Billionaires Behind the Attack on Public Education in California Tenure Suit

Sabrina Joy Stevens
June 17, 2014

As outspoken teachers are already finding out, what good are First Amendment rights if you have to choose between exercising them and paying your bills?

Last week, something happened in a Los Angeles courtroom that rocked the education policy world. A judge declared due process rights for teachers—commonly known as "tenure" unconstitutional in the state of California in the case Vergara v. California, so named for one of the several students named as plaintiffs.

Virtually everything about the Vergara trial is misleading, starting with the trial’s name. Though my heart goes out to the students whose district has likely not offered them anything close to the educational resources and opportunities they deserve, this trial has nothing to do with fixing what ails them. Indeed, some of the people bankrolling it, like billionaire Eli Broad, donated millions to a campaign against the Proposition 30 millionaires’ tax that passed as a ballot measure in 2012, and is designed to restore much needed funding to cash-strapped public schools. Then there’s billionaire David Welch.



Vergara v. California really ought to be known as the Welch trial, after the Silicon Valley tycoon whose “lawsuit in search of a district” finally found the one where these students reside, in the City of Los Angeles.