Cover teachers unions like you cover school districts

Enormously influential over students’ lives, teachers unions should be covered just like school boards are covered, says a longtime observer.  

By Mike Antonucci

Being an education reporter requires a lot of thinking and writing about students, teachers, classrooms, curriculum, school board meetings, policy, budgeting, and on and on.

However, you probably aren’t devoting too much energy to what the teacher unions are up to unless something dramatic happens, like a strike or other dispute.

That’s understandable. Just about every education reporter has covered a school board meeting, though few I know of have covered a union meeting.

But the unions affect all that stuff you do write about — and a lot more.

They also employ literally hundreds of well-paid professionals to persuade reporters and the public that they are the foremost defenders of children, public education and American democracy.

Most coverage emphasizes that teacher unions are powerful, but don’t offer much in the way of why they’re powerful or how they decide to exercise their power.

It’s like covering professional sports by focusing solely on the players and neglecting the roles of coaches, general managers, trainers, owners, the commissioners, or the players’ unions.

A lot goes on behind the scenes at union headquarters that the public should know about, and, better yet, it makes for good reading.

The unions affect all that stuff you do write about — and a lot more.

I’m a critic of teacher unions, but I come by it honestly.

I’ve covered teacher unions since the early 1990s, when I was a fledgling editor for a small Sacramento political newsletter.

At first, I wrote about legislation, not teacher unions. But it didn’t take long to learn that a lot of bills had to do with public education, and anyone with eyes could see that union lobbyists were treated with a great deal of deference.

During state budget negotiations, legislative staffers would shuttle back and forth between the Capitol and California Teachers Association headquarters across the street to ensure union approval.

Eventually, I started writing about the close relationships between unions and legislators. The readers liked it. I wrote more. I learned about the structure of teachers unions, leading me to expand my scope to other states and the national scene.

By 1997, it was a full-time undertaking and it continues to this day, mostly because it fills a knowledge gap.

Except for me and a small handful of others, all information about teachers unions comes from the unions themselves or labor reporters who are also union activists. Besides, no one else wants to do it.

Why not? Because unions are arcane organizations. Their elected officers and members are public employees (of the district). Each building usually has a teacher who also serves as the union representative.

They help shape all sorts of public policy, but they are entirely private entities. They are subject to the same types of disclosures as other tax-exempt organizations but can deny press access to any of their internal deliberations, conferences, meetings, and most documents.

Related: Two hours a day!? Remote learning provides meager offerings for low-income kids 

Except for me and a small handful of others, all information about teachers unions comes from the unions themselves or labor reporters who are also union activists.

Short of a career change to labor reporter, there are some things you can do that will improve your education coverage while still maintaining the necessary journalistic objectivity.

* Look at the contract. If teachers bargain collectively, nothing goes on in a school district without consulting the contract.

Noooooo! You’re screaming right now. The New York City teacher contract is 238 pages long. Chicago’s is 381 pages. Los Angeles’ is an excruciating 425 pages.

The very length tells you a lot. Collective bargaining agreements were once described to me as a collection of scars over old wounds. The first contract is never hundreds of pages long. It grows over time, like a lawn that never gets weeded.

Do you have to read and retain all of it? Hell no. There isn’t a teacher in Los Angeles who has read that whole thing. That’s what the union is for.

But you need access to it as reference material when a policy is being debated or decided. Collective bargaining agreements are the stone tablets from Mount Sinai and unions are devoted to seeing the commandments enforced.

When districts discuss changing health insurance providers or laying off employees, you need to know the provisions that govern those decisions. These decisions affect the life and livelihood of teachers and, by extension, their students.

If you write about any aspect of school district operations, you need to at least examine that section of the contract dealing with it.

Knowing and using the contract also works to keep the district honest.

Administrators have been known to blame the contract for their failure to take an action, when, in fact, they have the freedom to do so.

Related: What really happened in Chicago?

If teachers bargain collectively, nothing goes on in a school district without consulting the contract.

There is good news. If you cover more than one district, chances are the teachers’ contracts won’t be very different from each other.

Many local unions will utilize templates and boilerplate language crafted by the state or national union’s expert staff. Although it’s from 2000, this 381-page contract reference manual from the California Teachers Association contains samples of dozens of provisions that have made their way into collective bargaining agreements.

The National Council on Teacher Quality also maintains a searchable teacher contract database of about 145 large school districts that allows you to compare the provisions of one to another.

Some other key things to know to improve your coverage:

* Personal relationships matter.

Textbook explanations of how school districts and unions interact are all well and good, but they are flexible depending on how cordial the people are.

The personal animosity between Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the Chicago Teachers Union exacerbated a situation that two more friendly parties might have settled without a strike.

You can’t properly cover a labor dispute without knowing the context. Does the union like the superintendent? Did the union endorse a majority of the school board (as it did in Minneapolis)? If so, and there’s a dispute anyway, why did those relationships sour?

Conversely, is it the same school board/superintendent and a different set of union leaders? Union challengers usually unseat incumbents by promising to get tougher with management. Is the game the same, but the players changed?

* Union officials are not monolithic, but sometimes they want you to think they are.

Back in January, members of the Chicago Teachers Union approved a work stoppage due to COVID concerns. They returned to work after missing four days.

The union’s official statements emphasized the strike’s support and the gains achieved. A Chicago Tribune reporter posted leaked slides from a union meeting that showed, privately, CTU’s post-strike assessment was a lot more sober. After he did so, union members lambasted him because “all union info is confidential.”

Teacher unions prize solidarity and a united front, sometimes to the detriment of competing viewpoints. Like many organizations, they may sanitize or bury bad news.

* Check out some of the excellent and balanced coverage of teacher unions.

Reporters can be too credulous of union claims, but there are plenty who ask the extra question or won’t let a vague answer go unchallenged.

Just a few recent examples are: the Chicago Tribune’s story on the end of the 2022 strike and reporter Gregory Pratt’s posting of leaked information from the union’s own post-mortem; Jason McGahan’s profile of United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz for Los Angeles Magazine; Emma Green’s interview with NEA President Becky Pringle for The Atlantic; and Beth Hawkins’ story on the Minneapolis teachers strike for The 74.

Think of how you cover differences among school board members… and apply those methods to the union as well.

Most of all, be skeptical of everything you’re told.

In my view, this is good advice no matter what beat you’re on. Dickens told us that what the soldier said is not evidence, and it holds true for district and union representatives alike.

The superintendent says the district doesn’t have the money? Don’t just quote him; see if it’s true. The union says teachers are quitting in droves? Check the number of teachers and compare it with the same month in years past.

Think of how you cover differences among school board members, or how what you were told by the district’s public information officer diverged from reality and apply those methods to the union as well. You’d be surprised how often this doesn’t seem to happen.

You’re a generalist. You can’t be expected to become experts in textbook adoption, building maintenance, local tax levees, AND teachers unions.

But you will do your readers a service if you at least consider the labor angle of the topic you’re pursuing.

Even better, I won’t have to write about something you missed.

Good luck and good hunting.

Related from The Grade

What really happened in Chicago? (2022)
How to interview AFT head Randi Weingarten — or any other public official (April 2021)
Two hours a day!? Remote learning provides meager offerings for low-income kids (May 2020)
How teacher contracts are shaping remote learning (2020)
Much-improved coverage of the Los Angeles teachers strike (January 2019)
Teacher strike coverage illustrates need to amplify parent, student voices (August 2018)