Union Organizes Largest Pennsylvania Charter School

The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) teachers union has succeeded in unionizing the commonwealth’s largest charter school.

Teachers at the Midland-based Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School voted by better than a two-to-one margin (71-43) to join the PSEA, which is one of the Commonwealth’s wealthiest and most redoubtable special interest groups. The union boasts over 180,000 public school employees as members and spent a jaw-dropping $3.8 million on politics in 2013.

The PSEA has previously represented only two charter schools, both of which are now defunct.

“The PSEA has resorted to organizing cyber schools—which the organization regularly denounces—in their quest for more dues-paying members to fund their political operations,” said the Commonwealth Foundation’s Nathan Benefield. “I wonder how many cyber school teachers realize that about 12 percent of their PSEA dues will be used for politics and lobbying, or that the PSEA’s multi-million dollar lobbying efforts include trying to eliminate the very cyber school they just organized.”

The school’s CEO, Michael Conti, said its teachers’ salaries are in the middle of the pack compared to their public school peers. Still, the union declared in a written statement that it will negotiate for higher salaries and enhanced benefits at the school, which could pose financial harm.

Funding follows students to the charter school of of their choice but it is only 83%, on average, of what school districts spend per pupil. Charter schools receive around $2,300 less per student than traditional public schools. And because they get less money, they are forced to spend less.

In addition to its strident disdain for school choice, the PSEA has a history of lobbying state government for financially unsustainable policies, such as a defined-benefit pension system for state and public school employees that is now $57 billion in the hole.

“This decision highlights the need to change state law to eliminate compulsory union representation,” said Simon Campbell of Pennsylvanians for Union Reform.

“We respect the right of all workers to engage in voluntary collective bargaining. Certainly, the two-thirds of teachers who wanted to unionize should have that right. If they wish to risk their cyber charter school becoming less attractive to parents who have choices to go to other non-unionized schools, they should have a right to assume that risk and that potential loss of funding.”

Campbell noted that Pennsylvania law requires the one-third of teachers who rejected the union to now be forced into an unwanted collective bargaining unit.

“Compulsory monopoly unionism is a violation of individual civil rights,” Campbell said.

Source: Mediatracker