Originally published in Washington City Paper on February 17, 2019.
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Last week, Kay Elaster, the principal at Bridges Public Charter, told Liz Koenig, a preschool teacher who has worked at Bridges for the last five years, that she was “not a good fit” for the school and would not be welcome back next year. This is Elaster’s first year.

Koenig, one of the most highly-regarded teachers at her school by both parents and colleagues, says administrators told her they made the decision not based on her teaching quality or her dedication to students—both of which they acknowledged were strong. In 2016, Koenig was voted by Bridges teachers as “Best of Staff.”

In the past year Koenig has started speaking publicly about working conditions, both within her school and across D.C. charters as a whole. In October, at a conference organized by the teacher activist group EmpowerED, Koenig spoke on a panel with four educators and this reporter about increasing transparency in the charter sector.

In her speech, Koenig talked about learning two years ago that their pre-K classes were going to be increased from 18 to 20 students in order to boost their school’s per-pupil funding. Four Bridges teachers mobilized in response. “My fellow educators and I wrote a letter detailing our concerns about this change to the board, including that our ability to deliver quality instruction would be hampered,” she said. “In response to our letter the board told us this type of instructional decision was not in their purview, even though we know this was discussed at a board meeting from someone who was there, and moreover, inaccurate information about our pre-K program had been presented in support of the increase [in class size].” The board told the teachers to take their concerns to the school’s leadership team. Koenig says they were soon reprimanded for going outside the chain of command. In the 2017-18 school year, pre-K class size at Bridges increased to 20 students.

“It was demoralizing to have our voices shut down so completely,” she says. “It was defeating to realize that I had no tools to investigate the leadership team’s and the board’s decision to make money off my classroom at the expense of instructional quality.”

This experience motivated Koenig to become an activist for charter school transparency. She notes that in most other cities, the public can review board meeting minutes, attend the board meetings themselves, and file Freedom of Information Act requests to learn more about decision-making within the publicly-funded, privately-managed schools.

In October, Koenig also joined Twitter with the handle @dcteachersunite, where she has posted frequently about the importance of increasing transparency in the charter sector—particularly subjecting individual schools to FOIA and the Open Meetings Act. In November, she filed her first FOIA request with the D.C. Public Charter School Board, and shared the results publicly online when she got the documents the following month.

In late January Koenig testified at the D.C. Public Charter School Board’s monthly meeting about the need to increase transparency in the charter school sector. “I am both a parent of a child in a charter school and a teacher at a charter school in the city,” she said. “As a parent and as a teacher I’ve learned that the best schools are built on trusting relationships—between students and teachers, between parents and teachers, and between teachers and their schools … Transparency builds trust.”

And most recently, Koenig spoke on the record for a City Paper story on charter school teacher pay, bringing to light the challenges educators face when trying to plan for their financial futures in a sector that doesn’t make detailed salary information publicly available. She also pushed back on the D.C. Public Charter School Board’s suggestion that posting average teacher salaries, as opposed to a more detailed breakdown that could illuminate disparities and even discrimination, was enough. “What does average teacher salary tell me about how teachers are compensated for experience, credentials, and education?” she asked on Twitter. “What does it tell me about how TAs are compensated vs. leads? What does it tell me about parity in pay for different demographic groups of teachers?”

Principal Elaster and School Director Olivia Smith did not return City Paper’s request for comment, including for further explanation on what a “good fit” means, and whether Koenig’s termination was related to her recent activism around transparency and working conditions.

Mikey Weidman, who has had two of her children go through Koenig’s class, tells City Paper that Koenig has “been the best teacher we’ve seen” at Bridges. “She’s fantastic, smart, creative and incredibly energetic,” Weidman says. “She’s devoted to her families, she gives a lot of individual feedback, and she speaks Spanish and developed fantastic relationships with some of the Spanish-speaking families.”

Weidman requested that her son have “Ms. Liz” after seeing their daughter have such a positive experience in her class. “Our kids love her, and having watched her stay with the school for much longer than most people do, and all the while continue to grow her expertise and serve families who come back to her over and over, it’s hard to look at this decision as anything that’s not retaliatory.”

Weidman and her wife have sent a letter to Elaster and Smith, and say they intend to write to  the board of directors, too. “When you have an excellent teacher being fired for nothing to do with her teaching, it sends a message to other teachers that they need to be quiet and comply,” says Weidman. “And what I hear loud and clear from this as a parent is it’s more important to the administration that no one is rocking the boat than a highly exceptional teacher be able to continue in the school, and I find that profoundly upsetting.”

Jamie Boese was another parent who personally requested that her daughter be placed in Koenig’s class. “She was the best teacher in the entire building,” says Boese. “She frankly taught me how to be a better parent. To say she’s not a ‘right fit’ really makes me question what kind of staff they’re trying to cultivate.”

Koenig plans to finish out the school year at Bridges.

“What I do every day is my absolute dream job,” she says. “Goddammit, I love those kids.”

Originally published in The Intercept on February 15, 2019.
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Originally published in In These Times on February 14, 2019.
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As Denver public school teachers head back to school, ending their first labor stoppage in 25 years, it’s hard to dismiss the impact the nation-wide teacher strikes have had on American politics. As Democratic presidential candidates rush to voice support for the Colorado educators, Denver’s strike marks the ninth major teacher uprising in the last twelve months, with the anniversary of the very first—West Virginia’s—coming up next week.

Survey after survey has shown the striking teachers have gotten their message across: The majority of Americans agree teacher pay is a real problem. The annual PDK poll reported in September that two-thirds of people say teacher salaries are too low — a new high in its data since the poll started in 1969. Another national poll released in April found 78 percent of adults think schools don’t pay teachers enough, and 52 percent supported those going on strike over wages.

As further evidence of how the teacher protests have shaped the national conversation, the House education committee convened this week for its first hearing on K-12 schools in the new Congress, and the topic of teacher pay was front and center. Republicans and Democrats both agreed that teacher salaries were simply too low.

The House Education and Labor Committee hearing, chaired by Democratic Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia, lasted three and a half hours, and was entitled, “Underpaid Teachers and Crumbling Schools: How Underfunding Public Education Shortchanges America’s Students.” Topics explored throughout the convening included more than just teacher compensation and school infrastructure. Legislators and witnesses also discussed adequate funding for students with disabilities, turnaround strategies for low-performing schools, and civil rights protections for students who attend private schools.

While lawmakers from both parties agreed public-school teachers are not earning enough money, the two parties had vastly different explanations as to why.

Witness Benjamin Scafidi, an economist and fellow with EdChoice, a national school choice advocacy group, said that while inflation-adjusted spending on public schools increased 37 percent between 1992 and 2016, real teacher salaries declined by one percent in that same period, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Scafidi said this was due to the “tremendous increase” in non-teacher staff working in public schools—referring to a 52 percent jump.

Republicans seemed content to embrace the idea that the teacher salary problem was not due to their failure to fund schools properly, but because of school districts’ wasteful hiring decisions.

“It scares me when I hear people in education coming up and asking this completely broken federal government for more money when [states] are running surpluses,” said Republican Representative Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin. “Why do people think the federal government should give more money?”

Yet, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in 2015, 29 states provided less total school funding per-pupil than they had spent before the recession.

Democrats and some witnesses pushed back on the idea that schools are chock-full of superfluous staff, noting many workers included in this category are bus drivers, cafeteria staff, paraprofessionals, nurses, custodians and special-education aides.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, testified that the increase in school staff spending also overlapped with the Individuals with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law in 1990. That legislation obligates schools to provide students with disabilities with additional support services. If the federal government did an audit, Weingarten said, “you’d see that most of the non-teacher increase in schools across America was because of the needs in IDEA.”

Democratic Representative Joseph Morelle also noted the growing movement to provide wraparound social services in schools, since that is where students spend the bulk of their days and where it can be easier for parents to access. That sort of increased investment in community schools, he suggested, is not wasteful spending.

Some of the hearing was dedicated to discussing the Rebuild America’s Schools Act, legislation recently reintroduced by Representative Scott and Democratic Senator Jack Reed. The bill would invest $100 billion in K-12 public school infrastructure, and create an estimated 1.9 million jobs for local workers. Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington and the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, spoke of schools where students and teachers are forced to hold their feet over hot plates to keep warm. Even Representative Ron Wright, a Republican from Texas who voiced skepticism for new spending on education, admitted he never had an air conditioner in his overly warm Texas public schools until he reached high school; he said he’d be open to support air conditioners at least for Texas schools.

One 2016 report on national school infrastructure needs estimated it would cost roughly $145 billion annually to maintain and modernize school buildings to the point where all were in safe condition. While federal spending accounts for about 10 percent of school operating budgets, the feds currently spend virtually nothing on school infrastructure. The bulk of those facility costs fall on local governments, which results in a system where wealthier communities can afford to have nicer school buildings, and can more easily make necessary building repairs.

At the hearing, Chairman Scott noted his school infrastructure legislation would create more jobs than the Republican tax bill did, and at 5 percent of the cost. The last time Congress came close to authorizing federal school infrastructure spending was in 2009 as part of the stimulus bill. But Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said she wouldn’t support Scott’s legislation, arguing that school facilities should remain exclusively a local responsibility. As a result, communities across the country lost out on billions of dollars to fix their crumbling schools.

The Republican tax bill made two other appearances during Tuesday’s hearing. Residents who live in areas with higher state and local tax burdens had previously been able to deduct those costs on their federal taxes, so as to avoid paying twice. But in the legislation President Trump signed in 2017, individuals can now only deduct up to $10,000 in state and local taxes, and freshman Democratic Representative Lauren Underwood noted at the hearing that residents in her home state of Illinois have been very anxious about their skyrocketing tax bills. “We want our money to go to schools, not tax cuts for corporations,” she said. Other states feeling the brunt of the new SALT cap are California, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

The second time the GOP tax bill came up was in reference to so-called “Opportunity Zones,” which are federal subsidies directed toward investment in distressed areas to supposedly revitalize the areas. Ranking committee member Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina, said while she’d like to see teachers take home more money, she’s not interested in increasing federal investment in school budgets. Noting the expansion Opportunity Zone funding in the new tax bill, Foxx suggested that community development could perhaps somehow lead somehow to increased teacher pay.

“Time will tell if Opportunity Zones and other new initiatives will finally help us solve the problems of teacher pay and poor school facilities, but time has already told us that higher price tags and more bureaucracy in Washington won’t deliver results,” she said. “The answer is not more money.”

As federal lawmakers continue to bicker over how we got to this point, teachers aren’t waiting around. Earlier this month, 95 percent of Oakland teachers voted to authorize their own strike, and they too could walk out of their schools within days.

Originally published in The American Prospect on February 13, 2019.
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The National Labor Relations Board announced last week it would be accepting briefs on a case challenging its jurisdiction over charter schools, a matter that’s been settled for several years. Should the Republican-appointed majority rule that charter school employees are not covered under the National Labor Relations Act—thereby reversing two earlier Board rulings—that would leave employees in many states with no way to bargain collectively with their employers.

In 2016, in two decisions issued on the same day, the NLRB ruled that teachers at charter schools are private employees, concluding a charter’s relationship to the state resembled that of a government contractor. This position was affirmed last year by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, when it rejected a New Orleans charter school’s argument that its teachers, who organized a union, were public employees. As there is no statewide collective bargaining law in Louisiana, the teachers would have been unable to negotiate with their employer had the charter school prevailed in court.

Now, however, the Republican-controlled NLRB might reverse this precedent, sending existing charter school unions into chaos, and potentially preventing other charter teachers, like those in Louisiana, from ever unionizing at all.

Ironically, this opportunity has come before the Board through a case from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT—the local teachers union in New York City), which asked the Board to relinquish jurisdiction because some charter school teachers want to decertify their union.

The decision to revisit the issue was made by three Trump appointees—Chairman John Ring, Marvin Kaplan, and William Emanuel. In their statement, they said they may “overrule precedent” on this issue, though pledged to “keep an open mind.” Lauren McFerran, an Obama appointee, dissented, saying the charter school question has been “well-settled.” She noted her colleagues identified “no specific reasons at all” for revisiting the issue.

To determine that charter teachers are private employees, the courts have relied on a 1971 Supreme Court case, NLRB v. Natural Gas Utility District of Hawkins County, where the justices found Hawkins County in Tennessee to be a “political subdivision”—and therefore public—since it met several key tests: It was created directly by the state, and was administered by individuals responsible to public officials or the general electorate. By applying this so-called “Hawkins test” to charter schools, the NLRB and other judicial bodies have concluded that the publicly funded, privately managed schools do not constitute political subdivisions—and hence, their labor relations are subject to NLRB jurisdiction.

In announcing their acceptance of the New York union’s case, the Republicans on the NLRB did not object to using this Hawkins test, and agreed the New York City charter school teachers in question were private employees. What they did say, however, was they wanted to reconsider whether the Board should have jurisdiction over charter schools because of Section 14(c)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act—which says the Board can decline to exercise jurisdiction over labor disputes when it considers the impact on commerce to be insignificant. In her dissent, McFerran said it “seems highly doubtful” that charter school labor disputes have an insubstantial effect on commerce, concluding “the majority’s notice is a solution in search of a problem.”

While most charter school union disputes have involved teachers who unionized and then struggled to negotiate their first contract with a recalcitrant employer, the NLRB in this case has granted review to a very different kind of charter labor conflict, involving an obscure fight taking place in the Bronx.

The drama began in 2016. In New York City, there are 13 charter schools operated by the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP, a national nonprofit charter network serving low-income students of color. While most KIPP schools, and most charter schools in general, are non-union, the Bronx-based KIPP Academy school is unionized. It is also one of a small handful of so-called “conversion charters” in the city, which means it formed originally by converting a traditional public school into a charter.

David Levin, the network’s co-founder, launched KIPP originally as a program within a New York City public high school in 1995, and in the spring of 2000, he applied to expand it from a program into the entire school. As part of his application to the city’s school chancellor, Levin submitted a copy of an agreement between the United Federation of Teachers and the school district that said any conversion charter school “shall be subject to collective bargaining agreements for like titles or positions … including but not limited to salary, medical, pension and welfare benefits and applicable due process procedures.” The agreement also said the charter’s board of trustees could negotiate changes to the collective-bargaining agreement.

When KIPP Academy Charter School launched in September 2000, all of its initial employees had been previously employed by New York City public schools, all had worked in the original KIPP program, and all had been represented by the teachers union. But the KIPP Academy teachers and the UFT had virtually no relationship for the next 16 years.

In 2016, though, about 20 KIPP educators approached the union to raise concerns about their working conditions. One of them was Fatima Wilson, a fourth-grade science teacher. “Our day runs from 7:20 in the morning to 5:15 in the afternoon, so we’re there for nine hours and 55 minutes a day, and most of the time there are no breaks,” she told me in 2017. Even going to the bathroom was a stressful experience. “We often have to hold it in, and risk urinary tract infections, kidney infections. This is life as we know it,” she had said.

Seeking to create a more livable and productive environment, as well as to reduce staff turnover, the teachers asked the UFT for help. In June of 2016 the union filed a grievance on behalf of the KIPP Academy teachers. When they received no response, the UFT filed for arbitration that November.

KIPP then filed for an injunction, and in a district court hearing later that month, KIPP’s lawyer argued that the UFT does not actually represent KIPP Academy teachers, as the union has not bargained any agreement, processed any grievance, or attended any meetings for KIPP teachers since the school opened in 2000. The judge rejected KIPP’s petition to thwart arbitration, concluding that none of those facts changed the reality that the UFT has “been deemed and not overruled” as the teachers’ bargaining agent since 2000.

At about the same time, KIPP administrators began talking to their teachers about disaffiliating with the UFT, prompting the union to file charges with the NLRB in January 2017. The union accused KIPP of violating federal labor law by encouraging teachers to decertify, and allegedly threatening teachers with loss of their jobs if they did not do so.

Some KIPP Academy teachers had tried to disaffiliate once before. In 2009, teachers at the school filed a petition to decertify their union, but under the law back then, KIPP teachers would have needed to garner a third of the entire New York City–wide bargaining unit—which included members in all the city’s public schools—to hold a decertification election. There were over 75,000 UFT members at the time. An administrative law judge in 2010 rejected the KIPP teachers’ petition as “numerically insufficient.”

After the UFT filed unfair labor charges against KIPP in January 2017, the charter network’s superintendent emailed his staff to say he “disagree[d]” that the UFT represented KIPP Academy teachers at all, both because of how the school has operated since it opened, and because “of recent changes to the law,” referring to the 2016 NLRB decisions that found charter teachers to be private employees. If KIPP teachers were private employees, his letter suggested, then the number of petition signers needed for UFT decertification might no longer be a third of the entire UFT bargaining unit, as it had been in 2010.

A few days later, some KIPP Academy teachers filed a new union decertification petition with the NLRB, and the regional hearings were held last May. At the proceedings, the UFT argued the federal labor board should disclaim jurisdiction over the KIPP teachers, drawing a distinction between conversion charter schools and regular charter schools. The union argued conversion charters would not pass the “Hawkins test” as a private institution (hence under the Board’s jurisdiction)—but that even if they did, the Board still should stay out of the dispute to preserve labor stability. The NLRB regional director rejected the union’s arguments in August, and also determined that the KIPP Academy teachers are a distinct group, independent of the citywide UFT bargaining unit. The path to decertification suddenly looked much easier.

In September, the UFT decided to appeal the regional director’s ruling to the national board, which it urged to disclaim jurisdiction over conversion charter schools in New York City. To make their case, the union cited an argument advanced by former Republican NLRB Board Member Philip Miscimarra, who had been the sole dissenting vote on the decision to treat charter school teachers as private employees. Miscimarra argued in 2016 that the NLRB should not get involved because those conflicts have an insubstantial effect on interstate commerce. “The same is true here, and the Board should decline jurisdiction over conversion charter schools established in New York, which, like [the school in 2016], have an insubstantial effect on interstate commerce,” the union wrote in its brief. The UFT also approvingly cited Miscimarra’s argument that regulating charter school labor relations would be better left to state and local governments—a position that might help workers in labor-friendly states like New York, but could leave them with no recourse at all in states that haven’t granted bargaining rights to public employees.

In October, KIPP’s lawyer, Thomas Walsh, filed a counter brief, noting that the UFT was requesting the federal labor board disclaim jurisdiction despite “the scores of cases from California to Connecticut” in which the NLRB and its regional offices have recognized that charter school teachers fall under their purview. He argued the union failed to assert “any compelling reason” for the Board to take this case up, and cited over 30 charter schools from 13 different states where teachers had been found to be protected under the National Labor Relations Act. “The [Hawkins’ test] principles have been applied identically across the entire country by the board, its regions, and by administrative law judges,” he wrote. “To reverse course now would be to disrupt the stability which has been years in the making.”

Dick Riley, a spokesperson for the UFT, told The American Prospect the union’s “attorneys are reviewing the decision and we expect to be filing a brief as the case goes forward.” He did not return a request for comment on the concern that an NLRB decision withdrawing jurisdiction could make it harder for some charter teachers, especially educators in states like Louisiana, to unionize.

Neither Thomas Walsh, nor a KIPP spokesperson, returned request for comment.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, told the Prospect that her union and state and local affiliates are reviewing the case “and seeking some basic consistency when it comes to the legal status of charter schools.” She said that charter operators are trying to have it both ways. “Some, like KIPP, profess they are public schools, yet they want to bypass public labor law when it comes to their employees,” she said. “When the shoe’s on the other foot they try to avoid their obligations and they are determined to be private sector employers under the NLRA. Educators at thousands of charters across the country deserve to know where they stand.”

If the federal labor board disclaims jurisdiction, accepting the argument advanced by the UFT and Miscimarra that a charter’s impact on commerce is too insignificant to warrant NLRB involvement, the fate of existing and future charter school unions is not yet clear. While all existing charter union contracts would remain in effect until they expire, some charter schools that previously recognized their staff’s union may decide they no longer need to. The question will then be if the teachers can turn to some state agency for relief.

In Washington, D.C., for example, the city’s collective bargaining law covers only local government employees, which charter school teachers are not. If they can’t organize under D.C. law, or federal law, they might have nowhere to go. The D.C. City Council could pass legislation expanding its collective bargaining law to include charter school teachers, but in a state like Louisiana, that would prove more difficult, as such states lack any collective bargaining statutes for workers not covered under the NLRA

Should the Board side with the UFT, it might then see more cases based on the nuances of charter employment. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some case would come along and the union would go to the NLRB and say we understand you won’t exercise jurisdiction over new cases, but this one was where you asserted jurisdiction that we had a right to bargain, so please enforce our rights to continue,” said Wilma Liebman, a former Obama appointee as NLRB chairman. “I’m not sure this particular Board would accept that argument, but I could see it being made.”

Or should a more sweeping ruling completely strike down the Board’s jurisdiction over charter school employees—well, the Board is increasingly known for its reversals as its partisan composition shifts. Liebman said it’s unfortunately common for NLRB precedent to change between administrations, especially over areas of employment that tend to be evolving, like those involving social media platforms. “Ideally it would be nice if the precedent didn’t vacillate, but the Board has been famous for decades for what formally is called ‘policy oscillation’ and what informally is called ‘flip-flopping,’” she said. “Any case where there was a Miscimarra dissent, those tend to be ripe for Trump-era Board to take up.”

Originally published in Next City on February 12, 2019.
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When tens of thousands of Los Angeles teachers went on strike last month, the media focused its attention on educators’ concerns over wages, class size, support staff, and the future of charter schools in the city. While they didn’t make the headlines or even the pithy posters teachers carried around throughout the six-day labor stoppage, magnet schools were another point of debate between the union and the District — and they matter to understanding the direction of school policy in L.A.

Magnet schools are schools organized around a certain theme, like art, technology, or even healthcare and journalism. Sometimes they’re an entire school, and sometimes they’re a program within a traditional school. In L.A., magnets are very popular: more than 79,000 students attend one of the city’s 260 magnet schools and programs, with enrollment having grown 35 percent in the last five years. Thirty-six new magnets opened this school year, and 37 new ones are set to launch in September.

One reason they’re in such high demand is due to their reputation for being academically strong. L.A. magnet students generally score higher on state exams than those both in traditional public schools and charters.

“Over time we have recognized that magnets are a choice for families and the magnet brand is very popular,” says Mónica García, the president of the L.A school board. “We have many schools with waiting lists and we want to work to accommodate them.”

The first magnets in L.A. opened in 1977, as part of a court-ordered desegregation plan. Magnets are open to all students living within the city, and at least half of a magnet’s student body typically comes from outside the school’s zoned neighborhood. The idea is to create appealing schools that will attract students — a “magnetic” way to foster diversity. The first magnet schools in the U.S. cropped up in the 1960s, specifically for school integration.

Gary Orfield, the co-director of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA, was involved back in the 1970s when the city’s magnet program was originally established.

“The vast majority were created for desegregation, but they lost that focus since the U.S Supreme Court’s [Oklahoma City v. Dowell] decision in 1991,” Orfield says. “Magnet schools were designed to be much more autonomous than traditional public schools, but they also had strict civil rights policies, which charters never had.”

Today roughly a quarter of L.A. magnets are desegregated, according to the L.A. School Report.

Given their popularity and performance, local officials have viewed expanding magnets as a key strategy for keeping families enrolled in Los Angeles Unified School District. Enrollment in the district has been declining since 2002 partly because families have left for charters. (About 112,000 students currently attend charter schools that are independent of the city’s school district.) Unlike charters, L.A.’s school district doesn’t lose per-pupil funding when a student enrolls in a magnet.

But magnets emerged as a tense area of disagreement during the union contract negotiations. To convert to a magnet, a majority of teachers at a school must vote in favor of the change, and then all staff must reapply for their jobs at the new magnet if they want to stay. Sometimes school leaders decide they need to hire different people with a more specialized skill-set to accommodate the new school theme. If an educator is not selected to come back, they could then seek a transfer to a different school.

The union fought these rules, demanding any magnet conversion should require 60 percent approval, that all full-time teachers should have the right to stay, and that no full-time teacher should have to reapply for the jobs they currently hold.

In a letter sent in July, in response to the union’s “Last, Best, and Final Offer,” the school district’s Director of Labor Relations wrote that they “fundamentally disagree” with the union over this, and believe the union “want[s] to effectively limit the number of new magnet schools and limit the District’s ability to select teachers with special skills or talents for new magnet schools.”

In the end, the union lost that battle. In their new contract — which essentially codified the district’s existing policy — it says that if the school board approves a magnet conversion, all teachers must receive notification “no less than one calendar year” prior to the magnet opening. That way educators could seek specialized training in the focus area of the magnet to be “priority candidates” for hiring, or they could seek a voluntary transfer. A majority of teachers — not 60 percent — also have to vote in favor of magnet conversion for the school board to consider the application.

Alex Caputo-Pearl, the president of United Teachers Los Angeles, rejected the idea that his union tries to fight magnet schools. “We don’t want to block magnet schools, we want a teacher to have a say if they’re is going to be a big change in their school,” he said. “To frame that as though we want to block magnets is ridiculous.”

Caputo-Pearl says one problem with magnets is that they’re “the flavor of the day” for the school district. “Instead of investing in schools appropriately and doing things that matter like having administrators collaborate with teachers and parents on school improvement programs, the District falls into this game of changing names — and now it’s magnets,” he says. “Magnets can and should play a role, but not an oversized role.”

García, the school board president, says she and her colleagues take seriously that the “magnet brand is recognized as high-quality” by families. She emphasizes the District is interested in supporting all different kinds of school choice, including dual-language schools, charters, pilot schools, themed schools, and traditional comprehensive schools.

Challenges remain to expanding magnets further in the city.

One problem is the complicated, byzantine admissions process that has made it harder for some families — especially Latino families — to enroll in magnets.

“That’s something we definitely intend to begin raising more frequently and louder,” says Katie Braude, the executive director of Speak UP, a parent organization in Los Angeles that supports school choice.

Orfield of The Civil Rights Project at UCLA also notes there can sometimes be steep start-up costs for good magnets, requiring as much as a ten percent budget increase to get them off the ground. “There are other costs,” he says. “A good magnet requires a commitment to invest and train people to offer distinctive programs, and of course magnet schools that are run under good civil rights policies have to offer transportation.”

In Los Angeles, the school district provides free transportation to elementary students if they live outside a two-mile radius of the magnet, and free transportation for middle and high school students if they live five miles beyond the school.

Braude says the public has to ensure the school district doesn’t just convert schools to magnets without really giving them the resources to succeed. “Magnets have such a cachet,” she says, “But you can’t just slap the magnet name on something.”