For UTLA president: Linda Guthrie

"We have a system that offers kids a bread-and-water curriculum, nothing to entice them to want to perform, nothing that involves the community." -- Linda Guthrie

Challenger LInda Guthrie fields questions and makes her case for being elected president of one of the nation's most powerful teachers unions in this interview with Times staff writer Howard Blume. The union begins counting mailed-in votes Thursday night.

Challenger: LINDA GUTHRIE
Age: 56
Current job: Union vice president for secondary schools, finish second three-year term.

Q: Small learning communities—the idea of dividing up high schools into smaller schools on the same campus—is a central district reform policy. Duffy has criticized your work helping to develop the work rules for these small schools. Specifically, he notes that seniority only applies to the small school not the larger campus. So a veteran teacher could be bumped from a school even if there was a less-senior teacher at a different small school on the same campus.

Guthrie defended the change in the seniority system. “The idea is that the small learning community becomes the school. We’re trying to personalize our schools and move to a small-school movement. You can’t have a small school and say this is [still] a comprehensive high school.”

UTLA’s official policy endorses small learning communities, she said. And you can’t have a small school, but apply the rules as though you still have a big school.

“As an officer of UTLA, it’s my responsibility to enact the policies of the UTLA House of Representatives. It’s just a cheap shot to say I gave away something.”

Q: During this campaign, Duffy has blamed you for “losing” Locke High to a charter school company because you’re the vice president for secondary schools. You have blamed Duffy because he’s the union president. You say he took charge of the response to the petition to create a charter school. But is it so bad that Green Dot Public Schools is taking over, given how unsuccessful the school has been?
Guthrie: “I do think it’s a bad thing. Because this is unlike charter conversions we had before where an entire staff, through its own accord, turned over to a charter they created that met needs of student population of their community. This is an outside entity taking advantage of a charter law.

[Note: A traditional school can convert to charter status when a majority of permanent teachers sign a petition. Locke has many non-tenured teachers who did not have a say one way or another.]

“So few permanent teachers were needed. You only needed to get a minuscule number of people involved.”

As an alternative to Green Dot, “I would have prepared a UTLA-sponsored charter at the school, similar to ones at Palisades High and Granada Hills High and invited those people in to work with Locke.”

Q: How do you feel about charter schools?
Guthrie: “Charter schools are public schools that need to be held accountable to the public. LAUSD needs to impose more supervision. And all students should have access to charter schools. They should not have a strenuous application process. They should not discourage students with special needs and English learners.

"And they should be union… It is our job to organize the unorganized. We’re a labor union.

"I feel we have to be much more aggressive about being able to organize charter schools. But it’s hard to organize a group of people when you say, ‘We don’t support what you’re doing.’

The late teachers union leader Al Shanker "said charter schools should be the way to free teachers to do what they needed to do for students. We need to see that we are involved in them so we are seen as agents of change.

"The [Duffy] administration is ignoring charter schools and trying to stop them. Charter schools are not going away. People want their children to go to school in a safe environment. They do not necessarily offer a better education program. Parents send their children because they want them to be safe, and because the charter schools will put out any student who doesn’t adhere to rules and regulations.”

Q: To what extent is discipline a problem in traditional schools?
Guthrie: “The discipline policy is a joke. It doesn’t establish a safe and orderly environment for our students. It places the onus for student behavior more on the teacher than on the student. There needs to be joint accountability for parents, students and teachers.”

Q: What is one thing that is very wrong with schools?
Guthrie: "We have a system that offers kids a bread-and-water curriculum, nothing to entice them to want to perform, nothing that involves the community.

"Parents can stand at the counter of a school for 20 minutes” and no one will help them. “I think I should be able to sit in on classes as a community member. I feel teachers need to be able to change curriculum to fit the needs of kids in a community.” A school should be able to offer “ungraded classrooms where kids move on based on mastery. You need to look at things like extending the school year and different work schedules” and providing teacher training outside of the academic year.

Q: How would compare UTLA’s role in reform efforts with that of unions elsewhere, such as the teachers union in New York City, which is headed by Randi Weingarten?
Guthrie: “I don’t think confrontation is needed. What is needed is guidance and support. I talk to people and I try to reason with them. Administrators need to be trained to be support personnel and realize that their first role is to see that instruction is being carried out.”

Q: How effective is the current system at dealing with ineffective teachers?
Guthrie: I don’t think people are given the time and support to become better at what they need to do.” Early in her teaching career, “I needed support and guidance in dealing with certain kinds of students.”

She supports the current practice of teacher peer review, but “I don’t think it goes far enough. I don’t think we have a mechanism to help people transition out of teaching when it’s not what they’re being successful at.”