Longtime San Diego Unified board member Richard Barrera’s campaign for state superintendent faces its first, and perhaps most consequential, vote this week. But it won’t happen with official ballots.
Barrera, like many of the other candidates vying for the state’s top education role, made the pilgrimage to Sacramento this week for an endorsement interview with officials from the state’s largest teachers union.
Leadership from the union, the California Teachers Association, which represents more than 300,000 teachers statewide, will then vote on whether to endorse Barrera.
The decision will likely be announced soon.
Barrera is often viewed as the ideological lynchpin of the district’s board. His progressive labor bona fides have made opinion of him something of a Rorschach test – to some, he’s a villain whose background as onetime head honcho of the region’s union of unions sparked accusations of conflicts of interest and to others, he’s a valiant fighter for district workers who’s led the charge on adopting equity-focused initiatives and increasing employee compensation.
In any case, during his tenure, the board has taken an expressly progressive turn, embracing both liberal political issues and union-friendly governance.
Still, his campaign has been relatively under-the-radar. He has far lower name recognition than some other candidates in the race, like Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, the chair of the Assembly’s education and higher education committees. That means Barrera’s campaign hopes may very well hinge on the CTA’s influential endorsement, which carries significant weight – and funding. The CTA-endorsed candidate for state superintendent has won every election cycle since 1998.
Barrera did not comment on the endorsement process.
But big changes may be on the horizon for the state superintendent position. Late last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed significant changes that would drastically reduce the power of the state superintendent position.
As it stands, power over the state’s education systems is split between three entities – the governor, governor-appointed members of the State Board of Education and an independently elected state superintendent. If Newsom’s proposal passes, control of the California Department of Education would be shifted to members of the State Board of Education, who are appointed by the governor. The weakening of the role could deprive the CTA, perennially a top founder of the superintendent race, of some influence over the statewide education conversation.
The consolidation of power over the department has been supported by a slew of studies dating back one hundred years that argue it could reduce conflicts and confusion. Unsurprisingly, though, the proposal has elicited pushback from current State Superintendent Tony Thurmond.
“It is important to Thurmond that the will of voters for a superintendent to advocate for a vision of schools is protected. It is not clear what problem would be solved with this alignment or how it would improve outcomes for students,” Liz Sanders, spokesperson for the California Department of Education, recently told EdSource.