Lawsuit: Layoffs hurt minority kids
Regulations for teacher layoffs are a prime example of how interests of adults are put ahead of those of children, especially minority children. Now, that system, along with state budget cuts that set it in motion, will face a court challenge.
In a case with statewide implications, the ACLU of Southern California and other public interest and pro bono attorneys are suing the state and Los Angeles Unified, charging that teacher layoffs have savaged three low-performing, low-income middle schools. All three have been thrown into turmoil since between half and nearly three quarters of their teachers got layoff notices last year. Most eventually did lose their jobs because of rules that dictate that less experienced teachers must be the first to go, regardless of how good they are with students and how well they fit in the school.
The suit, filed Wednesday in Superior Court in Los Angeles, comes less than three weeks before school districts must formally notify teachers that they may be laid off next year. With Los Angeles Unified facing a $640 million deficit, thousands of teachers are expected to get layoff notices, including yet again, many remaining teachers at the three schools named in the lawsuit. The ACLU’s next likely step is to seek an injunction preventing disproportionate numbers of teachers from those schools from being let go. After that, it’s unclear what the ACLU and Public Counsel, its partner in the suit, want to have happen.
The suit challenges the adequacy of state school funding, but it also argues that the latest budget cuts are discriminatory, disproportionately harming children in low-income schools. On that point, there should be little dispute.
The plaintiffs in the case are Hispanic and African-American middle school students in Los Angeles, but they could as easily have been from poor schools in other urban districts. The problems detailed in the suit are widespread – and devastating.
School improvements reversed
Both the Samuel Gompers and the Edwin Markham middle schools have been in school improvement status, designating a chronically failing school, for a dozen years. But both went through recent efforts, as part of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, to improve. According to the suit, the district recruited young, energetic teachers who wanted to be in those schools and spent between $200,000 and $250,000 at each school training them. (Marshall Tuck, chief executive for the Partnership, told the Los Angeles Times that the organization supported the lawsuit.) The third school, John Liechty Middle School, opened only three years ago, as the first new middle school in a poor area in 20 years. It was set up with small learning communities.
The layoffs were like a tornado, wiping out school leaders and talented teachers. At Liechty, an entire small school staff of 13 teachers is gone. Several dozen dedicated teachers returned to the three schools as substitute teachers, with a loss of pay and benefits, but now those will be first in line in the next round of layoffs. Mostly, though, the schools had trouble replacing those laid off and turned to inexperienced substitutes. The suit charges that the district compounded the difficulty of hiring replacement teachers because of larger classes and fewer resources at the schools.
By turning to substitutes, students were victimized twice, because, under state law, a sub without a credential to teach the subject can remain in the classroom only for 30 days. Some students have had nine and ten subs in one class. The suit claims that several subs gave every student C’s because they didn’t know enough about the subjects to grade tests.
“In my history class this year I had so many different teachers that it was a blur,” said Markham eighth grader Sharail Reed, one of the plaintiffs, in a statement. “They would write their names on the board and the next day the name would be erased because the teacher would be gone.”
Struggling schools need stability, resources and a corps of teachers committed to working in a challenging environment. “It is virtually impossible to implement school reforms with a revolving door of teachers and administrators,” the suit says, quoting UCLA Education Professor Gary Orfield. Reduction in force rules have created obstacles that schools in middle-income neighborhoods don’t face – and that parents wouldn’t put up with.
If school districts have the discretion to protect low-performing schools from the consequences of seniority rules, they should use it. If not – and the Legislature won’t act – then let judges step in to protect vulnerable students.
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What flavor Kool-Aid are you drinking today?
This lawsuit is absurd unless it also names UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles) and the CTA (California Teachers Association) as co-defendants. The problem is not the set of anecdotes that relate to the specifics of the “three affected middle schools;” it is the teachers’ contract itself.
Try and find any middle schools in LAUSD that have very different demographics from the affected schools; these three schools are among the 32 “rank 1″ middle schools among the 100 middle schools in LAUSD with a similar score API ranking.
Until the standard teachers’ contract contains provisions that allow a district to maintain equal budgets across schools (viz. assure that the amounts spent on teachers are equal across schools), this problem of disparate impacts will continue to occur.
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In reading the article I did not discover why these schools had to rely on substitutes more than the other schools in the district. If the plan was to rely on substitute teachers, I sure hope the district loses the case.
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Somewhat ironic are the assertions that these schools should: 1) have the right to keep new, and lower paid teachers, who are “young and energetic;” and, 2) be able to have more senior teachers who will maintain salary parity with other schools.
I guess it’s not ironic as much as a case of cognitive double-think. Holding two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.
School districts are bound, not by the teachers’ contract, but by state law to use a seniority system in layoffs. Though seniority is not set in concrete and other factors, like qualifications and programs, can come into play. Being young and energetic is great if the energy is directed appropriately. The knowledge to do that comes with age and experience.
The law is set this way because, as unbelieveable as it seems, school districts did not always proceed with layoffs in an objective fashion. Friends, family, whoever, were often given job rights over the most qualified teachers. Another unbelievable fact is: Note-newer, younger teachers come at lower cost to the district.
With the lavish pay and benifits that teachers receive it might not seem logical that having an objective process like seniority in place for layoffs would not have that big an impact on people choosing teaching as a career, but you know how illogical teachers can be.
Teachers do tend to leave at-risk schools situated in at-risk communities when given the opportunity. Not all teachers, but some. When surveyed the teachers say it is not the children that cause them to leave but: lack of resources; poor management; and, to work at a school closer to their home. There might be some thought put to those issues rather than the ritual bashing of the unions and the contract.
It is management, lack of resources (that is, frustration with trying to do a job without resources in overcrowded classrooms) that are cited when teacher leave the profession. Which is about what half of them do in the first five years. This points out that CA has a problem keeping teachers and not, as commonly asserted, getting rid of teachers.
Someone might want to look at those things instead of bashing the unions and schools too.
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The problem is not that the school district is targeting those schools the problem is that the state has cut funding to a level where districts have barely enough money to operate, and suing them is only going to make it worse. Districts received 85 cents on the dollar last year (they were “officially” told DURING the school year) and then another 5 cents on the dollar cut for the 2009-10 school year to 80 cents on the dollar. Try taking a retroactive 20% pay cut and see how it affects your personal finances. In addition to the cuts the state has also delayed paying the districts large sums of their general operating money and are threatening to delay more payments. (That is like your employer telling you that you still make the same salary but they will pay you in a couple of months for this month and that months salary will be delayed until next year.) Despite all of the cuts and funding delays districts are still expected to educate students and pay their employees on time. Unfortunately regulations that were made to protect people from favortism are now working against the pupils in lower income neighborhoods. The more experienced and higher paid teachers generally want to teach at the schools in the better neighborhoods so they tend to flock to those schools leaving the less experienced teachers at the lower performing schools. When layoffs happen they affect the lower performing schools more because the teachers with the least seniority are laid off. The only remedy is the allowance of involuntary transfers by the school district. Of course this will affect employee morale and in turn the education of the students. There is no way to truly “equalize” the amount spent on teachers between schools because different schools need teachers in different specific grades or subjects. One school may need more English teachers and another Math. One school may need 4th grade teachers and another 3rd grade teachers. Teachers, students and non-teaching employees (just as necessary as teachers) are all real people, they are not the “they” that does things. This whole mess has been building in Sacramento for years. By the time everyone not directly working with school finances hears about the layoffs and cuts it is too late, the decision has been made by our legislators beforehand. The way we fund our schools needs to be changed. The funding source schools depend on is not stable and fluctuates too much to allow real educational improvement. In addition to fluctuations there are restrictions on funding that many times do not allow for the most efficient and effective use (difference between charter schools and regular schools). This subject is very complicated and unfortunately a lot of times only one side of the story is put on the news. I have not even touched on unions and contracts and some unions willingness to cooperate and some unions unwillingness to cooperate. The bottom line that districts have been cut drastically and are now forced to make decisions that hurt the students and students are the whole point.
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