In this very same week, the California Senate Education Committee killed a bill calling for curriculum transparency in public school classrooms. Senate Bill 1045 (Melendez-R) was seen as a much-needed fix by parents and parents’ rights groups concerned about Critical Race Theory and radical gender identity politics being taught to California’s kids. 

Existing state law already requires “all primary supplemental instructional materials and assessments, including textbooks, teacher’s manuals, films, audio and video recordings, and software, to be compiled and stored by the classroom instructor and made available promptly for inspection by a parent….”

SB 1045 would require a classroom instructor to also provide a parent or guardian with a copy of the classroom instructor’s lesson plan upon request.

Sounds innocuous enough, so what’s the big deal?

According to teachers unions, transparency and parents' rights bills are nothing less than Armageddon.

“This is the way in which wars start,” American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said last week about parents' rights bills that are making their way through state legislatures around the nation. “This is the way in which hatred starts.”

California state Senator Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore), the author of SB 1045, called out Weingarten at Wednesday’s Committee hearing. Melendez explained that SB 1045 was not meant to be a wedge between parents and teachers, but rather is intended “to bring them even closer together” and promote their partnership in children’s education, which is especially important after the learning loss kids experienced due to school shutdowns during the pandemic.

Senate Education Committee Chair Connie Levya (D-Chino) immediately jumped to the union’s defense, painting parents as — per union talking points  — unhinged.

“I don't know the last time you attended a school board meeting, and I think parent involvement is essential, but someone needs to give some of these parents a lesson on how to be professional,” Levya admonished. 

“Yelling at people, screaming at people, running up and down the aisles, heckling people and students who are speaking,” Levy continued. “I think those are some of the concerns….”

It should come as no surprise that Senator Levya is a longtime union beneficiary. According to CalMatters, Levya “has taken at least $1.8 million from the Labor sector since she was elected to the legislature,” representing 57% of her total campaign contributions. (You can see a detailed breakdown of the union contributions she received in the 2018 election cycle here.)

To summarize: Teachers unions have been abusing parents’ trust by covertly teaching radical and life-altering curricula to their children, and when parents speak up to stop it, the unions are publicly shaming parents as “hysterical” and “overreacting,” and even accuse parents of “imagining things.” 

This is called “gaslighting.” Blaming the victim for their reaction to your abuse, then dismissing their reaction as crazy. 

Levya’s response was also a slap in the face to the long line of parents who called in to oppose SB 1045, who were universally polite and professional throughout the hearing. 

“It’s actually Senator Levya that needs to learn the lesson that the job of our elected officials is first to listen to their constituents,” said Celeste Fiehler, deputy director of CPC’s Parent Union. “Parents will no longer be silenced and dismissed when it comes to our kids.”


The trend is clear: Public-sector union membership is shrinking

Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Janus v. AFSCME held that public-sector unions could no longer force those who did not want to be members to pay union dues. So how many people have opted-out of membership since the landmark decision?

“Answering that question turns out to be harder than one would think,” writes Daniel DiSalvo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and professor of political science at the City College of New York-CUNY, in his article in City Journal this week. “Government does not collect good data on even the simple question of public-union membership.”

In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) fails to differentiate between public and private sector union membership in its annual survey. The BLS report sample size is also small — 25,000 nationally, and just 1,900 in California. In addition, union financial reports filed with the Department of Labor also convolute public and private union membership and, not surprisingly, are questionable in their veracity, showing only “modest declines” in public union membership since Janus.

In 2018, California Policy Center, alongside the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, developed a research method that was far more time intensive — and gave real insight into the growth of public unions. 

CPC’s research team audits union membership records directly from government employers in California’s state agencies, cities, counties and school districts. For the past four years, we gathered payroll data of more than 50% of all public employees in California — that is, about 800,000 employee records per month. 

To repeat: BLS surveys just 1,900 Californians; CPC surveys California government payroll records for more than 800,000 — eliminating the errors associated with small sample size and confused self-reports. 

In our most recent analysis, CPC found that public union membership is down 21% in California, the deepest drop in the nation — and the drops are seen most sharply in places where CPC deploys its multi-front outreach campaign to inform public union members of their rights under Janus. SEIU's membership is down about 29% since 2018.

That means membership in California's government unions is down to the lowest level since 1999. 

Public union membership has likewise seen significant drops nationwide. As DiSalvo explains:

“…We know this thanks to the heroic work of at least four organizations covering some 21 states that have filed thousands of public-records requests to secure this data. The Freedom Foundation has done this work in Washington and Oregon; the California Policy Center in the Golden State; the Mackinac Center in Michigan and some 20 other states; and the Commonwealth Foundation in Pennsylvania. …We should be grateful that these policy organizations have stepped in to promote transparency and secure important data….” 

Jackson Reese, Vice President of California Policy Center, who leads CPC’s Janus project, summarizes how CPC’s work helps Californians this way: 

“For years, California Policy Center has worked to educate public union members on their rights under the Janus decision. It's clear that, as people understand their rights, a significant number decide to keep their money to spend on themselves and their family.”