Teachers Gird for Voucher Battle : Education: L.A. union chief urges members to fight ‘Armageddon’ of Proposition 174.

In a strong opening salvo against the school voucher initiative, the head of the influential Los Angeles teachers union called her troops into action Saturday, likening the November ballot measure to Armageddon and directing teachers to “fight this battle as if our lives depend on it, because our livelihoods do.”

At the annual United Teachers-Los Angeles leadership conference this weekend, union President Helen Bernstein and others began cranking up the group’s well-oiled political machine, saying that Proposition 174 will severely erode funding for education, leading to budget cuts that could further reduce teachers’ salaries and increase class size.

They also argued that the measure would hurt poor minority students, who lack the resources to make up the difference between the amount of a voucher and the high cost of many private schools.

“We must act as if we had only 46 days to live. This is Armageddon, and without decisive action today, there will be no tomorrow,” Bernstein said in her state of the union address before 700 union stewards. “Your schools must become a hotbed of anti-174 activity. . . . The bottom line is you must get to the soul of every UTLA member.”

Supporters of Proposition 174 predict that such rhetoric will backfire and believe that voters will see the intense union campaign as primarily an effort to protect jobs.

“This is a union that has stood in the face of educational reform and the people will see that as the case,” said Sean Walsh, spokesman for the Yes on 174 campaign, charging that school employee unions are out to “protect the status quo for the benefit of their members.”

Public school employee unions are expected to spend in excess of $10 million to fight the initiative. Teacher union dues were hiked $19 annually for three years to finance the campaign.

On Saturday, Bernstein and others gave the Los Angeles union representatives marching orders on how to organize anti-voucher campaigns in their school communities. The muscle of UTLA, with its 28,000 members in voter-rich Los Angeles, is a key component of the anti-voucher campaign spearheaded by the California Teachers Assn., one of the top-spending special interest groups in the state.

The initiative, called the Parental Choice in Education Amendment, would profoundly change the way education is funded in the state, giving parents a $2,600 tax-supported voucher to help pay for private school tuition.

The money would give parents more power to choose whether they send their children to public or private schools, supporters say. By creating greater free market competition between public and private schools, inadequate public education systems would be forced to reform.

It would also allow private schools with 25 or more students to redeem vouchers, as long as the school does not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity or advocate unlawful or hateful behavior against other groups. This provision, supporters say, will stimulate the opening of more private schools.

But Bernstein estimated that the Los Angeles district could lose at least $100 million the first year the vouchers take effect. She said that figure was extrapolated from analyses by the Los Angeles County Office of Education and the state Department of Education and that it takes into account the funding lost by every student who left the district for a private school and the measure’s complex formula for reallocating state education dollars.

District budget Director Henry Jones did not dispute the figure, saying that for every 10,000 students who left the district, at least $42 million in funding would be lost.

This scenario would likely lead to more teacher pay cuts, benefit and retirement losses and increased class size.

All district employees had pay cuts last year, with teachers nearly striking over their cumulative 12% reduction amid charges that the district was poorly managed.

David Barulich, director of research for the Yes on 174 campaign, said it is self-serving for the union and the district to frame their arguments around figures that show total funding losses.

“They are using this figure to gain sympathy,” he said. “But if children are leaving the district, why can’t staff be reduced or classroom size consolidated? . . . Why can’t they downsize overhead? That’s what the private sector does.”

For the district’s demoralized teaching force, registering voters and organizing community meetings against vouchers is not a welcome assignment, but one that some view as a professional obligation.

“This is one more thing for an already tired group of people,” said Roslyn Markman of Saticoy Elementary School in Van Nuys. “But we will do this . . . just like we set up our classroom before the start of school without pay. . . . Teachers will look out at their kids and once again say, ‘We will fight for them.’ ”