A little bit of pretty good news

I missed this the other day. The National Labor Relations Board ruled that the charter companies operating Lusher and the International School have to recognize recently formed unions. The little dance these private employers do didn't fool anyone this time.

Charter schools are neither fish nor fowl, publicly funded but run by independent nonprofits. The National Labor Relations Board treats them as private employers, which under federal law must bargain with unionized workers. Elected Louisiana school boards don't.

Both schools argued that they should be considered public agencies. International High said it was subject to the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education; Lusher says it operates only with the approval of the Orleans Parish School Board.

Moreover, the labor board should treat Lusher as a public school because "the State of Louisiana has specifically called for the creation of charter schools as an integral part of its overall public education system," the school's lawyers wrote. That's especially true locally: "Without charter schools, there simply would be no public education in the City of New Orleans."

Um... "without charter schools," there would be a public school system with an elected board and a union contract. That's what we had before the charter school "experiment" took advantage of the Katrina emergency to fire all of the teachers working under that structure.  Basically the charter operators want us to consider them public or private depending on whatever makes it harder for people to organize. They didn't get away with this. Now, once Trump shakes up NLRB, this might be a different story. But we aren't there yet.