How Unions Influence School Districts’ Financial Rankings

Authored by John Moorlach via The Epoch Times,

In his most recent book, “Not Accountable,” author Philip K. Howard observes “that unions in the public sector can get what they want by helping friendly politicians get elected. As labor leader Victor Gotbaum put it, ‘We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.’ Public sector ‘bargaining’ is a misnomer; the process is more like a transaction: benefits at the bargaining table in exchange for campaign support.”

This has been happening in California and at great cost to the very taxpayers that the majority of which voted for union friendly politicians. Since I like to look at hard data, how costly has this cozy and corrupt relationship become?

The graph below provides the 2021 data for the number of parcels in each of Orange County’s 28 school districts and the net current assessed total value within each district, after considering homeowners’ exemptions and the like. Taking these two numbers, the districts are ranked from highest average value per parcel to lowest.

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is thrown in for comparison and illustrative purposes. It is a national poster child for what happens to a school district when the teacher’s union dictates who is elected to the school board and how those elected members are to vote.

LAUSD is the second largest school district in the nation. It has a per parcel assessed value of $817,765, which would place it near the top if it were in Orange County. But with probably the highest unrestricted net deficit in the nation, at $16,357,535,000, and serving a population of 4,583,874, it has a negative $3,568 per capita. This is 26 percent greater than last place Santa Ana Unified’s negative $2,821!

LAUSD spent an average of $30,514 per student this year. After going into such deep debt and incurring such a high spending rate per pupil, LAUSD has lost more than 315,000 students in the last 20 years, some 43 percent since 2002. Another 28 percent decrease is expected by 2030.

Encouraging students to participate in winter break acceleration programs has been a public relations nightmare. This program was to occur in August, but the teacher’s union, United Teachers Los Angeles, boycotted the proposal. And the union’s leadership has claimed that the pandemic’s learning loss is a myth. Well, for the 2021-22 school year, state tests show that only about one-fourth of LAUSD students meet math proficiency standards.

And if you need a sign of what happens when things get neglected, thanks to the bulk of funding going for staffing and related costs, the district’s computer systems are so poorly maintained that they were recently hacked.

With dropping attendance, poor performance, infrastructure deteriorization, and currently unaffordable teacher salary and benefit commitments, the union is brazen enough to threaten to strike for even more. Their demands also include eliminating standardized testing, a ploy implemented by New York state’s teacher unions to avoid a proposal back in 2008 by then-Mayor Bloomberg to institute merit pay.

Striking teachers and supporters rally in Grand Park across from City Hall in Los Angeles on Jan. 22, 2019. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

The local data in the graph also indicates a financial imbalance. The last column, with the heading “Fiscal Rank,” refers to each districts’ per capita ranking for its unrestricted net deficit from their audited statements of net position (see “COVID Lockdowns Dealt a Huge Blow to OC School Districts’ Financial Health”). One would expect that the school districts with the lower values per parcel would be those with the weaker balance sheets. But eight of Orange County’s worst managed school districts are in the top fourteen property value zones. Conversely, the eight school districts with the best balance sheets are in the bottom fourteen areas. Just like LAUSD, the worst managed districts have the highest property values, probably giving a false sense of entitlement. It is obvious that the teachers unions for California’s school districts need more math teachers in their leadership.

I would suggest that the political strategy of public teacher unions as described by Philip K. Howard has been working. The unions identify candidates, fund their campaigns, and provide hundreds of volunteers. After getting elected, these beholden school board members agree to whatever is proposed at the bargaining table during the collective bargaining process. This massive conflict of interest is also occurring at city, county, and state levels.

The craziness occurring up the street in Los Angeles County is occurring in Orange County. And a face can be placed on the sad fiscal legacies of Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.

Newport-Mesa Unified, having the 26th worst balance sheet per capita, is in the highest value per parcel by far. Houston, we have a problem.

One of the two cities embedded in this school district is Costa Mesa. It places last, out of 34 cities, as the worst fiscally managed city in Orange County. And Costa Mesa, home of South Coast Plaza, has dropped dramatically from 20th place to 34th in just the last decade.

The common denominator for the residents of these two cities is Katrina Foley. She gladly followed the union’s strategy, receiving union support when she ran for Costa Mesa City Council back in 2004 and 2008. And teacher union support when she ran to serve on the Newport-Mesa board from 2010 to 2014. With union assistance again, she ran for Costa Mesa City Council in 2014 and 2018 and for mayor in 2020. The wake from the fiscal destruction is provided in the numbers. The balance sheets tell the tale.

Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley attends an Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting in Santa Ana, Calif., on Aug. 10, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

This nonsense continues, as Foley received public employee union support for her first run for County Supervisor in 2021. And last fall, she received the allocation of $750,000 in media buys from one public employee union alone.

Having participated in bringing Newport-Mesa to nearly the bottom of the rankings and Costa Mesa to dead last, County of Orange residents should expect a similar downward fiscal trend. Especially now that the Board of Supervisors has a Democratic majority.

Foley has already voted against utilizing outside vendors who perform services at lower costs, because they do not have the expensive pension and retiree medical benefits offered by the County. She would prefer to bring more employees on the County payroll. This is a standard operating procedure for public employee unions. More employees means more union dues revenues, which means more funds to elect accommodating politicos like Foley to keep their control and power into the indefinite future.

Many are now speculating that Foley will run for the California State Senate’s 37th District, as the incumbent has announced plans to run for Congress. You can expect more massive public employee union spending support, although having one more progressive Democrat in Sacramento will not make much of a difference as it’s almost redundant.

Philip K. Howard observes that “payoffs that would be unlawful in business bargaining have become a common feature of public bargaining – unions are making massive campaign donations to the politicians with whom they will be negotiating.” Don’t complain when taxes go up, especially if you are complicit in the public employee union politician selection processes.