These Teachers Will Have to Cross Party Lines to Get a Union

Can educators in California’s largest nonunion public school district—in a county that flipped to Trump—upend a 65-year tradition?

by Debbie Truong

January 9, 2025

This article was produced by Capital & Main, an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. It is co-published here with permission.

The schools of Clovis, California, are not an obvious place for a union campaign. Some of that reflects politics: Nearly half of registered voters in this city of more than 120,000 are Republican, while about 30% are Democrats, and its home county, Fresno County, flipped to Trump this fall.

Some of that reflects history: The Clovis Unified School District has been without a teachers union since its inception in 1959, and it is California’s biggest public school system without a teachers union. But since 2021, teachers, psychologists, sign language interpreters and others in this nearly 43,000-student district have been trying to change that.

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Under the name Association of Clovis Educators, or ACE, which is affiliated with the California Teachers Association, teachers and others have pushed for smaller class sizes, better pay and more class prep time. But the real battle, they said, has been to persuade teachers and residents in this conservative community to support a union. (Disclosure: The CTA is a financial contributor to Capital & Main.)

“To mention a union was considered very taboo. It was a four-letter word for sure,” said Kristin Heimerdinger, an ACE vice president and union organizer; and a longtime teacher at the district’s Buchanan High School. “There were people who definitely thought that even mentioning a union was disrespecting the entire district.”

FULL story: https://prospect.org/labor/2025-01-09-teachers-cross-party-lines-get-union/