LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Day Higuchi : On Making Education a Priority in Tax-Phobic California

Day Higuchi, president-elect of United Teachers-Los Angeles, was born in a Japanese Relocation Center on the Pomona Fairgrounds in 1942 during World War II. He and his parents were moved to what some still angrily call America’s first concentration camp. It was better known as the Heart Mountain, Wyo., Internment Camp, one of the camps where Japanese Americans were sent because many doubted their loyalty to America.

Racial reverberations from those ugly war years were harsh for many. But Higuchi said he was too young to have negative memories of his parents’ internment; he was back in Los Angeles at the age of 3. Since then, the third-generation Japanese-American said his heritage has had no noticeable discriminatory affect on him. As he often does in conversation, though, Higuchi added a caveat to his observations: “But it may have. I’m a pretty thick-skinned person. If it had an affect on me, I probably just haven’t noticed the insults.”

If not as a Japanese-American then as a teacher and union activist, the 53-year-old Higuchi has needed a thick emotional skin. He has had some arguments with students, battles within UTLA, but far more trouble with Los Angeles school administrators as a union activist helping fight for better salaries and working conditions for teachers.

While he received bachelor and master’s degrees in philosophy at UCLA, he studied other subjects for his teaching credentials including math, chemistry, English, physical science and the humanities. Higuchi used those and other subjects while he taught junior high school students for 20 years in East Los Angeles. His union activities take all of his remaining time. His first union job was as a school representative and he assumes the union’s presidency July 1. He is also a vice president of the California Federation of Teachers, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. UTLA itself is unusual. Representing more than 32,000 teachers, it is one of two local teacher unions in the nation that belong both to the independent National Education Assn. and the AFL-CIO American Federation of Teachers which have been trying for years to merge into a single union.

His wife, Charlotte, is also a teacher and educational researcher. Their daughter, Kerri, is an aspiring film and theater director. He was interviewed at his union office in Los Angeles.

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Question: Do you think Los Angeles residents understand the problems of the city’s school system enough to agree with you that there is a need to spend more money to correct them?

Answer: No. There is a glut of information and misinformation about our schools and it seems almost impossible to explain our problems briefly enough to get people to understand them. But I’ll try. For starters, school districts get almost all of their money based on the number of their students. Currently, the basic amount number in California is about $4,200 per student, plus another $1,000 if they are eligible for various special needs funds known as inner-city “categoricals.”

Q: How does that compare with other states?

A: Rotten. Our students in California get about $1,200 per student less than the national average which is about $5,400.

Q: Why is the money coming to our schools so far below the national average?

A: Because California taxpayers are not willing to pay the taxes to provide each student with a quality education that is at or above the national average; and I think that’s because they don’t understand the problem, a major one being Proposition 13, which sharply curtailed property taxes that go mostly for schools. Ever since Proposition 13, it’s been very difficult for California districts to raise money.

Q: How does California compare with other states?

A: As a straight amount of money per kid, we’re probably two-thirds of the way down the list of the 50 states. In terms of the amount of money that we invest in our children as a percentage of our wealth, we’re probably in last place. In terms of the classroom size--the number of students that each teacher has to face--we have the largest class sizes in the nation.

Q: Wouldn’t those statistics motivate voters to approve more spending for schools?

A: They should, but they are being bombarded by antitax propaganda and nobody likes to pay taxes. Yet as a state we’re paying less per-capita on the basis of our share of income than any other state, including Mississippi, which is a very poor state compared to our own. Our state is in the top 10 in wealth. We have a bigger economy than all but about eight nations in the entire world. It is absolutely criminal not to spend more for education.

Q: Do you blame it all on Proposition 13?

A: No, but most of it. Proposition 13 does make it difficult to raise money, and much of the public doesn’t know where their school tax money is going. There’s a perception on the part of the public that all of the relatively little money we do spend for education is really going to educating children. But far too much of it goes to administration costs, money that should be devoted more directly to the children. The average class size in California is about 35 kids per class in K-12. In New York, the average classroom actually has 17 students compared to our 35. Every other state is better off than we are. We have the largest class sizes in the entire nation.

Q: As funds for the schools diminish and the number of students increases, is it necessary and possible to raise taxes to meet the needs?

A: I think it’s both necessary and possible. As the economy improves, some argue, that will be enough. But we have dropped from the top 10% in terms of investment in education down to near the bottom simply by waiting for the economy to gradually improve.

Q: But doesn’t Proposition 13 negate the possibility of raising the taxes to meet the needs?

A: Well, first we have to end the requirement that to pass any type of tax increase you have to have a two-thirds majority, a super majority, which was required under Proposition 13.

Q: So why don’t you start a campaign to repeal all of Proposition 13?

A: I’d like to consider doing some things first to see if people would be willing to vote increases without repealing the measure because our advisors tell us you’re not going to repeal Proposition 13 soon. One big step will be passing an initiative we’re trying to qualify for the November ballot that would restrict the amount of money that can be used for administration to 5% of the total education budget, including all money from local, state and federal governments. We call it “95-5,” which says that you have to spend in the state of California no more than 5% of your total income on administration.

Q: What is it now?

A: It’s about 10%. A 5% shift in funding would give the state over a billion dollars to the schools for education, not administration. It would force the bureaucracy to operate in a different way because they would not have to pay for the status quo. The measure, the California Educational Efficiency Initiative, would shift more money to the schools for the children. It would give more to education than is currently raised by the lottery, which is a scam. It would reassure the public that, in fact, if they do invest in the schools by voting for a tax increase, the money would go to a school, not to a bloated bureaucracy. Then, once that happens, we would be looking for a tax that was dedicated to something like reducing class size. That would be the kind of tax that could lead to increased funding as we gradually move to repeal parts of Proposition 13.

Q: You said the California lottery is a scam. Should it be abolished?

A: Yes. What happened with the lottery was that everybody said it was going to raise all this money for schools. We asked some unions in New Jersey, New York and other places where they had lotteries and they said it would be great the first year. In the second year, your California State Assembly’s going to see how much money the lottery can bring in and they are going to cut money from the education budget. And that’s exactly what happened in California. In its best year the lottery added 3% to school budgets.

Q: So you think it is deceptive?

A: Of course, and it’s terrible public relations because everybody thinks that they’re giving all this money to the schools.

Q: How would you select a new superintendent?

A: I would consider the fact that a Latino might know the Latino majority here and is familiar with the system. Those facts are worth a considerable number of points for [Ruben] Zacarias. But other factors need to be considered. Youth is important. Why do you want to select a superintendent who is, I believe 66 years old? That tells me the symbol is worth more than the content. There are many other Latino administrators who are young, and the superintendent doesn’t necessarily have to be a Latino.

Q: What’s wrong with a candidate being age 66?

A: Nothing is wrong with 66 except that if the person is about to retire you know it sends a signal that you’re really not making a long-term investment and you know our sources tell us that Zacarias and the other top administrators who are about the same age are not really looking forward to doing it for many more years. I think that if the choice is between someone who is brilliant but not Latino and someone not the most qualified who is Latino, the choice is clear.

Q: So you want a committee named to make a nationwide search for a new superintendent?

A: Yes. That would send a signal to the city that the Board of Education can proceed in a rational manner and not react to the immediate politics of the day.

Q: Your contract with the schools has two more years to run. Do you want to start negotiations now to avoid a confrontation when it does expire?

A: We haven’t gone on strike for many years, and long, drawn-out threats of one are fewer. We’ve hired an accounting firm to study the district’s budget and that allowed us to have information about the budget both sides can trust. We got away from the “you’re lying” syndrome in which we spent 95% of our negotiating time squabbling. Of course, we will still have differences and no one doubts we can deliver a strike that keeps the game honest.

Q: Do you think one of the motives behind the effort to break up the Los Angeles School District is a desire by some whites to regain a majority in a new school district and, in effect, resegregate our school system?

A: Yes, I think that’s a motive on the part of some people, but that isn’t sufficient to cause a groundswell to break up the district. You know there’s an interesting phenomenon going on which is that the notion to break up the district was actually filed by a group called the Innercity Committee. And the district they want to form is the Central Los Angeles Unified School District that would keep the children in Central Los Angeles in one district. It would keep all the money currently there and that’s not a movement on the part of some whites to resegregate. It’s sort of a defensive move on the part of primarily African Americans.

Q: You think we’re too lax about meeting educational standards?.

A: I think teachers are punished when they try to maintain the kind of educational standards we must have. We should not move children along in school just to move them along. Then there’s no job waiting at the other end. There’s no higher ed for them. These standards need to be enforced. There should be no “social promotions.”

Q: Should there be some kind of national certification of teachers to assure high quality teachers and protect students from incompetent ones?

A: There is a national certificate issued by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. I think that’s a great idea. We support it because it helps take the quality of teaching out of a political arena, where appointments and promotions sometimes depend on who you know in management. That certificate ought to get more support as a positive, recent development.*