CTA’s Barrera Endorsement Shows San Diego Unified Is Model for ‘District with Organized Labor as a Copilot’

And just like that, San Diego Unified Trustee Richard Barrera’s campaign for state superintendent is looking serious. 

On Saturday, the state’s largest teachers union announced it was officially endorsing Barrera. The announcement came a week after Voice of San Diego broke the news that the California Teachers Association’s board had recommended the endorsement. 

A social media post from the union announcing the endorsement reads, “Richard Barrera is a fighter for public school education and unions. He is the best candidate for our students, schools, and communities.” 

CTA’s support rewrites the balance of a state superintendent race in which Barrera looked to be a longshot. The longtime San Diego education figure has far lower name recognition than some other candidates, including former Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Assembly Education Committee Chair Al Muratsuchi and former Senate Education Committee Chair Josh Newman.  

That has also translated to far less in campaign funds raised. The about $78,000 Barrera’s mustered is less than half what’s already been raised by Muratsuchi, Newman, Rendon and conservative Chino Valley Trustee Sonja Shaw. 

But with CTA’s endorsement, the challengers’ fundraising head start likely won’t matter. Not only is the union often a top donor in state superintendent races, its endorsement holds considerable sway statewide. The last time a CTA-endorsed candidate lost the state superintendent race was in 1982. 

So, why would the 310,000 member-strong union throw its weight behind Barrera, who’s only experience in elected office is a 17-year stint on a school board? 

Fellow board member Cody Petterson put it succinctly: “To my mind, this is an acknowledgement by CTA that San Diego Unified is the model of how to run a district with organized labor as a copilot.” 

During Barrera’s tenure, he’s established himself as the ideological pillar of San Diego Unified’s board. And for nearly two decades, he has used that influence to help turn the district into a laboratory for progressive and union-friendly policy.  

San Diego Unified has led the way on some of the biggest educational changes in the state. Barrera successfully pushed an ethnic studies graduation requirement years before California did. And while California’s requirement failed to launch, San Diego Unified is enforcing theirs.  

The district passed a community schools resolution well before the state created its grant program. Officials have since secured grant funding for nearly three dozen district schools. 

San Diego Unified is also well ahead of the curve on education workforce housing. The district this week may approve the largest portfolio of affordable employee housing projects on district land that California has ever seen. On that front, though, Barrera actually threw a wrench in the plans’ works.  

All the while, San Diego Unified has maintained its status as one of the country’s top-performing urban school districts, even as performance lags behind pre-pandemic levels and its schools are plagued by familiar achievement gaps. 

The district has also faced its fair share of controversies during his time.  

Marne Foster, a board member recruited by Barrera was taken down by a messy corruption scandal that led to a guilty plea. A recent federal report slammed officials’ handling of sexual misconduct complaints and the district’s most recent superintendent was fired after an investigation revealed he’d sexually harassed multiple former staff members. 

Barrera was around for all of those scandals, and more.  

Neither the scandals, nor the district’s accomplishments can be fully attributed to Barrera. Since his election in 2008, the composition of the board has shifted significantly. More conservative members have been shed in favor of five progressive trustees all backed by the San Diego Education Association, the union that represents district teachers. 

Still, both past and present board members point to him as the architect of much of the district’s big leaps forward.  

Former board member Scott Barnett, who, despite his conservative background is forever a Barrera-booster, described him as “the most influential and powerful person the average San Diegan hasn’t heard of.” 

To Petterson, Barrera’s outsized influence didn’t come about by chance.  

“If you elect someone who’s smarter than your average elected official and keep him on a school board for 17 years, he’s going to take that intellect and capacity and experience and come out of it as an ideologically dominant figure,” Petterson said.  

Barrera’s deep labor ties form the foundation of that ideology and the foundation of the deep support – and for some, deep disdain – or him within San Diego.  

While an elected school board member, Barrera even served as the head of the region’s Labor Council, a sort of union of unions. The uneasy overlap of duties – a responsibility to advocate for the interests of union members as Labor Council head and a separate responsibility to act in the interests of taxpayers and students as a trustee – led to allegations of conflicts of interest. 

Barrera has waved those claims off, and over the years built a close-knit relationship with the local teachers union, which in turn has supported him throughout his tenure. That relationship has been evident in much of what he’s fought for.  

In just his first year in office, he supported a landmark project labor agreement that steers the district’s hiring of contractors to union friendly shops. That agreement has been especially impactful because over the past decade voters have approved nearly $10 billion in bond funding. That’s a whole lot of dough for union laborers.  

In recent years, he’s helped usher in massive raises for staff – a 17 percent bump over the past three years, even as the district racked up deficits in the tens of millions. Those raises have added to the district’s already enviable health benefits, which fully cover dependents. 

San Diego Education Association President Kyle Weinberg is effusive in his praise for Barrera. Weinberg said Barrera is someone they have long been able to count on Barrera as an ally in pushing for “union educator values.”  

“To have someone like that at the head of public education in the largest state in the United States is a very powerful opportunity … to push back on the austerity narrative that has been dominant in California for decades and to build coalitions statewide that will effectively advocate for increased funding for our public schools,” Weinberg said.   

To his allies, that’s especially true because of the nature of not only Barrera, but of the office itself. State superintendent is a muddled role made up more of soft powers than of concrete ones. The superintendent has no money to throw around and can’t necessarily pass new policy. Instead, it imbues the elected with a sizable bully pulpit that enables them to advocate for issues on a grand scale. 

To former SDEA President Lindsay Burningham, that remit may be a match made in heaven for the heavyweight educational powerbroker.  

“He had a way of being able to bring everybody together, even people of differing views, that was really impressive,” Burningham said. “He was always willing to do the work that needed to be done to build relationships with people, because those relationships were key to him.” 

Those relationships have, little by little, paid off. In 2024, for example, Barrera added a new gig to his resumé – senior policy advisor to Tony Thurmond, the current state superintendent. In that position he’s worked with Thurmond, and district boards across the state, on everything from contract negotiations to workforce housing to driving down chronic absenteeism.  

The role also gave Barrera something important for a man pondering a statewide run – more facetime with education leaders across the state and, potentially, more juice.  

Still, despite his sterling progressive and union-friendly bonafides aside, the CTA has easier paths to an ideological ally in the state superintendent’s office. They could go with the former assembly speaker, or the current chair of the assembly’s education committee. 

Barrera said he thinks CTA’s boils down to his vision for the role, or rather, he and CTA’s shared vision for the role.  

“They’ve seen me walking the walk in terms of focusing on educators, the people closest to the kids, as the people who should actually be driving solutions,” Barrera said. “I think the idea that educators can build coalitions to actually change the systems across the state, and that the State Superintendent can play a role in that – I think that’s where their decision has been coming from.” 

And Barrera does intend to take on some systemic fights. He’s expressed support for everything from a new tax on the wealthy to increase school funding to continuing the expansion of public schools past the recently created UTK to younger and younger kids. Those are big moves that are likely quite attractive to the CTA, lower profile candidate or not.  

To Petterson, his fellow school board member, CTA may not even need to fret about which path to the office is easier anyway. Why try to predict the future, when they can make it?  

“CTA is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. They have the luxury of asking themselves, ‘Who do we want to be in this position?’ not ‘Who do we think is going to win?’” Petterson said. “They want somebody across the table who will work with them, understands what they’re talking about and who can deliver and be competent in that role. That’s Richard.”