6/22/2023 0 Comments California virtual schools![]() ![]() ![]() In September of that year, CVEU and CAVA began negotiations for their first contract. CAVA again appealed but was rebuffed by PERB in June 2016. In October 2015 the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) rejected CAVA’s arguments, granting CVEU/CTA exclusive recognition. That sparked a 17-month legal battle in which CAVA contended that its campuses were individual schools and therefore separate bargaining units, and that voting for CTA representation was not the same as voting for CVEU. CVEU stepped up its organizing efforts with regional staff development meetings and weekly organizing team meetings, while CAVA management tried to convince teachers that unionizing would destroy the school (in one case advising teachers to call the police if a union organizer came to their home).ĭespite management opposition, in 2014 CAVA teachers overwhelmingly voted to have CVEU/CTA be their exclusive representative. A family with a child in a public school shouldn’t have to pay for books.” I even heard a K12 executive, in response to a parent asking to bring back physical textbooks instead of online versions that were hard for students to navigate, ask if the parent would be willing to pay for them. “When I started teaching there, families would start the year getting these great boxes of art supplies, textbooks and curriculum, and teachers had time to build relationships with students and families. “Changes in management at K12 and an increased emphasis on profits had led to changes at CAVA that shortchanged students,” says Sarah Vigrass, a 10-year CAVA teacher who has since joined CTA staff as a field organizer. Every year we were losing more and more students and teachers.” “We also began discussing the reality that our low salaries and working conditions were making it hard for CAVA to keep teachers, creating an unstable environment for students. “Teachers were concerned about the instability their students were experiencing,” she says. Concern for studentsīrianna Carroll is a fourth-year CAVA teacher and CVEU’s current and first union president. Many of those concerns centered on ever-changing, top-down policies that didn’t benefit students. They set up a closed Facebook group, which built solidarity and a sense of community, and gradually became a safe space for teachers to air concerns. They formed an organizing team and began outreach to colleagues. In 2013 they reached out to CTA staff in the Sacramento area for advice. That frustration led to a small group of CAVA teachers discussing the idea of forming a union, a daunting task given that at the time the school had about 750 teachers who were spread all over the state with limited opportunity to engage in person. Front row: Sheryl Carruth, Stacey Mankoff, Amber Blodgett, Katie Jamreonvit. Back row, left to right: Janine Burns, Brianna Carroll, Kristin McCaffrey, Amy Koller. Carroll says that with her colleagues working from home and scattered all over the state, it took "a lot of phone calls" to get to this point.The CVEU delegation at fact-finding. In this most recent wave of teacher actions, educators all over the country have been gathering over social media as well as with more traditional organizing techniques. has not yet responded to a request for comment on the announcement. Virtual charters, like other charter schools, overwhelmingly are not unionized. Research has found comparatively low teacher pay and low levels of teacher-student contact to be the norm. ![]() Carroll says she and fellow teachers supported improving the quality of education, but "the way it was done was abrupt, and caused a lot of uncertainty for a lot of people."Īs we've reported, virtual charter schools run by K12 Inc and other companies such as Connections Academy have come under scrutiny for low performance in state after state. These new rules included a more stringent "attendance" or check-in policy that, Carroll says, was harder for students to meet. NPR Ed Inside The Virtual Schools Lobby: 'I Trust Parents' ![]()
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