IMMIGRATION: Legality of effort to repeal Prop. 187 is questioned

Some California legislators are poised to repeal Proposition 187, a controversial 20-year-old initiative that was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court and never enforced. But law scholars question whether the elected officials have the legal authority to act on their own.

“The California Constitution says you can’t amend or repeal an approved measure without submitting it to the voters unless there’s a waiver clause,” said Jessica A. Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who specializes on election law.

Prop. 187, which sought to cut off public education, health care and welfare benefits to undocumented immigrants in California, had no such waiver, said John C. Eastman, a Chapman University Law School professor and founding director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence.

“These guys are acting lawlessly,” Eastman said. “They’ll do it if they think they can get away with it and no one will challenge them.”

California voters approved Prop. 187 – also known as the “Save our State” campaign – in November 1994 with almost 60 percent approval. A federal court ruled most of the provisions unconstitutional, and the measure was not enforced. But some of the language remains embedded in various codes, including education codes.

Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, said he learned of its existence in California codes accidentally. He was recently talking to his staff about his personal history and recounting how he “cut my teeth politically against the 187 campaign.” Chief of Staff Dan Reeves decided to look into the proposition and found it had not been removed.

“These code sections are unenforceable. The Legislature has the right and power and authority to maintain the codes with our statutes and that’s we’re doing,” Reeves said.

“Essentially, it’s code cleaning,” he said.

De Leon’s staff consulted with the state’s legislative counsel, Diane Boyer-Vine, whose opinion was that “it’s not necessary to go back to the voters,” Reeves said.

State Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, said unconstitutional laws should not remain on the books.

“The Constitution is the highest law of our nation, and I support any effort to remove any statute or language found unconstitutional,” he said.

Sen. Mike Morrell, a Rancho Cucamonga Republican who represents parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, said in a statement that he has not yet decided whether to vote for de Leon’s bill.

“I have not yet had a chance to review the specific language of the bill or the legal questions surrounding it,” he said.

Robin Hvidston, executive director of the anti-illegal-immigration We the People Rising and an Upland resident, urged legislators to keep the law in California codes.

“To me, it’s important because this was the direct voice of the people,” she said. “The people’s voice, the people’s will was overruled by the courts.”

She worried that stripping Prop. 187 language from state codes would set a dangerous precedent and lead to other voter initiatives being gutted.

But Maria Rodriguez, an activist with the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Coalition, said passage of de Leon’s bill would be another signal by the Legislature that California is “an immigrant-friendly state.”

Californians like Common Core education, finance overhaul

Two major changes in California's public education system - adoption of "Common Core" academic standards and giving extra money to school districts with large numbers of poor and/or English learner students - seem to have gained favor with the state's residents.

A new poll by the Public Policy Institute of California tested the two changes now underway, along with a number of other education-related issues.

The poll found that 69 percent of adults support the Common Score approach to teaching, a system that's being adopted by a majority of the states as a way of ensuring that students leave public schools with skills in a variety of areas.

The change has been controversial, especially in other states, with those on the political right complaining that it will lead to federal control of school curricula. The concept was promoted by a bipartisan coalition of governors to replace the state-by-state determinations of what should be taught, how instruction should be given and how academic progress should be assessed.

The PPIC survey found that support was over 50 percent among all political subgroups but Democratic support was highest at 72 percent, while that among Republicans was 60 percent and among independents, 61 percent.

The change in school financing was championed by Gov. Jerry Brown on the theory that poor students and those not fluent in English need special attention to close what educators have called the "achievement gap."

The state Board of Education is finalizing regulations on how the Local Control Funding Formula is to be implemented, and there has been some criticism of the regulations that they leave too much discretion in the hands of local school officials. But Brown, citing the principle of "subsidiarity," has endorsed local discretion.

The PPIC poll found that 53 percent of all adults, and 57 percent of parents of public school students, are confident that the money will be spent wisely, and higher numbers, 68 percent and 71 percent respectively, believe the extra money will improve academic performance by the targeted kids.

The poll also tested support for Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg's push for universal pre-kindergarten, which would cost about $1 billion a year when fully implemented, and, like other polls, found very strong support for the concept - 73 percent among all adults and 80 percent among students' parents.

About 40 percent of adults surveyed were aware that California ranks below average on per-pupil school spending and 46 know that it's also below average in academic test scores.


PHOTO: At right, Maiya Miller, 8, hugs Principal Shana Henry on the first day of school at Pacific Elementary school in Sacramento on September 3, 2013. The Sacramento Bee/Renee C. Byer

via: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/04/californians-like-common-core-education-finance-overhaul.html

Michelle Rhee's consultant introduces California ballot measure

A ballot measure submitted by a political consultant for education advocate Michelle Rhee seeks to remove seniority as a factor when California school districts lay off teachers, requiring that they instead base decisions on performance ratings. Performance, under the proposal, would be determined in part based on student test scores.

Those policy proposals have been at the core of Rhee's advocacy efforts as head of StudentsFirst, a national group headquartered in Sacramento. Rhee, who is married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, has said she established the group to try to counter the influence that teachers unions have in decisions about public education. Unions generally reject the idea that teachers should be rated based on their students' test scores, and prefer contracts that call for the most recently hired teachers to be the first let go during layoffs.
The California ballot initiative was submitted Monday by Matt David, a political consultant to StudentsFirst. David was communications director to Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and worked on the presidential campaigns of Republican Senator John McCain and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr.

David said he submitted the measure on his own behalf and that StudentsFirst has not yet endorsed it.

"I would hope to get their support on this, assuming the language isn't changed (by the attorney general)," David said. "But they haven't taken a position yet and I've advised other groups not to take a position until we get the language finalized."

StudentsFirst spokesman Francisco Castillo said the group has been in talks about advancing a ballot measure in California next year, but hasn't yet decided if this will be it.
"We're currently reviewing the language for this one, and we generally support the concepts behind it, but it's premature to say whether we will take a position on it right now," Castillo said.

The proposed initiative for California's 2014 ballot must receive a title and summary from the Attorney General's Office before proponents can begin gathering signatures from the public to qualify for the ballot.

The measure also would streamline the firing procedures for teachers convicted of sex crimes, setting up a possible conflict with another ballot measure recently proposed by an advocacy group called EdVoice, which generally shares StudentsFirst's anti-union approach to education.

StudentsFirst has been active in several states but has made little headway so far in California, where public employee unions hold big clout in the state Capitol. The organization recently hired labor lobbyist Jovan Agee, who previously represented the AFSCME union, to head up its California operation.

Students First pushed for a bill to add student test scores to teachers' performance evaluations earlier this year, but Senate Bill 441 died in its first committee.
The bill was carried by Sen. Ron Calderon, the Montebello Democrat whose office was raided this summer by the FBI. A sealed FBI affidavit made public by Al Jazeera America alleges Calderon accepted $88,000 in bribes from a hospital executive and an undercover agent posing as a movie studio owner.

In 2012, StudentsFirst pitched a bill in California that sought to remove seniority as a factor in teacher layoff procedures, instead basing layoffs largely on job performance, according to a confidential draft The Bee obtained last year. The bill also would have changed the teacher evaluation system so that at least half the ratings were based on student test scores.

Calderon's brother, Charles Calderon, who was an assemblyman at the time, said he was interested in introducing the bill, but ran out of time during the 2012 session.

StudentsFirst poured more than $1 million into legislative races in 2012, including support for Ian Calderon — the son of Charles Calderon and nephew of Ron Calderon — as well as Assembly candidates Cheryl Brown and Brian Johnson. All are Democrats who faced opponents backed by the California Teachers Association.

Ian Calderon and Brown won their races and now serve in the state Assembly.


Michelle Rhee at Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's State of the City address in January 2011. The Sacramento Bee/Bryan Patrick

via: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/12/michelle-rhee-pushing-california-ballot-measure-to-change-teacher-laws.html