Lessons Learned?

Now that director/activist Rob Reiner and the state’s largest teachers union have pulled their joint initiative from the November ballot, they should learn from their mistake of writing a proposition behind closed doors to fit a narrow agenda, even when its stated goals are ones as worthy as more access to preschool and better public-school funding.

The reasons given for the pullback last week ranged from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s vocal opposition to a self-serving assertion that the backers didn’t want to damage the mental health initiative and other health-related propositions on the same ballot. Certainly, the times are not promising for the tax increases this initiative would have required, and taxpayers might want to see the money used to retire the deficit before the state undertakes universal preschool. But the measure also faced more surprising worries: opposition from the very constituencies that should have been among its biggest promoters.

The California Council of Churches opposed the measure because its preschool provisions not only left out faith-based organizations, which have been leaders in providing preschool, but would have created publicly funded competition. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund voiced serious concerns that the requirements for who could participate would leave out the Mexican American community, where such services are just getting started. The NAACP expressed similar concerns.

Many private preschool directors complained because their teachers would have had to become union employees of the public schools rather than working for them -- a union-serving provision that no state with universal preschool has.

Add to that provisions for kindergarten through 12th grade so rigidly worded that schools could not have used the extra money to hire nurses or counselors, create full-day kindergarten or train new principals. The only permissible uses were teacher training, teacher salaries or reducing class sizes (and thus hiring more teachers). Might voters have sensed a self-interested agenda here?

By the time critics could object to the poorly worded document, its drafters could only promise to fix the problems later.

The California Teachers Assn. vows to come back, probably in 2006, with a similar initiative on public schools. Not too similar, let’s hope. The Reiner camp is wisely looking to go through the Legislature, where at least everyone can debate the issues openly and perhaps end up with a fairer and more successful system.