Textbook Issue May Go To Ballot

The California Teachers Association may be tasting defeat in the Legislature, but now it´s eyeing the ballot. The group´s president says voters may decide whether to expand the union´s collective bargaining to selection of school books. C-T-A President Wayne Johnson says if you can´t do it one way you look at another. But school officials call Johnson´s threat a way to publicly slap around Governor Gray Davis and the Legislature.

A bill to give the teachers union more power to select textbooks died in the Assembly late Thursday.