When It’s Winning Versus Learning, Everyone Can Lose

The financial implosion of the sprawling Los Angeles Community College District--symbolized by a hefty raise for employees and administrators in the face of a $13.1-million deficit--could serve as Exhibit A on mismanagement of taxpayer resources.

Administrative incompetence has caught the eye and ire of the public and state auditors. The district has spent more than $12 million paying for a still-unoccupied, nine-story district headquarters, while locally officials at Valley and Pierce colleges complain that they cannot make basic payroll this year.

Yet for those of us who have once worked in public-sector education and seen political infighting divert the learning process, fiscal malpractice and confused priorities are symptoms of the deeper, inherent philosophical contradiction afflicting public education.

Newly minted public-sector instructors soon find their admirable notions of lofty lectures and Socratic dialogue grounded by the empirical realities of textbook shortages; overcrowded, decaying and unair-conditioned classrooms; wrongly placed students; and abstruse edicts handed down by a distant district office whose $100,000-per-year occupants typically haven’t seen or taught a class in 20 years--if ever.

Educators--teachers in particular--take pride in their individual creativity and independent, critical thinking. But in desperation they find themselves seeking refuge in an all-for-one, one-for-all team that plays gladiator powerball where winning becomes more important than educating.

Weak, alone and frustrated, it’s goodbye, Mr. Chips; hello, union warrior. Indeed, California’s education-sector unions remain a formidable financial and political presence in Sacramento, routinely targeting and defeating legislation, ballot initiatives or candidates that could negatively impact their members.

But what’s good for Mr. Chips’ union may not--in the end--be good for him, his students, his school or the taxpayers. As a new teacher in 1989 taking stock of what seemed more like a circus than a public school, I recall being tracked down two or three times by the local union rep and asked why I hadn’t yet joined the teachers union like almost everybody else.

I offered some excuse, but the unspoken truth was that I didn’t want to pay the equivalent of a month’s rent to an organization that put my hard-earned money into political causes I detested, or that helped keep burned-out, incompetent teachers on the job simply because they had paid union dues for 30 years.

In the often-hostile work environment of public education, everyone can lose--students, faculty, the institution and the taxpayers.

Instructors at Pierce College in Woodland Hills have loudly complained for years about decaying facilities, lack of supplies, insufficient air-conditioning and massive class cuts exacerbated by what has now become a $4.8-million campus debt owed the district.

Despite the money crunch, Carl Friedlander, community college district faculty union president, termed the recent 12% to 14% pay hike “a good increase . . . even though L.A. still has a long way to go to reach even the statewide median.”

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A good increase and a job well-done by American Federation of Teachers College Guild, Local 1521, perhaps, but characterizing the results of this union-versus-management slugfest as an accomplishment reminds one of a pyrrhic victory.

In fact, since the Christmastime raises were announced, the district’s $140,000-a-year chancellor has jumped ship, the district’s financial and accreditation status has been imperiled and there’s talk of rescinding the raises and offering faculty early retirement incentives.

Unions should keep the overall health of their job sites in mind when negotiating salaries that may ultimately put their members out of work. Raises should be ranges that are predicated on individual review, and the whole notion of tenure should be reexamined.

In the real world, there is no job security for executives that is not merit-based. College administrators should face demotions or termination--not pay raises--for wasteful investments in vacant offices, failing to provide basic supplies and maintenance, submitting imbalanced budgets and incurring noncompliance penalties like the salt-in-the-wound multimillion-dollar district fine concerning the percentage of full-time faculty.

In nearly every field, the private-sector economy continues to innovate, diversify, decentralize, cut costs and be customer-friendly. If public entities like the Los Angeles Community College District want to provide quality services, they must abandon the worn-out template of power politics and focus directly on their shareholders--the students and taxpayers who ultimately determine whether such institutions continue to exist.