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March 9, 1993 interview with Joan Marie Shelley, president of the United Educators of San Francisco. Time and you know to try to remember because you'd start into one thing and then something else would happen and then something else would happen and you have to remember to

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get back to the 1st 10 things that you had going and it drove me crazy. I guess it still drives me crazy but at least I'm used to it now and you have a way of shutting off other things and I. I, I just hippity hop

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from one thing to another and try to focus on, uh, what I've hippity hopped to at that precise second. A different thing from the, uh, classroom, very different, although that involves a lot of juggling of different balls also and orchestrating, uh, or, or conducting a whole

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rather complex orchestra, but, um. It's a little bit more predictable and manageable, I think, than this is. I mean, there's a little more structure to it than, uh, than there is to this line of work. I first, um, heard you speak at the Jack Olsen. Oh,

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yes, yes. Program. Yeah. And I was so excited because I liked your presentation. You were so cogent. You had a presence. Oh, thank you. And I talked to Lynn and I said, I got somebody for, for us. And she agreed. And then I got your, uh.

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Let me just say I'm honored and flattered to have been, uh, to have been selected to be interviewed. Um, then I received your, uh, A resume and I saw something there and I thought they shouldn't have let her out of the classroom with that sense of

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humor. Under miscellaneous activities, my birth in San Francisco. Well, that seemed to have some significance, but I wasn't quite sure what category that would fit into, but I, I thought that was wonderful. I was interested. How did it begin? When did you decide you wanted to

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be a teacher? Oh, I decided that very early on. I mean, I don't know that I ever consciously decided. I just sort of gravitated into that. However, it wasn't, um, the kind of teaching that I ended up doing that I had originally anticipated. I had wanted

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to be a kindergarten teacher, and I really am not sure at what point in my life that idea. Gelled in my mind, but then, um, at some point along the line in high school I guess I fell in love with French and also with Spanish, but

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that's kind of a, uh, that goes off on a different track but at any rate I, I fell in love with foreign languages and I wanted to be a foreign language teacher and this is talking about being in high school from 1946 to 1950. And in

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those days there was little or no foreign language taught in elementary schools so that I shifted gears somewhere along the line to um thinking about teaching high school rather than elementary and so I then majored in French, wanted to minor in Spanish but got what was

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rather bad advice as it turned out, bad advice in terms of what it was intended to do from an advisor at Stanford who. Um, was an advisor to people who were language majors who were going into education. And I went in to talk with her one

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day and she said, and when I was still an undergraduate and really she dealt with graduate students for the most part, but I just happened to go in because I, you know, wanted her advice and um she said, oh, don't major in one language and minor

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in another, you'll never get a teaching job if all you can teach is foreign language. Well, as it turned out that wasn't true at all. Um, when I was then job hunting, I discovered it would have been much easier to get a job if you could

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teach French, Spanish, German, and Latin in some small high school where there was one all-purpose language teacher. Um, however, in the meantime, I'd already shifted gears and had majored in French and had a teaching minor in, uh, social science. And so I ended up then teaching

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French and social studies, uh, various social studies courses for, um, uh, most of my teaching career. I taught, um, all levels of French and I taught US history and civics, and I say for most of my teaching career because I taught a modicum of English. On

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the theory I guess that if you spoke English you could teach it which was ridiculous and uh I taught a modicum of Spanish on the theory that if you had majored in one romance language clearly you could teach any of them and I had had you

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know a fair amount of Spanish but certainly not enough to to qualify me professionally to be teaching it but. Those were the days, I mean back in the um mid to late 50s when there was much less emphasis on teachers being properly credentialed to teach the

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subject matter that they were assigned to and we had um general secondary credentials and we were um interchangeable parts in the machine from the view of uh school administration in many instances. Fortunately, the law has made that impossible now so that one can expect a degree

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of professional expertise that um one couldn't necessarily expect when I began teaching. So you had to find your way. Well, so you, you know, bit by bit, I mean, I, I, I did everything I could to get more French to teach, which was what I was,

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was, uh, really well equipped to do. Um, that was the reason that after 11 years of teaching at Lincoln. I then transferred to Lowell where I got all French, um, where at Lincoln I had always taught a combination of French and social studies. I went off

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on sabbatical in 1965 and found that the gap in French filled in while I was gone and no one wanted to budge and all the other teachers in the department had more seniority than I did, so they, uh, of course had, I mean they asserted their

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right to stay teaching French. So I came back to find myself um teaching all social studies or almost all social studies I forget and I think it would have been all social studies and that was the point at which I sought more French elsewhere and transferred

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from Lincoln to Lowell and then spent 18 years at Lowell with straight French which um I loved really uh. Yeah, that's right. And, uh, what did you, uh, were your classes small? What was the size of your classes? How did you? Oh, they, they, they ran

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the gamut. I mean, when I first started teaching at Lincoln back in 1955, I had classes that I can remember a Spanish one class of 42 kids, but then I would also have some classes that would be 1718 kids. Um, there were no real class size

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limits at that point. Then somewhere along the line when there was money in the budget and, uh, and we first had a contract, we got a class size limit which meant for academic subjects in high schools the limit was 30. And um we enforced that fairly

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uh fairly rigidly for a number of years. Those limits all became very squishy again when um Money began drying up and as a matter of fact, I mean the district really always disregarded those numbers and they would run in as many kids as as as they

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saw fit. It was only those of us who were kind of militant unionists who would really insist that those limits were limits, they were not goals, and we would simply refuse to take the kids over 30. That, however, was very hard on the teacher because it

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meant, you know, if the kid showed up at your door and wanted to enroll, I mean, you hated to reject that individual human being, and what you really wanted was for the administration to, to control the class sign up procedure in a way that would make

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it impersonal, so it wasn't the individual teacher having to say no to the individual student. At any rate, when numbers started getting squishier again. I was back up, I mean, the last years that I was in the classroom, the very last year when I was at

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Lowell, and this was 1984, I had two classes of 46 kids apiece. Now, once again, in the intervening years, I mean, I had had some classes, as I say, of 17 or 18. I even had an Advanced Placement French literature class at one point that had

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only 11 students in it. But then of course the upshot of that was that the next school year the course was canceled. There was no advanced placement French literature because the school district saw that as too expensive to uh to allow. So it's been a mixed

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bag. I mean through the years I've seen class sizes go up and down and around, um. It currently it's going up again obviously for the for the um the the budgetary reasons that we're all living with. The um we actually in this contract agreed to redefine

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the class size numbers as goals because it's, it's impossible. The only way we could enforce them as numbers as as absolute limits is if they were 50 probably because um. Uh, it just is a very high cost item for the district to try to um Keep

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the numbers down. In the last contract we were very happy that we had managed to get the district to agree for the first time to lower the staffing allocation formula, which is what really controls the numbers. Um, by 0.2 for each year of the contract, which

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was bringing class size down bit by bit. Unfortunately, the current recession hit really in the midst of that contract so that there was no way in the contract that we've just signed a tentative agreement on now, uh, to, to get the continuation of that lowering as

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we had hoped to do. So, that's a battle that rages on and. Now, how does that work? You said lower two, What does that mean, uh, lowering? Well, it's, it, it, it, when I talk about the staffing allocation formula, I'm talking about the, Pupil teacher ratio

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because obviously if you have numbers in the contracts that say that the ideal class size, uh, you know, it's not that it's ideal, but that the, the class size maximum for, uh, French or whatever the subject may be should be 30, but as a matter of

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fact, the school district is staffing schools on a ratio of 33 to 1, 33 students to 1 teacher. You can never achieve. That, uh, goal of 30. So we decided that instead of focusing on the goal, we would focus on the staffing allocation formula and we

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got the district to agree over the 3 years of the last contract to lower that number, uh, bit by bit each year so that that was bringing class size down. They had committed, uh, I think it was the expenditure of a million dollars. During the duration

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of that contract to lower class size, all of that's out the window again as the budget crunch gets worse and worse. I mean this in this round of negotiations, you know, we were faced with some very, very difficult choices. Teachers had not had a salary increase

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last year. They had had only 1.6% the year before that, um. Or vice versa, I guess it was. They had 1.6% last year and nothing the year before that. At any rate, they'd had several years of little or no salary increase. They were feeling the economic

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bind, and we were faced with very hard choices with whatever little bit of money was negotiable. Do you put it into salary or do you put it into class size or do you put it into any of the million other worthy causes that are of interest

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to the people that you represent. What we really did was to put some of it into both. I mean, we agreed to the restoration of 128 teaching positions that would have been eliminated otherwise, which would have, if they'd been eliminated, class size would have gone up

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dramatically. So we agreed to the restoration of those 128 positions and we put 2%. Uh, into salary, uh, a 2% bonus really that doesn't go on the salary schedule permanently because it was short term money that may not continue, uh, that comes out of the sales

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tax increase of, um, which ends on June 30th, so. That, you know, gave us a, a, a defined amount of finite amount of money to play with and uh we, we put some of it into class size, some of it into salary, and I mean that's

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the way it. It always is. I mean, life is full of, of, uh, hard choices, uh. Now you said when you were teaching you were uh uh in the union. Yes, yes. Tell me how did you become a union member when you first began teaching? I

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think it was the first day. I started out at Mission High School. I was there as a matter of fact, only 7 days, uh, 7 school days when their enrollment was down and Lincoln's and Balboa's enrollments were up and so I ended up very early on.

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Uh, being transferred to Lincoln. However, in that brief interlude that I was at, um, at, uh, mission. I was approached, I think the very first day by a couple of union activists who were in that school who recruited me into the uh into the union. There

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was no question in my mind, by the way, that I would join the union because I mean I came from that kind of family with a, you know, father who had been a. A labor leader and uh uh so it it it just and and with

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you know deep convictions about the importance of uh of uh organized labor and uh so I was a very easy sell for the the gentleman who recruited me um I had absolutely no knowledge at that point in time about the fact that there were two rival

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teachers organizations and I Suppose that I would have joined at that point either one, whichever one got to me first because I really didn't know anything about it. As it turned out, the one that I joined is the one that I would have chosen to join

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if even if I had known more about it because it was the one that Was, uh, and still is affiliated with the AFL-CIO and you know, prides itself in its being part of the labor movement whereas the other organization, um, has seen itself historically as a

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professional association with. Nothing, not nothing, but with little in common with the trade union movement. And so if I had understood all that, I certainly would have made the choice to join the, the, the one that was affiliated with the labor movement. Well, it was the

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AFT and I became therefore, um, a member of the San Francisco Federation of Teachers. Um, I could jump way ahead now and say that, you know, although Having to make that choice, I certainly chose the AFT and would choose the AFT, uh, uh, now having to

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make the choice, but I do believe that it is tragic that teachers have to make that choice because what that means is that teachers are divided, that they cannot present the kind of unified front that they need to present. In dealing with the common problems that

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we all face, I mean, particularly as the economy, uh, gets to be more and more troublesome, and one of the things that I am most delighted about is that we managed in San Francisco to put an end to that crazy warfare between rival teacher organizations by

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merging the San Francisco Federation of Teachers, of which I was the president at the time. And the San Francisco Classroom Teachers Association, of which my good friend and colleague Judy Dellamonica was the president at the time in 1989, into um One unified organization which is uh

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the United Educators of San Francisco. So at least we've put an end to the nonsense in San Francisco of spending all of the time, energy, money that both organizations spent historically fighting each other, uh, so that we can concentrate our resources on, on dealing with our

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common problems and I would only wish that, um. That model would be followed around the country. I mean there are, uh, attempts at merger and merger talks and, and a couple of successful mergers, um, but it certainly hasn't spread like wildfire, and I would wish that

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it would because it's, it's just, I think, unconscionable that, um. The two national organizations and two state organizations should be still having at each other when I think it does a great disservice to the people we represent. Now, um, when you first began teaching, can you

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remember some of the problem areas that you were. Working on, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, um. I mean, and, and I didn't become. I didn't play a leadership role in the union until I became a building rep in 1970, so from 1955 to 1970 I

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was, um, simply a union member, um, active within my own school which it was initially Lincoln High School and then Lowell High School, and I attended all the union meetings in each of those schools on the building level. I didn't do much on the overall school

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district level, but I can remember very well. Some of the, it's it's amazing really looking back at some of the issues that we dealt with as the as the union at Lincoln High School, um, at some point we decided that Instead of addressing the kind of

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larger, almost philosophical issues that we needed some small wins that people would identify with, small improvements in people's working conditions that They that they would organize around and that if we could win on those small points it would really be a victory that would lead to

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more organizing success and so I remember that one of the first things we tackled was trying to get Mustard and ketchup in the teacher's cafeteria because you went through the line and you got, you know, not terribly exciting institutional food and there was nothing to jazz

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it up or make it any more palatable and so our first big campaign was to get mustard and ketchup in the teacher's cafeteria and when we were successful in doing that we felt we'd made a great accomplishment and then I can remember taking on um. I

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don't mean individually but as a group taking on the question of trying to get decent furniture in the faculty lounges. There were at Lincoln in those days two places that Uh, teachers would hang out as it were on their preparation periods and their lunchtime. They were

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the, the, there was a, um, 2nd floor ladies' room and a 3rd floor men's room. They were, you know, segregated. They were attached to the restroom facilities, although each of them had a, you know, rather large, uh, potentially pleasant, um, room. And those were the only

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places in the building you could smoke and so all of the smokers gravitated to those, um, rooms and then other people whether or not they smoked and, and I've smoked in those days. I mean this is, you know, long before consciousness was raised on, on that

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subject, so I spent a lot of time in that second floor ladies' room when it I say a lot of time, I mean on my lunchtime or my prep period and uh. The furniture was just abysmal, I mean it was really dreadful, appalling, uh, ugly, uh,

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beaten up stuff that people had brought in instead of throwing out. And so we did this major campaign to get decent furniture for those faculty lounges, and we were successful in doing that and I believe that that then spread to some extent around the school district.

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I mean other schools, uh, saw what we had at uh at Lincoln and wanted to emulate that success and uh. Uh, so, uh, uh, faculty lounges in general got improved furniture. Now that's talking about improved furniture in the late 1950s, much of which is still sitting

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there, by the way, and is not in, uh, in any kind of decent condition at this point, but at any rate. It was things like then I can remember kind of a major, I mean a a a more a more educationally related issue rather than uh

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you know, making our lives a little more comfortable as as employees, um. We went on a major campaign to Halt or or at least diminish the classroom interruptions and the interruptions in the instructional program, which meant, for example, I mean there was at Lincoln then and

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I don't remember any of the details, but there were rallies every time you turned around and kids were always being excused from class for rallies and you had to let them go. You could not, you know, insist on holding the class during the rally and whatnot,

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and so we, we, um, attacked that and managed to get a limit that was somehow reasonable on the number of rallies that there could be in a semester, and that was very helpful. I mean, I think rallies are fine, building spirit is fine, you know, all

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of the that's all fine. But it's a question of which is uh dog and which is tail, and it was getting to the point that the tail of extracurricular activities was wagging the dog of the curriculum of the instructional program, so we, um, really I think

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raised academic standards considerably in a number of ways by by By fending off the constant classroom interruptions, uh, you know, the administrator, uh, walking in any time saying things that would disrupt your class, the, uh, passes being written by other teachers to get kids out of

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your. Class to work on an extracurricular activity that that teacher was the sponsor of. I mean, we really got a lot of um uh order brought into that chaos that was causing classes to be uh really disrupted all the time. And so, I mean, and all

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those were, you know, major gains, and then, of course, I mean, in those early years we got into some larger city-wide issues that I can um Start talking about, I mean, that was a little bit later, but by the 60s, certainly we were into some Um,

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you know, citywide issues, I mean this was in the days before collective bargaining. And so you, what you had was um First you had the Winton Act which provided for I mean it was kind of a foot in the door towards collective bargaining, but what it

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provided for was councils that would meet and confer with the school district, and the councils were made up by proportional representation, so you had the various employee organizations, um, teacher organizations sitting on the certificated employee council. What that meant was that you had a lot of

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Pushing and pulling and tugging and jockeying for position among the the various organizations on that council, um, which kept it from working very effectively but at least it was a step in the direction of some kind of um. Unified representation of employee interests in dealing with

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school district management and now I and I wasn't personally involved in any of that because I wasn't on a leadership level at that point, but I, you know, remember some of the, of the issues that were swirling around, um. I can remember, and I'm not sure

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when this was, I mean I can remember union meetings where the issue was attempts at censorship of textbooks or um books in school libraries, and I really I'm I'm not sure of of the year now, but I can remember. You know, a large meeting where the

00:27:08.520 - 00:27:24.520

focal point was whether or not Soul on Ice could be in the schools, and I can remember, I think probably the first Board of Education meeting I ever attended, and I don't know what the year of that was, was a board meeting when the union put

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out the call for people to come in support of a teacher. The teacher was one of my colleagues at Lincoln High School. She was an English teacher who was under attack because She used classroom sets of Harper's Magazine, which was delivered to the schools in those

00:27:45.530 - 00:28:01.030

days, I think free. I mean, I think, uh, or, uh, maybe the, maybe somebody paid for the class sets. I don't remember, but at any rate there were class sets of Harper's Magazine delivered that were used mainly in English classes, sometimes in social studies classes. She

00:28:01.030 - 00:28:17.390

had assigned to her class and was using as a basis of whatever instructional activity an article in a particular issue of Harper's Magazine. Now I don't remember what the article was that she was using, but I remember very clearly that there was another article in that

00:28:17.390 - 00:28:41.410

same issue of Harper's Magazine. It wasn't the article she assigned, it simply happened to be in that same issue that was about. The inefficacy of laws that attempted to regulate sexual behavior. Now this was in the days, you know, before, um, sexual activities between consenting adults

00:28:41.410 - 00:28:56.440

were legal in the state of California, for example, and so in that article it talked about the absurdity of the law trying to regulate what went on in people's bedrooms and so on and so forth, and that's not the article she assigned to her students. But

00:28:56.440 - 00:29:14.610

because it was in the same issue of the magazine, you had some right-wing fundamentalist type who happened to have a kid in that class who went into orbit over it and was demanding that she, that the teacher be fired for immoral conduct or whatever for exposing

00:29:14.610 - 00:29:29.170

the uh students to this uh shocking article and I, and, and as I say, I believe it was the first. Uh, school board meeting I attended, and this would put it in the years that I was at Lincoln because it was because she was a colleague

00:29:29.170 - 00:29:46.110

of mine at Lincoln, uh, which means it was somewhere from 1955 to 1965 that this issue was swirling around, and so we, uh, turned out for the school board meeting and in support of the teacher under attack. I can remember being appalled by some Idiot on

00:29:46.110 - 00:30:05.310

the school board, uh, sitting there pontificating about how, um, there were things in the, uh, that edition of the magazine that would make a sailor blush, and which, and yeah, even I mean then seemed absolutely preposterous in retrospect it seems all the more preposterous, however, um,

00:30:05.470 - 00:30:26.520

that was, uh, a very big issue at that point, um. She did not lose her job, I am happy to say, and uh Harper's Magazine was still used in the schools. I think it was more carefully controlled somehow by the administration before it um it was

00:30:26.520 - 00:30:47.400

used in the classroom, and I don't remember the details of that, but it was just a, you know, a crazy uh attack on um academic freedom really that um we rallied around. I remember other school board meetings. I remember the school board meeting where this had

00:30:47.400 - 00:31:05.190

less to do with union activity than just an issue going on at the time when the new Lowell was being opened. I was still a teacher at Lincoln at that point and there was a huge issue about whether the new Lowell would be um. A neighborhood

00:31:05.190 - 00:31:22.640

school open to all the kids in the neighborhood with no particular academic requirements for entrance or or whether it would be um an academic high school open to students from all over the city. And of course I viewed that issue at that point through the eyes

00:31:22.640 - 00:31:37.210

of a Lincoln teacher and we felt very, very threatened because I mean Lincoln was academically a very good school. We felt very threatened by seeing Lowell open up in our backyard, um. In terms of geographic proximity.