent of candidates with teacher endorsements won election in the three districts. That includes two elections where Williamsville candidates ran unopposed, so teachers made no endorsements.

As a result, union-backed candidates form the majority on the boards of the three biggest districts.

Local teachers unions have always endorsed school board candidates. But with high-profile fights about the future of education in New York State, new attention is being given to union-endorsed candidates.

Changes in education – from the shift to a more teacher-friendly chancellor and Board of Regents, to how the state handles the Common Core Learning Standards, high-stakes testing and school and teacher accountability – will be felt at the local level. And each school board must approve teacher evaluation plans and teacher contracts with their teachers.

Cavarello said the teachers union support was a big factor in her victory.

“I think that says a lot about what’s going on – not only in the district, but education in general,” said Cavarello, a lifelong resident of the district. “I know teachers everywhere feel like they’re not really being listened to. Corporations, the governor and all these people who don’t know about education are telling us what we should be doing. We need to be listening to the teachers more because they’re the experts in the classroom.”

But teachers aren’t the only ones who have a stake.

“We think teachers are obviously incredibly important to the education process and development of standards,” said Stephen Sigmund, executive director of High Achievement New York. “Teachers aren’t the only voices who can contribute to the conversation to educating kids.”

High Achievement New York is a coalition of community groups, charter schools and business organizations – such as the Buffalo Niagara Partnership – that supports Common Core and other changes in education that have taken place in the last five years. The group does not endorse candidates for school boards.

“It takes awhile, obviously. These are big seismic changes,” he said. “We really believe the standards, in part, are making a difference.”

Sigmund pointed to an uptick in proficiency and improvement in graduation rates as evidence that reforms are working.

While teachers are working in the classroom to increase proficiency, their unions have been working at the ballot boxes.

In Williamsville this year, it was a case of trying to elect people who would resolve the problems between staff and the administration, Michelle M. Licht, Williamsville Teachers Association president, said before the election.

The teachers association endorsed a slate of three candidates who teach in other districts, and they won. Last year, the three union-endorsed candidates also won.

“We’d like a return to peace in the district,” Licht said.

While teachers in public schools are members of NYSUT, the local unions make the decisions on whether they will endorse, which candidates to support and what that support will entail, said Carl Korn, a NYSUT spokesman.

But last year, NYSUT started its “Pipeline Project” to develop candidates friendly to the union. The initiative also seeks to interest teachers in running for office, from school board to town and village boards to the State Legislature and Congress, Korn said.

“Perhaps we have accelerated some efforts in response to the attacks on public education,” he said.

The project came on the heels of massive budget cuts and layoffs, high-stakes testing, and teachers and other public employees being blamed for “societal problems that come through the schoolhouse door,” Korn said.

Educators on the Williamsville School Board, or candidates endorsed by the teachers union, are nothing new.

“It’s not going to be an influx of teachers,” Licht said of this year’s election results.

While three teachers are joining the board, two educators are leaving at the end of the school year, and Mark V. Mecca, a Buffalo school psychologist, is on the board.

At times, the union has endorsed nearly every board member who is serving, including Anthony J. Lafornara, who did not win the endorsement, or the election, this year. Had he been endorsed by the teachers, Lafornara said, he would have been re-elected. Board President Ronald S. Shubert said he has received the endorsement six times.

“Just because someone is endorsed or elected by the teachers doesn’t necessarily mean that the teachers union controls them,” Shubert said. “I haven’t seen that at all.”

West Seneca teachers look for good candidates to endorse, but after they win, the union does not meet with them or ask for anything, said Teachers Association President Joseph J. Cantafio.

“We want good people that have the best interests of students in mind,” he said.

Shubert said it’s important to have a balance of educators and noneducators on the board. He said his experience with board members who have been endorsed by the union is that they are independent, and make decisions in the best interests of the children.

Christopher J. Cerrone is a local teacher who is active in the opt-out movement, and is a member of the Springville-Griffith Institute School Board. He said teachers may have an advantage in that they understand how the education system works from the inside.

“As a teacher on a School Board, my No. 1 loyalty is to the students of the district, not other teachers,” he said. “I’m a parent first. I’m a taxpayer second, then my knowledge as a teacher helps.”

Charter, tax credit groups again outspend teachers' unions on lobbying

By BILL MAHONEY and ELIZA SHAPIRO 

5:39 a.m. | Feb. 8, 2016

While teachers' unions remain near the top of the list of the state’s highest-spending interest groups, a position they’ve occupied for decades, they no longer dominate education lobbying in New York.

The unions have been joined by several groups supportive of issues they’ve opposed, such as expansion of charter schools and a tax credit that would redirect money to private schools, according to a POLITICO New York analysis of lobbying reports submitted to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics and campaign finance disclosure reports submitted by state-level candidates and parties to the Board of Elections.

In all, labor groups and their key allies on education issues spent $8.3 million on political activity in 2015. Charter schools and their influential lobbying arms spent a little over $9 million, and tax credit advocates, $5.7 million, according to the lobbying and campaign finance reports.

For the second consecutive year, reform groups, including charter and tax credit advocates, outspent unions on lobbying, contradicting the argument often made by reform groups that unions dominate state education policy by pouring money into their lobbying efforts.

The $23 million spent last year is down from $30 million in 2014, which is at least partially attributable to the fact that statewide elections were held in 2014.

The decrease is likely also driven by the changed political calculus for both unions and charter groups after most of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s sweeping education reform proposals failed during last year’s legislative session.

In the last six months of 2015, two key education factions pulled back their advocacy efforts as imminent threats to unions subsided and charter groups dialed back their lobbying efforts in accordance with Cuomo’s shifting priorities.

Early last year, New York State United Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers were facing existential threats from state government and advocates.

Cuomo proposed a series of reform proposals that would have been anathema for the unions, and a lawsuit seeking to overturn the state’s teacher tenure protections was working its way through the courts.

But a year later, Cuomo has largely reversed his education agenda in favor of union initiatives, including strong criticism of the Common Core and a de-emphasizing of standardized test scores in teacher evaluations. The teacher tenure lawsuit has stagnated in court as unions file a stream of motions intended to kill it.

On the other side, some of the state’s most confrontational and influential charter groups — Families for Excellent Schools and Success Academy — have halted the massive (and expensive) rallies they held twice a year to push for charter-friendly legislation.

Charter groups in general have a wonkier set of legislative priorities this year — mostly focused on adjusting complex funding formulas — compared to the two previous sessions, when charters fought for their right to expand across the state.

Despite an overall spending dip, some particularly powerful individual charter networks had consistent spending in 2015 compared to the previous year.

Success Academy, the state’s largest and most politically connected charter network, spent $190,313 on lobbying in 2015, and nearly $200,000 in 2014. A spokeswoman for the network did not respond to a request for comment. Success spent about four times as much as KIPP, another influential charter network with schools across the nation.

While Families for Excellent Schools' 2015 lobbying effort fell to $3.4 million from $9.7 million the year before, the group’s total was still likely enough to place it among the five biggest lobby clients in the state. The group is known for its combative lobbying style, and aired a series of television ads criticizing Mayor Bill de Blasio and unions during last year’s legislative session.

A spokesman for FES declined to comment on the group’s spending.

StudentsFirstNY, another influential education reform group that has advocated both for charters and for Common Core standards, increased its spending on lobbying nearly tenfold in 2015, to $2.4 million, the lobbying reports show. StudentsFirst was a particularly vocal supporter of Cuomo’s education agenda early last year, before he switched gears to accommodate unions in late 2015.

Jenny Sedlis, the group’s executive director, said in a statement that she was pleased reform groups were finally matching the influence of unions.

"For years, the teachers unions flooded Albany with millions of lobbying dollars resulting in a virtual monopoly on influencing education policy,” she said. “Now, students finally have a voice and they will continue to have that voice in 2016 and beyond.”

Additionally, several hedge fund managers whose political money has primarily flowed to charter school supporters in the past continued to remain active.

They contributed $2 million to state candidates and parties last year, primarily to Cuomo and the Democratic account he controls. Additionally, New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, an independent expenditure committee created by StudentsFirstNY that supported Senate Republicans in 2014, seems poised to be involved in this year’s elections, having raised $2 million from hedge funders Daniel Loeb and Paul Singer in June.

The union side continued to be dominated by NYSUT, which spent $4.6 million for lobbying and made more than $500,000 in campaign contributions. This is down from $8.9 million in in spending in 2014, a decrease largely attributable to the fact the union’s Super PAC was mostly dormant in a non-election year.

“NYSUT’s education spending comes from approximately 170,000 teachers and other educators who want to have a voice in state education policy. They contribute an average of a dollar per paycheck to ensure their voice is heard,” spokesman Carl Korn said. “That’s a stark contrast to the six and seven figure checks written by hedge fund billionaires who want to impose their version of ‘reform’ on parents and teachers despite having never taken a step inside a public school classroom.”

The UFT was responsible for an additional $1.5 million in political activity, according to the lobbying reports.

“We work hard on behalf of our students, teachers and parents,” UFT president Michael Mulgrew said in a statement. “Our efforts are funded by thousands of teachers kicking in a couple dollars a month, or $5 or $10, to make sure their voices — and the students and parents they advocate for — are heard. That’s our strength. Compare that to the other side, where a couple dozen people account for their huge war chests.”  

Other allies of teachers' unions on issues such as charters and the tax credit, including the labor-backed Alliance for Quality Education and several school districts, combined to spend $1.7 million.

The biggest jump in spending came from supporters of the tax credit, who pushed for the measure for the entirety of last year's legislative session. The tax credit would allow credits for donations to scholarship funds that could be spent at private schools. Supporters have argued it could provide low-income families with more educational options and help support the state’s struggling parochial schools. Opponents, however, say it’s an end-run against the state constitution’s prohibition on directing taxpayer funds to religiously-affiliated institutions.

This issue is likely to remain at the center of education policy negotiations in Albany in 2016. The governor placed it in this year’s budget proposal, and the Senate passed a version on its second day in session this year.

Advocates have indicated they’re going to continue pushing for the proposal; Cardinal Timothy Dolan has said one of the lesson’s from last year’s failure to get a credit enacted was that they should “try even harder” this time around.

And it seems these reinvigorated efforts will at least partially take the form of increased spending. Supporters of a tax credit have recently created both a new PAC and an independent expenditure committee.

Groups tied to the Coalition for Opportunity in Education, which has since renamed itself the Invest in Education Coalition, spent $5.2 million of the $5.7 million spent by the tax credit’s supporters in 2015, the vast majority of which went toward lobbying rather than campaign donations, the lobbying reports indicate.

“This demonstrates that school choice, especially for lower-income families that can’t move to Westchester or afford pricey private schools, is a powerful idea that’s not going away,” said coalition spokesman Bob Bellafiore.

CORRECTION: Paul Singer was misidentified in the original version of this article as "Paul Simon."