6:30am | One week after the Long Beach Unified School District was championed as a leader in constructing a new application for California schools to apply for federal Race To The Top funding, the Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) has not taken a position for or against the effort, despite recent reports.

President Michael Day says that TALB was not involved in crafting the application and is still conducting a review. He says that even the School Board had not seen the application and recently postponed a vote on the issue because they also had not had time for full review.

“We haven’t really had any involvement in the drafting of the MOU (Memorandum of Understanding), and that gets it off to a bad start on our part,” says Day, who took issue with recent reports from the Los Angeles Times and others that TALB opposed the effort.

“As an organization we haven’t taken any position on the MOU,” he says. “Our Rep Council won’t meet again until August, we have a process and we respect our process but I am a little dismayed that we weren’t involved earlier.”

Last week, Governor Schwarzenegger signed the new Race To The Top application in a Lafeyette Elementary classroom here in Long Beach with State Superintendent Jack O’Connell and other educational leaders. California was denied during the first round of funding, so Schwarzenegger opted to apply the second time with only seven school districts, Long Beach included.  LBUSD Superintendent Chris Steinhauser was a key author of the application and expressed confidence that the effort would be successful, netting the LBUSD an estimated $18-$26 million.

If approved, Race To The Top requires some changes from schools that receive funding, but Steinhauser has said that many of those changes have been in place in Long Beach for years. Other teachers associations across the state have opposed the application because they do not support reform like basing teacher reviews on student testing scores, but the LBUSD has done so for many years.

Day said he can’t point to specific issues that TALB may have with the agreement, other than the process in which it has been handled. He says that he plans to sit down with Steinhauser and others soon to discuss the issue.

“We’re taking issue with who’s making these unilateral decisions without it going before a School Board meeting to see what exactly Long Beach is getting itself into by getting involved in this,” says Day. “We need to sit down with the Superintendent and see exactly what he thinks is in place as opposed to what we see in the MOU.”