California Teachers Association
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| Full name | California Teachers Association |
|---|---|
| Founded | May, 1863 |
| Members | 325,000 |
| Affiliation | NEA |
| Key people | Eric C. Heins, President |
| Office location | 1705 Murchison Drive, Burlingame, California |
| Country | United States |
| Website | www.cta.org |
The California Teachers Association (CTA), initially established in 1863, is one of the largest and most powerful teachers' unions in California politics. It is based in Burlingame, and its current president is Eric C. Heins.
In a June 30, 2016 editorial, The Sacramento Bee compared the dominant legislative influence of the CTA and California's second-largest teachers union with the relative weakness of groups representing school administrators and the parents of schoolchildren. The Bee's editorial board noted that proposed legislation extending California's teacher tenure trial period from two years to three had been defeated in the Senate Education Committee, even though it was supported by "[t]he PTA, Association of California School Administrators and California School Boards Association. But they’re not the ones with clout. The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers are."
CTA was founded in 1863, during the Civil War, in response to a call in 1863 from the California Superintendent of Public Instruction, John Swett, for a "teachers' institute", about one hundred teachers gathered in San Francisco, resulting in the formation of the California Educational Society. In 1875, the organization changed its name to the California Teachers Association.
CTA won its first major legislative victory in 1866 with a law providing free public schools to California children. A year later, public funding was secured for schools that educated nonwhite students. More early victories established bans on using public school funding for sectarian religious purposes (1878-79); free textbooks for all students in grades 1-8 (1911); the first teacher tenure and due process law (1912); and a statewide pension, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (1913).
CTA led efforts to outlaw child labor in the state and enact other protections for children (1915), and to strengthen the teacher due process law (1921). In the 1940s, the union was the only major organization in California to protest against the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
While the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 made collective bargaining a lawful, protected activity in the private sector, it did not include public workers or teachers. Wisconsin passed the nation's first public employee bargaining law (1959), and several large, urban affiliates of NEA or the American Federation of Teachers started winning bargaining rights (New York in 1961, Denver in 1962, Chicago in 1966). After a decade of school strikes and teacher organizing, California K-14 educators at last won the right to bargain collectively in 1975 when the CTA-sponsored Educational Employment Relations Act, also known as the Rodda Act, was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown.
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