Tony Mendoza, a classroom teacher who taught every grade except kindergarten and third, received CFT’s Legislator of the Year Award to wide applause.

 “I went from teaching in a classroom in East Los Angeles to the other classroom in Sacramento,” Mendoza said of his Assembly seat representing the 56th District that straddles Los Angeles and Orange Counties. “And sometimes the Legislature reminds me of a classroom.”

Mendoza said his work as a member and officer of United Teachers Los Angeles let him see firsthand the problems facing education, and he wanted to be “a voice for teachers, classified, and our students.”

California’s current budget crunch, he said, is desperate. “We must protect education from the governor’s budget cuts. We must pay teachers like the professionals they are. We didn’t become teachers to become rich, but I didn’t want to go broke, either.”

Many legislators took big pay cuts to leave behind their previous employment when they came to Sacramento, Mendoza said, “but I was the only one whose pay doubled when I joined the Legislature. There’s something to learn there.”

Mendoza is carrying CFT’s Faculty and College Excellence Act, now embodied in Assembly Concurrent Resolution 91 (formerly AB 1343). The legislation, part of an AFT national campaign for equity, aims to push the community colleges and CSU to have full-time employees be 75 percent of their workforce. It would also increase pay scales and benefits for part-time faculty.

“We need to change the existing situation,” Mendoza said. He criticized the growing reliance on adjunct faculty and said the system “has become dependent on a contingent workforce that is poorly compensated and too often lacks basic supports such as health insurance and paid office hours.”

Mendoza also spoke about two more of his bills. AB 1831 would produce a teacher housing report that could lead to programs that help teachers find affordable housing near their work.

AB 2135 would require the state to develop a stand-alone revision of the Reading/Language Arts framework to serve the needs of English Language Learners. “We’ve got to get away from the one-size-fits-all mentality,” Mendoza said.

Upon accepting the CFT award, he concluded, “I need your help. I will be your champion. This is my first term and my second year. I intend to stay there as long as I can. When I look back, I want to see CFT behind me so I’ll know who I’m working for.”