A tale of parents standing up to union-controlled school district

The Orange Unified School District is in trouble, plagued by plummeting student performance on state standardized tests and the subsequent exodus of students searching for quality alternatives. When students depart a district, state and federal education funds go with them. A financial crisis is always close behind. So, few were surprised when, in November, local voters elected school board candidates who promised to end the district’s slow-motion collapse. But almost everyone was surprised when those board members moved quickly toward reform, announcing on Jan. 5 that they had removed the top district official, Superintendent Gunn Marie Hansen, and replaced her with an interim superintendent, Edward Velasquez.

Many parents have welcomed change at the moribund district. Teachers union activists and their allies see it as an alarming sign that they’ve lost control of Orange Unified.

In California, teachers unions like the Orange Unified Education Association are the best organized, most militant and wealthiest players in school elections. They use money they collect from member dues to finance the campaigns of candidates who, once in office, raise teacher pay and benefits without regard for student outcomes and expand the union’s power over classrooms and local politics. For that reason, the head of the Los Angeles teachers union famously bragged of his group, “We elect our own bosses.”

Supported for years by the district’s union-backed board, Hansen had been the Orange Unified Education Association’s best friend, implementing a kind of deckchairs-onthe-titanic response to Orange Unified’s collapse. When OUEA leaders asserted that the district’s problems could

be solved with a pay hike, district officials dutifully complied. When parents complained about their children’s lousy performance on state reading and math tests, union leaders denied the value of testing. They also pointed to the absence of state-of-the-art science labs; Hansen supported a massive 2018 tax hike to pay for four new high school labs. When test scores continued their years-long slide, Hansen’s team acceded to the union’s demand for an army of highly paid consultants to carry out a range of so-called Social Emotional Learning “interventions” that looked and smelled like political and sexual indoctrination.

Most notably, Hansen seemed to take real delight in trying to crush the Orange County Classical Academy (OCCA), a public charter school that offers a back-to-basics curriculum that has proved wildly popular with parents. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed by local parents. They are almost always non-union, and for that reason generally outperform their union-run competition. That makes them a threat to powerful teachers unions.

In 2019, when OCCA was still in start-up mode, teachers union activists predicted it would never succeed in attracting enough students — and with those students, enough funding — to remain open; when OCCA filled quickly to capacity and generated a waiting list in the thousands, union leaders declared the school had fooled parents into signing up. (No OCCA parent has endorsed that claim.) As the school’s successes became obvious — it’s now ranked in the top 5% of state elementary schools — the union fed the faddishly progressive Salon website the provocative conspiracy theory that OCCA was, in fact, part of a national campaign to destroy public education. In that, the union’s leaders were a little bit right: OCCA’S standout performance has indeed drawn children from classrooms in union-controlled schools throughout the district.

Irony came a few days ago when the state Department of Education released its list of California’s best public schools of 2022, called Blue Ribbon Distinguished Schools. Next door, Tustin Unified has six Blue Ribbon Schools; nearby Placentia–yorba Linda has four.

Orange Unified has just one: the Orange County Classical Academy.

Hansen’s Jan. 5 termination shocked teachers union leaders accustomed to managing their employer. At the board’s Jan. 19 meeting, two weeks later, the Orange Educators Association did what teachers unions do: dressed in matching black T-shirts with the union logo emblazoned on each, they arrived early to reserve rows of seats for union activists who would turn up later. From those seats, they heckled the board and denounced parents calling for reform. One woman, a mother of Asian descent, called for civility among the attendees. That much the union could tolerate. But the chirping from union activists resumed when she described her surprise at discovering that the curriculum for 10-year-old students seemed highly sexualized. She stopped mid-sentence, turned to her critics as if to listen to them carefully. Then she said gently but directly, “I know. I have an accent. Are you going to make fun of it now?”

“The so-called educators were just so hateful and disrespectful for other speakers who didn’t align with their belief,” said Esther Yoon, a mother of three students, who also spoke that night. “It’s truly disheartening to know that these people are the educators of our children.”

A woman who identified herself as Amanda said, “I sat in that crowded room for hours surrounded by obnoxious, classless educators who berated and threatened the board members based on unfounded rumors, assumptions and incomplete information. They resorted to personal attacks and childish name-calling.” Calling the union’s performance “a terrible example for students and the community,” Amanda said, “I was utterly shocked.”

The union’s performance was muted only when, halfway through the evening, smoke of unknown origin poured in through the vents and public safety officers ordered everyone out for a 45-minute break.

The evening’s best moment came when, the pyrotechnical threat eliminated, the meeting resumed. A woman who identified herself as Colleen, a mother of three Orange Unified elementary students, stood at the public-comment podium, faced the board, and gave them an alarming insight into the life of a parent in an out-of-control district.

For a year, she said, she had told district officials that some textbooks on district-provided computer tablets were inappropriate for young children. She asked them to install parental controls. They said it couldn’t be done.

Sensing danger, the ranks of teachers union activists began to bellow their disapproval, roll their eyes, groan, and shake with feigned laughter. But when Colleen began reading from one of the district-approved novels, author Bill Königsberg’s “The Music of What Happens,” the laughter stopped.

Königsberg is an award-winning youngadult novelist, so no family newspaper would allow a transcription of Colleen’s reading from his “The Music of What Happens.” But it exists on the district website in a remarkable recording of the night’s proceedings. That recording may be unlike any other recording of a public meeting in American history, a reading from a text that OUSD provided to children, a text that describes what an Orange County Register reporter characterized as “a string of sexually explicit and/ or obscenity-laden quotes to the board, as well as mentions of penetration, wet dreams and rape.” I would add that it also includes in vivid detail the rape of a child and an exhaustive catalogue of sexual activity that reduces most of it to the sort of monkey-wrench-andscrewdriver mechanics of 1970s pulp porn.

Short of smoke pouring into a room, there’s nothing like hearing a suburban mom read porn in a crowded public meeting to end the conversation.

Or almost nothing like it. Because what happened next was the dream of every American frustrated with government bureaucracy. When Colleen stopped reading, she looked up and told the board, “I want change. I voted for change. I want parent controls on the district app right now. And I want an investigation of the previous administration.”

Trustee John Ortega spoke up immediately. “Real quick,” he said to his board colleagues. In light of Colleen’s dramatic reading, Ortega recommended that the district remove the app immediately — “first thing tomorrow morning.” That, Ortega said, should be followed quickly by an investigation. Who approved these books? How many other parents had complained as Colleen had?

Ortega’s comment took just 90 seconds, but it felt like real change after years of drift. By the next morning, true to Ortega’s request, “The Music of What Happens” was gone and the platform hosting it was suspended for review.

Sometimes there’s justice. But justice is never final.

Within days, the union had a new talking point: the real threat to Orange Unified — the real reason for its now legendary dysfunction — is that the new district board is banning books.

Parents and many teachers may be grateful that someone is reviewing books for their relevance to public education. What those parents and teachers also know is that parents are beginning to flex. That has union activists calling for a recall. But it has longtime Orange Unified trustee and board President Rick Ledesma feeling re-energized after nearly a quarter century on the district board.

“What’s happening is that parents no longer feel intimidated,” Ledesma says. “They’re coming forward. They feel more comfortable with this board than the previous board majority, so that when we made the difficult decision [to terminate Hansen], we did so based on what we thought was best for the district — a change in leadership. And the parents supported that.”