LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Helen Bernstein : Head of L.A.’s Teachers’ Union Struggles With a Constricting Budget

Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District are singing a low, sad refrain this school year. A four-year cycle of budget cuts has eliminated 4,000 jobs, ended or curtailed a variety of programs and increased class sizes. Now, teachers face salary cuts that could reduce their paychecks by more than 17%.

By most accounts, morale at L.A. schools has hit an all-time low, and the union representing the district’s 35,000 teachers, librarians, nurses and counselors has embarked on an aggressive campaign to raise public awareness of their plight. Leading the charge is a former history teacher and counselor, Helen Bernstein. Since 1990, she’s been the outspoken president of United Teachers-Los Angeles.

Bernstein knows how to play hardball. She’s solicited the help of Mayor Tom Bradley and other elected officials, warning them if they don’t join in the fight against pay cuts, the teachers’ union will respond with a campaign painting Los Angeles as a town that doesn’t care about education.

Bernstein says the union might put up billboards describing the city as “Home to 650,000 unserved students.” She’s suggested sending teachers out when realtors hold “open houses,” to distribute leaflets warning potential buyers of the school district’s problems. And she vows to notify banks and other creditors that teachers may default on their loans if salary cuts are approved.

Faced with shrinking revenues, the school district says it must pare $400 million from its $3.9-billion budget this year. More than half that money will come from cuts in employee pay and benefits. The district wants teachers to continue taking a 3% cut they agreed to last year, absorb an additional 8% in salary reductions and give up 6% more in unpaid days off. Bernstein says that’s just too much.

Bernstein, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from John Marshall High, says her members can’t afford a strike, but she thinks the district may not be giving the union any other choice. She’s hopeful that LEARN, a coalition of civic leaders, may be able to broker a solution. LEARN has formed a commission, headed by former state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, to delve into the district’s finances and attempt to find an alternative to the deep teacher pay cuts. The commission is expected to make a report by the end of the month, and teachers have agreed to put off a strike authorization vote until then.

In an early morning interview, Bernstein munched on a bran muffin while outlining the problems facing teachers. She says perhaps the greatest of those problems is the lack of status teachers have in our society. Bernstein sees this issue of teacher empowerment as important in the struggle to restore a measure of excellence to public education in Los Angeles.

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Question: How would you rate the morale among teachers coming back for this new school year?

Answer: Our philosophy in this union is that we try to be in the schools, so I go to at least one school every day. I have never witnessed the kind of demoralization and depression that I now see among the employees of this district. For years, teachers have been like second-class citizens. Because it was a primarily female profession, and it was male-dominated, there was a sense that teachers had no control. Much of the work that we have done in this union has been about helping teachers develop a professional attitude about teaching, to empower them with the sense that they had some control over what they taught and how they taught it. This is a real problem--teaching is one of the only professions that doesn’t set its own standards and pass judgment on colleagues. Doctors and lawyers have review boards, teachers don’t. So part of our whole goal has been to take ownership of the profession--not just on labor-management issues, but also on instructional and professional issues. We had to fight just to get the right to use the copy machines!

But right now the whole reform movement has come to an end for teachers, because you can’t slash their wages, give them no extra time or help and then expect them to redo the system at the same time.

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Q: One of your proposals is the idea that no administrator should be paid more than the highest-paid teacher. Are you serious about that?

A: I’m real serious about that, and I’ll tell you why. The focus is all wrong in the system. The quality of learning is totally dependent on the quality of teaching. Period. And you can’t attract quality teachers unless you are competitive. I can’t tell you the number of teachers who have quit in the last few weeks to take jobs in other districts, where they can make more money and not feel so mistreated. Other teachers are taking second jobs, and that diverts their energy from teaching. It’s going to be a disaster for the kids. So the center of everything is the classroom teacher, and they should be the ones who get the most respect.

I don’t think, just because you are writing curriculum downtown, that makes you more important. I don’t think, because you are doing lobbying up north, that you are more important. If you gave people the choice--work as an administrator or a teacher, but make the same salary--you’d see a lot of (administrators) leaving downtown, and it wouldn’t hurt the district at all.

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Q: Do you think there are too many administrators?

A: Yes, and I think the difference between what they earn and what teachers earn is so great that there is very little respect for what they do. For instance, there is a man who makes over $100,000 --that’s more than the governor of this state--and his title is Special Liaison to the business community. Now, I don’t get it. This is not a business; this is a public service, and the only thing that should make a difference is that our kids are learning more. Being a liaison to the business community isn’t going to make any difference about who is learning math in the fifth grade.

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Q: Have you been telling teachers not to stay after school? Is it union policy that when the bell rings, they are out of there?

A: Well, I am telling them to be out of there, but I guarantee you that the vast majority of teachers are never out of there at 3. They may leave the school building, but teaching doesn’t end at 3 o’clock. You know, there are probably three reasons why people go into teaching. One is that it’s considered a secure profession, two is that the benefits were pretty good and three is that they probably like children.

Now they are taking away two of three of those things from us. But you wouldn’t have gotten into this job unless you feel a real commitment to young people. And if you feel that commitment, it’s pretty hard to just close up shop at 3. I mean, I still have kids who call me, because I was a high-school counselor, to tell me what’s going on, in college or whatever. What, am I going to hang up on them and say, “Look, I’m getting a pay cut, I don’t want to talk to you”? It just doesn’t turn off when the bell rings.

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Q: Can you tell me about some of the ideas you have about how to make the public aware of the problems teachers are having in the L.A. schools?

A: During the uprisings last spring, I sat at home and watched politicians and pundits on television, all saying, “Education is the answer. We have to beef up our schools and prepare our kids for the year 2000.” Twelve hours later, same politicians are up in Sacramento slashing the education budget. So I thought to myself, “We’re the only ones out there as advocates for kids, advocates for reform. And if somebody doesn’t do something, it’s going to be up to me to tell people that this is a city where people don’t care about their children.” So I wrote a letter to the mayor. I’m not advocating that people not move to Los Angeles. I’m just saying if we don’t do something about the schools, then the message we are sending is that we simply don’t care about education in this town.

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Q: Do you think the public’s perception is that the district has plenty of money, but there is too much waste and inefficiency?

A: Yes, there is waste and inefficiency. The public ought to demand that if they give more money in taxes, then the money should be spent in a wiser way. But we don’t have the same amount of money we had in education 10 years ago. We have less per child, and are being asked to do more. And with Proposition 13, the funding is all done in Sacramento, and the decisions are all made there. It’s bad enough having bureaucrats downtown make decisions. But, in fact, the important decisions are made by legislators up north, who have never even seen a school. So if school funding was put back more on a local level--where you could say unless things are done right, we are withdrawing our money--change and reform would be much easier.

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Q: Both presidential candidates have proposals to provide for some choice in education--President Bush wants a voucher program that parents could use to send kids to public or private schools, and Gov. Clinton has a plan that would allow students to pick among public schools. What do you think of these plans?

A: I don’t believe in using public money for private schools, that’s crazy. Private schools don’t have to educate by the same rules. They don’t have to do special education, bilingual classes, busing and integration. But I do believe there should be choice in the public system. The problem is this: If tomorrow they said every kid can choose which school they want to go to, the choice would be only geographic, it wouldn’t be educational. It would be between being in this neighborhood and that one. What I believe is that each school should be unique, and then parents should have the right to choose which school’s approach they think best suits their child. But that’s not what’s happening--all the schools are the same. That has to change before this idea of choice can make any sense.

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Q: How would you rate your feelings about the future of education in this city?

A: To me, it’s not rhetoric--I really believe this: Public education is what is going to make or break this country. And what is happening now is just not right. I am compulsive when it comes to trying to redirect the anger and the hostility and the inefficiency in the schools and turn it into something that is positive for our children. There is nothing like seeing a child succeed. As a teacher, you have to be adequately compensated, you have to be able to take care of your family. But let me tell you, if you were failing every day with kids, no amount of money would make it worthwhile. As a teacher, you know that something you did may have turned a child’s life around, and that is something you have for the rest of your life. So, if I give up on that sort of hope, if I don’t think I can make a difference, why would I be doing this?

One thing that really bothers me is that the teachers, the nurses, the librarians whom I represent--they are so angry. A lot of them don’t know how to channel that anger, and they are turning it inward. And that is the definition of depression. So they become non-functioning as teachers, they can’t do what they need to do for the kids. That makes me pessimistic, because I have to fight every day to keep those teachers from feeling impotent and unable to control their lives.

There is something else. I am very aware that this is a nation of those who have, and of those who have not. But that’s not even the critical issue. What I see happening in the ‘90s is that this is becoming a nation of those who have hope, and of those who have none. And it’s our responsibility, as teachers, to give that hope back to kids. And I have to be optimistic we can do just that. But we can’t do it alone, as teachers. We need other advocates out there to say, “Enough is enough, let’s re-evaluate our priorities in this country.”