Credit: EdSource file photo

A lawsuit challenging teacher tenure, seniority and dismissal laws is underway in Los Angeles.

Credit: EdSource file photo

A lawsuit challenging teacher tenure, seniority and dismissal laws is underway in Los Angeles.

The potentially game-changing Vergara v. California lawsuit, which attacks primal aspects of California law on how teachers are evaluated and fired, opened in Los Angeles concluding week and has been accompanied by an aggressive public relations campaign unmatched by the opposing side – the State of California and  its teachers unions.

The campaign seems designed to brand sure that the explosive issues being raised regarding teachers' chore security in California ripple far beyond a cramped courtroom in Los Angeles and help shape public opinion across the state and nation.

Remarkably, this one-sided communications war has been initiated past a unmarried person – Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch, the founder of the nonprofit system Students Affair, which brought the suit – and provides a case study of what impact a single private can have if he has the resource, or admission to them, to have action based on his beliefs.

California Teachers Association President Dean Vogel says his organization, representing more than 300,000 teachers, has no intention of trying to counteract what he described as a campaign funded by the abysmal pockets of the "billionaires boys order."

"The media blitz is no surprise to us," he said. "We expected this kind of barrage. We believe that what people want is not flashy PR but real substantive conversations with teachers that they deal with every twenty-four hours. Our focus is non on the media show, just getting out into the customs and engaging with parents and community stakeholders. When we tell them the truth they volition stand with united states of america."

However, the sophisticated campaign mounted by the communications firm Griffin|Schein is vastly amplifying the voice of Students Matter, founded in 2010 by Welch, who describes himself every bit having "30 years of entrepreneurial leadership in fiber optic communications."

The organization is a relative newcomer to the California education policy landscape. The system has no staff on its payroll, or fifty-fifty its own part. Instead it is run out of its communications firm'south office in Los Angeles. Its sole purpose, equally described on its website, is "sponsoring impact litigation to promote access to quality public didactics.  Welch'south net worth is unknown, although public reports assert that he receives more than $2 million in almanac compensation from the Infinera Corporation, which he founded.

For weeks leading to the opening of the trial on Jan. 27, media outlets take received a stream of emails and announcements about the pending proceedings.

An email sent out on the weekend earlier the trial opened provided possible tweets – complete with scripts, hashtags and Twitter handles – with a half-dozen to draw from. Here's one: Let's get back to basics, starting with a nifty teacher in every classroom! I support @Students_Matter #VergaraTrial

Students Matter called a news conference a few days before the trial opened, and on opening day yet another news conference was held during the lunch intermission with all nine students who are listed in the suit as plaintiffs in the case, forth with Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy who has testified on their behalf.

Students Matter founder David Welch. Credit: Students Matter

Students Matter founder David Welch. Credit: Students Thing

On the morning the trial opened, Students Matter emails sent at 5 a.thousand. by the communications firms landed in media outlets' inboxes.  Before eight a.m. that day a news release appeared on Yahoo News with the headline "California Students Get Their Day in Court: Groundbreaking Teaching Equality Trial Begins Today."

Inside minutes of the trial's opening at 10 a.1000., reporters received an email "live from the courtroom" with a 54-slide PowerPoint outlining the plaintiffs' case, as well every bit a "Trial Tracker" that promised daily highlights and quotes, as well equally footage from the trial. Before half-dozen p.thousand., at the terminate of the solar day, another email boom declared that "California Students Get Their 24-hour interval in Courtroom," with a detailed description of the 24-hour interval'southward proceedings – from the plaintiffs' perspective – opening with quotes from lead co-counsel Ted Boutros' opening statements.

Welch has as well expressed his views in several op-ed pieces – all part of the media campaign – including one that appeared on the trial'south opening day in the Orange County Register.  The communications firm now sends out daily wrap-ups to the news media at the conclusion of each day'due south proceedings.

There has been no meaning communications counter-attack from the Land of California, the defendants in the suit, nor from the California Teachers Clan and the California Federation of Teachers who would exist most straight affected if the plaintiffs were to prevail in the case.   The Los Angeles Times has run reports on each 24-hour interval of the trial during its opening week of what is at present expected to exist a half-dozen-calendar week trial.  Only about media outlets have not comprehend the trial beyond the first day. So for those in the media and elsewhere  interested in getting summaries of the proceedings,  their main source of information may well be the daily bulletins put out by the plaintiffs.

"It doesn't surprise united states of america at all they are pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions, into these kinds of campaigns," the CTA's Vogel said. "They are trying to turn this into a court of public opinion rather than a court of police."

The Griffin|Schein firm has represented a wide range of clients of differing political persuasions, including the opponents of Proffer 8; Sandy Hook Promise, the system founded by parents and other survivors of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre; and the Walmart Foundation. The firm is headed by Felix Schein, a erstwhile journalist and producer for NBC'due south Today show who has an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business organization.

In fact, the organization'south "team," as described on its website, consists of only iii players – Welch, the Griffin|Shein communications firm and the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, including the lead co-counsel on the case, Ted Olson. Olson was solicitor general in the assistants of President George West. Bush-league, but most recently confounded perceptions of where he stands politically with his successful challenge in the U.Southward. Supreme Court of Prop. viii, the initiative banning gay marriage in

Welch founded Students Matter in 2010, apparently with the sole purpose of filing this lawsuit. The organization's initial proper name was The Students First Foundation, but then former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee took that name for her Sacramento-based organization, StudentsFirst. And then the group is now known as Students Matter.

Co-ordinate to the organization's taxation forms, called Class 990s, in 2022 it paid $515,919 to its original constabulary firm of Quinn Emanuel and another $451,058 to Griffin|Schein through a donation and an interest-complimentary loan.

In 2012, its expenses jumped considerably. Two law firms – Quinn Emanuel along with its current law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher – were paid $1,472,270 and Griffin|Schein, $491,758. Those two payments alone amounted to 97 percent of the system's total upkeep. Figures for 2022 are not yet available, but presumably volition be  much higher given the preparation for the lawsuit and the escalating public relations campaign being mounted on its behalf last year.

The Form 990s point that Welch made about $one.v million in interest gratuitous loans to Students Matter in 2022 and 2012, only it is not clear the extent to which other high cyberspace worth individuals take likewise contributed.

The forms also testify prove that the three founding board members were Welch and Silicon Valley venture backer luminaries Ajit Shah and Ted Schlein of the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

A Griffin|Schein staffer provided a listing of of the group'southward advisory board, which he said is now its legal lath likewise, but that could non exist confirmed with the board itself.  The board is headed by Russlynn Ali, the former head of Education Trust-Westward in Oakland and until last yr assistant secretarial assistant for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education.  She is currently chair of the Emerson Education Fund, function of the Emerson Collective established past Laurene Powell Jobs, who was married to the late Steve Jobs.

Too on the board is Ted Mitchell, the president and CEO of the NewSchools Venture Fund, who was nominated past President Barack Obama last fall to be undersecretary of education in the U.S. Department of Educational activity.

Another lath member is Ben Austin, executive manager of Parent Revolution, the arrangement promoting the "parent trigger" laws allowing parents to effect radical changes in their children'south schools, including converting them to charter schools. Maria Casillas, currently the primary of School, Family and Parent/Community Services for the Los Angeles Unified School District, is also on the board, forth with Schlein and Arthur Stone, described in a New York Times commodity equally "1 of the founding fathers of venture upper-case letter."  Rock made information technology onto the embrace of Time as 1 of the instigators of the Silicon Valley dot.com smash two decades ago.

A spokesperson for Students Affair said that although Welch consulted with her, Rhee has never been on the advisory board, opposite to a 2012 commodity in the Los Angeles Times.

The CTA'southward Vogel said he was not surprised that two members of the board – Ali and Mitchell – were or are virtually to be high-level figures in the U.S. Department of Education.   "We are on a different team," he said.  "Our major business is not that they (Students Matter) volition win the public over, our business organization is all the money and fourth dimension and energy that is going to this nonsense instead of to what we know is actually works in our schools," he said."It is a shame that nosotros have to get through this charade rather than stand together and tackle the issues together."

Welch did non reply to requests for an interview, just on the KQED Radio program on Forum final Friday, Ted Boutros, the plaintiffs' co-counsel who has been a prominent effigy in the lawsuit's media campaign,  said Welch "should be commended" for bringing the adapt along with "some of the innovations from Silicon Valley" to the land'southward public school organisation.

"People like David Welch and others who are trying to change the system, and go up against the powerful forces like the unions, are only trying to help students here," he said "That is  what this is about …This is non an attempt to take over the public schools and privatize them."

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