BILL WOULD FORCE UNION RULES INTO CHARTER SCHOOLS.

Byline: Terri Hardy and Michael Coit Daily News Staff Writers

In what critics denounced as a surprise attack by the educational establishment, a Democratic-dominated state Assembly committee voted Wednesday to impose collective bargaining on charter schools.

If the bill, AB 842, eventually becomes law, it would make charter schools the only public campuses in California required to have union contracts - a provision that charter-school advocates say contradicts the innovative schools' mission to operate free of most state and school district regulations.

``I am very, very afraid that everything we have worked so hard for has been destroyed on a whim,'' said Irene Sumida, co-director of Fenton Avenue Charter School in Lake View Terrace, after the bill barely collected the necessary 10 votes in the Assembly Committee on Education.

That trepidation was shared by Yvonne Chan as she sat in her office at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in Pacoima, a charter school that has won praise from President Clinton and other leaders.

``If it passes, we're dead,'' Chan said. ``We might as well close all charter schools and start fighting for vouchers. If this passes it will be the districts and the unions that run charter schools.''

In two weeks, the bill will be considered next by the Assembly's Public Employees Retirement and Social Security Committee.

The measure, authored by Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, was strongly supported by Assemblyman Scott Wildman, D-Glendale, a member of the Assembly Education Committee and a former union organizer for United Teachers Los Angeles.

``Collective bargaining is not something charter schools should fear,'' Wildman told the committee. ``This shouldn't be about good or bad. This is about whether teachers (in charter schools) should be granted the same rights as teachers in other public schools.''

Supporters of the measure contend it protects school staffers, but the director of a charter school think tank contends the measure actually would take away their rights and force them into existing unions.

``It would take away probably the most important freedom that charter schools have. It would not only force them to bargain collectively, but to bargain as part of the existing bargaining units,'' said Eric Premack, director of the Charter Schools Development Center at the CSU Institute for Education Reform.

Some 180 charters have been granted since the state law allowing them took effect in 1993. There are 140 charter schools operating. The other charter schools have either never opened or not been renewed.

They operate under the umbrella of their local school district and are paid for with public funds. Charter advocates believe that they can boost student achievement by operating outside state and district constraints, while critics say the campuses have not yet proved they can raise performance.

As it now stands, some charters chose to have union contracts, while others did not.

``We tried the UTLA and it didn't work out at our school,'' said Marcia Strauss, a school psychologist at Fenton who was a founding member of the teachers union. ``The UTLA historically hasn't fought for charter members. They fight for the vast majority of the teachers who are not in charter schools.''

Susan Cornell, a Fenton teacher, said adopting the UTLA contract would force staffers to operate the union way.

``We choose our class size. We choose class assignments based on what's best for the kids, not seniority,'' Cornell said.

Chan said UTLA provisions would kill her innovative plan to tie student achievement to teacher pay.

Migden claimed schools could have their own operating plans, but conceded exemptions ``were not defined in the bill.''

She said she was ``rankled'' that public money was going to pay for schools that did not all have collective bargaining agreements. In a heated exchange with Assemblyman Scott Baldwin, R-La Mesa, Migden said those opposing her bill were telling teachers who get lesser salaries and benefits at charters to ``pick up and go somewhere else'' if they were unhappy.

Baldwin charged: ``Let's talk about academic performance of our students, not union power.''

Migden was unable to answer several basic questions about how charter schools operate. ``She didn't know what she was talking about,'' several Fenton employees said after the hearing.

Charter advocates said they got little notice the bill was coming up.

``That was clearly done on purpose,'' said David Patterson, director of governmental relations for the California Network of Educational Charters.

He called the legislation a ``political payback'' to the California Teachers Association.

``This bill will destroy our ability to be different and be a catalyst for reform,'' he said.

The measure would have the greatest impact on ``financially independent'' charter schools that set their own pay scales and working conditions and control as much as 99 percent of their annual budget, officials said.

There are six such independent schools among the 31 charter schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District.

``I think it would set us back an eternity,'' said Joe Lucente, Fenton's executive director and chief financial officer. ``It would turn everything upside down . . . throw everything back into the box that we chose to leave.''

At financially independent charter schools, administrators, teachers, parents and community leaders work together to set pay scales, assignments and responsibilities for teachers, clerical workers and other employees governed by collective bargaining agreements at other public schools, officials said.