CA superintendent candidate wins over unions and charter schools

Which of these is least likely?

Are Kendrick Lamar and Drake putting out their feud?

Giants fans and Dodgers fans sharing a high five?

Or California charter schools endorsing the same superintendent candidate as the state’s largest teachers union?

If you remember the 2018 election, you probably voted for the flying pig scenario of the California Charter School Association and California Teachers Association getting on the same page in an election year. Then the advocates of both sides scattered tens of millions of dollars in the race between union-backed Tony Thurmond and charter school-backed Marshall Tuck. Thurmond stepped forward.

But this year, both associations are rallying behind candidate Richard Barrera: four months after the teachers’ union announced his approval of the president of the San Diego Unified School Board, the charter school association said this week also supports Barrera — a move Barrera told me “came a bit of a surprise.”

He pointed to two attributes of San Diego schools that could explain how the usually competing groups came to support his candidacy. First, unlike other regionsthe politics surrounding San Diego school board races or other education issues typically don’t pit charters against unions. In fact, the percentage of students attending charters increased while he was on the board.

And second, the school board includes charters when allocating money to improve school facilities. That experience working with local facilities bonds created “a unique relationship between charter and public schools that CCSA told me doesn’t exist in most places,” Barrera said.

In a statement, Gregory McGinity, executive director of the charter association’s lobbying arm, said Barrera “has shown that supporting educators and supporting high-quality public charter schools are not mutually exclusive.”

But don’t expect the two groups’ support for Barrera to mean they’ll agree with each other in the future. CTA President David Goldberg told me that while the union didn’t approve of Barrera building a coalition with charters, he also didn’t find the charter association’s support for Barrera “shocking.”

• Goldberg: “Sometimes even people who don’t see things the same way … we still want someone who is very capable of running this department. It benefits all students.”