Diverse Group of Wealthy Elite Funded Attack on L.A. Teachers

Republicans, liberals, Hollywood stars and multinational corporate executives are all donating to the effort to strip public schools and teachers in Los Angeles and beyond of the means to perform their work without interference from private interests.

The movement had a victory Tuesday, when an L.A. court declared “all sorts of job protections for teachers ‘unconstitutional.’ “

The Los Angeles Times had described the makeup of the coalition in an April 2013 report:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, L.A. philanthropist Eli Broad, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, pomegranate juice titan Lynda Resnick, anti-Obama mega-donor A. Jerrold Perenchio and the widow of Steve Jobs.

Together, they smashed records for spending by outside groups in last month’s L.A. Board of Education elections. These major donors poured about $4 million into the Coalition for School Reform, a political action committee spearheaded by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

On the surface, they have little in common. But this group united in Los Angeles behind education issues that have become national in scope, including the growth of publicly funded charter schools and the use of student test scores in teacher performance evaluations. Most want to reduce job protections for teachers and support the education agenda of the Obama administration. Some even want to limit collective bargaining rights for teachers.

They believed that a successful stand in the L.A. Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school system and a hotbed of unionism, would have a sweeping effect.