In the summer of 2023, frustrated in their demand for a pay hike, Orange, California, teacher union activists settled on a diabolically admirable political strategy: they would target for removal two of the board’s fiscal conservatives and replace them with union-friendly candidates.
But the union’s attack campaign during the March 2024 recall wouldn’t feature any dull talk of the district’s financial challenges or anything so mundane as a pay increase for teachers.
Instead, Orange Unified Educators Association president Greg Goodlander built the union’s recall campaign around a single, dramatic charge: “MAGA extremists” had taken over the board. As evidence, Goodlander and the union’s replacement candidates cited the board’s adoption of a policy that would require parent authorization before teachers and other school employees engage in gender transitioning children in the district’s K-12 schools.
If you’ve ever seen a pickpocket work, you know what happened next. Distracted by the union’s call for “tolerance,” “equity” and “inclusion,” Orange voters removed the board’s offending conservatives and replaced them with two union-backed trustees.
One of those, Ana Page, was quickly promoted to board president. Suddenly more sympathetic to the union’s demands, the newly reconfigured board swiftly approved the union’s demand for a 10 percent pay hike
In the past few months, just as predicted, that pay hike has blown holes in the district’s finances. Internal documents show that district officials knew at least by September that they’d screwed up.
“It appears that the adopted budget in June did not fully account for the ongoing costs of the raises,” assistant superintendent Sulema Holguin told the board. “In other words, it appears that we are deficit spending – spending more money than we are receiving.”
Since then, it’s been nothing but chaos. The superintendent has resigned. Remaining officials are working with more energy than Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to cut costs – cuts that are coming fast, including teacher layoffs, school closures, the fire sale of school property. Money intended to renovate classrooms has been redeployed to cover payroll. Now there’s talk of a tax hike.
But lost in the district’s frantic slash-and-burn effort is this fascinating revelation: at the heart of the scandal is a story of sex – and money – between teacher union president Goodlander and Page, his union’s handpicked candidate during the March recall.
That news emerged quietly in December, two days after the Southern California News Group (which includes this newspaper) detailed the connection between the teacher union’s recall and the district’s cratering finances.
On December 18, government documents show, Goodlander filed for divorce. Two weeks later, the union he ran announced that Goodlander had “made the decision to step down as president of OUEA to focus on his family.” Days after that, Page made it official: she and Goodlander were apparently doing to one another what they had done to the school district.
“I have recently started a profound relationship with Greg Goodlander, and I want to assure everyone that there is no conflict of interest or political involvement,” Page posted on Instagram. “What truly matters to us is our family, friends, and the values we both hold dear. The kids and I are happy to welcome him into our lives.” She concluded with a request “for privacy, understanding, and respect as we move forward with positivity and gratitude.”
There’s no question that Goodlander, architect of the March 2024 recall, and Page, his union’s successful candidate in that campaign, worked together long before last year’s lethal pay hike. But the recent revelations raise questions about the nature of Goodlander and Page’s relationship during the negotiations that led to the pay increase.
School district officials are saying nothing. In response to a Public Records Act request for documents about the Page-Goodlander relationship, the district said it had “determined that no responsive records exist related to your request.” The district has not responded to a separate request for an investigation into conflict-of-interest allegations – specifically whether Page, in her capacity as board president, worked with Goodlander to engineer the pay hike during negotiations.
Discerning something rotten in the district’s response, California Justice Center attorney Julie Hamill has filed a demand that the district preserve all records that might illuminate a possible conflict of interest during the district’s negotiation over the teacher pay hike. (Full disclosure: Hamill represents the California Policy Center where I serve as president.)
“In light of the ‘profound’ relationship between Board President Ana Page and recently-resigned Union President Greg Goodlander, there are serious concerns regarding Brown Act violations arising from communications of confidential information obtained by Ms. Page in closed session to Mr. Goodlander, as well as concerns regarding a potential conflict of interest in connection with Ms. Page’s June 13, 2024 vote on the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between OUSD and OUEA,” Hamill wrote in a March 14 email to the district.
“Government Code Section 1090 prohibits an officer, employee, or agency from participating in making government contracts in which the official or employee within the agency has a financial interest,” Hamill wrote. “If Ms. Page and Mr. Goodlander were in a romantic relationship at the time the CBA was negotiated and approved, there is significant likelihood that confidential closed session material was revealed to Mr. Goodlander, and Ms. Page should have recused herself from voting to approve the CBA.
The chaos inside Orange Unified is important to Californians everywhere, and not merely because Orange Unified ranks No. 21 among the state’s 937 school districts. It’s also the laboratory for a union strategy that teachers unions will use all over the state.
Video obtained by California Policy Center shows that the recall campaign was coordinated with the union’s state parent organization, the California Teacher Association. Their aim: to beta-test in Orange a strategy to take over school boards everywhere.
Speaking to state union leaders on a video call nearly a year before the March 2024 recall, OUEA executive director Roger Urroz Jr., one of Goodlander’s subordinates, said he had “already been in contact with the higher-ups at CTA. The officers are aware of what’s going on in Orange. They are very concerned.”
In the same conversation, Urroz makes it clear that state union leaders saw the Orange school board takeover as a kind of test. “They’re seeing it as ‘Orange is the pilot,’ if you will: if [we] can succeed here in Orange then they know they can go to other districts and do the same thing.”
As much as Orange’s teacher union attempted to camouflage the recall as a grassroots effort, it’s clear that union money was paramount – including money from CTA’s political action committee, Association for Better Citizenship, or ABC.
“We are already working on trying to get ABC money through CTA to come to OUEA,” Urroz told the union activists. “And then we will turn around, if you will, provide that to the recall group. So, we’re working on that. CTA management or leadership is aware. They are concerned and they are working with me to bring in resources and support.”
Even as the union alleged that “outside money” had elected “extremists,” CTA later itself confirmed that it directed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the district from union locals all over the state. In a June proclamation, CTA characterized the Orange recall as a triumph of community activism – while more quietly underscoring the critical role of other teacher union locals in bankrolling the campaigns of the union-friendly candidates who replaced conservatives Madison Miner and Rick Ledesma.
The Orange union “received donations from other local CTA chapters to stop the extremist takeover of schools, including Westminster, Anaheim, Saddleback, Tustin, La Habra, Buena Park and Capistrano . . . they and coalition volunteers helped gather signatures, canvass, write postcards and make phone calls,” CTA bragged. “The recall, on the 2024 March Primary Election ballot, was successful. As a result, OUEA members are more politically aware and active than ever before, and OUEA recently joined the Orange County Labor Federation.”
Politically aware and active, indeed. But hardly financially literate. Following the successful recall, union supporters cheered their own political sophistication – and the wisdom of the public that followed them. But with the district’s financial dashboard now flashing red, their comments in the immediate aftermath of the recall now sound ironic.
Will Swaim is president of the California Policy Center and co-host with David Bahnsen of National Review’s “Radio Free California” podcast.