Teachers Give $6 Million to Fight Measure

California’s largest teachers union has poured nearly $6 million into the effort to defeat an education ballot measure sponsored by Gov. Pete Wilson, state records show, dwarfing all other donations on either side of the campaign.

The donations by the California Teachers Assn., including $1.8 million this month, have given opponents of Proposition 8 a higher profile than supporters of the initiative through radio and television advertising across the state.

For all of the CTA’s largess, Proposition 8 has received less attention than the Indian gaming initiative, the $9.2-billion school construction bond and other measures on the Nov. 3 ballot. But Wilson’s initiative contains several provisions that would reverberate throughout a public school system with 5.7 million students.

Among them are a guarantee for funding of reduced class size from kindergarten through third grade, a new “chief inspector” to grade all 8,000 public schools by academic performance and other criteria, parent-controlled councils at every school to oversee curriculum and spending, and certain testing requirements for teachers seeking credentials.

Proponents of the initiative, seizing on the testing issue, say the 280,000-member union fears reform.

“If the CTA wasn’t against this initiative, there would be no opposition to Prop. 8,” said Yes on 8 spokesman Mitch Zak. “What you have is the teachers union desperate to protect a system in which teachers aren’t required to pass a subject matter competency test.”

But a high-ranking CTA official said the union is most concerned by the potential for upheaval with the creation of new layers of school bureaucracy--especially school councils--at a time when the state is promoting uniform standards for the skills students should learn.

“Prop. 8 has very serious issues for teachers,” said Bob Cherry, associate executive director of the CTA. “For one thing, we believe there’s a problem with the new standards with this.” The councils, he said, would meddle with the standards.

To back up its position, the union had contributed more than $5.5 million in cash to the main anti-Proposition 8 campaign committee as of Oct. 17. Counting in-kind contributions, the union’s total was more than $5.9 million--or more than 95 cents out of every dollar the campaign collected. That is about what the CTA spent to help defeat Proposition 226, an anti-union initiative, last June.

Despite the union’s dominant financial role, opponents contend that their campaign is a broad coalition. Their committee--Parents, Teachers, Cops and Taxpayers Against Proposition 8--has endorsements from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., the state PTA, dozens of school districts and superintendents, a number of local chambers of commerce, top Democratic Party officials and some Republicans.

The Yes on 8 campaign had raised more than $2 million as of Oct. 17--though more than $1 million of that sum went to qualify the initiative for the ballot through a signature drive. The top contributors to the campaign in its final stretch were E & J Gallo Winery and Los Angeles businessman Ron Burkle, giving $100,000 apiece.

Most of the initiative’s key supporters are Republicans. The governor also has the support of the California Business Roundtable--a group of major-company chief executives.