Faster firings in ‘egregious’ cases
No changes in law for unsatisfactory performance
Kathy Baron provided reporting from Sacramento for this post.
The Senate Education Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to make it quicker and cheaper to suspend and fire teachers facing a narrow range of “egregious” misconduct charges that include sex, drugs, and violence. In doing so, they disregarded calls from the mayor of Los Angeles and superintendents of Fresno and Los Angeles Unified to go further, by also making it easier to dismiss incompetent teachers.
“It matters that this state put a stake in the ground” on the issue, said Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy, in supporting SB 1059, sponsored by Senate minority leader Bob Huff of Diamond Bar, giving school boards the final say over all dismissals. Deasy and Fresno Unified Superintendent Michael Hanson called for eliminating the Commission on Professional Competence – a three-member appeals board that contains two teachers – which they said adds an expensive and unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle to firing teachers who behave badly and perform poorly. The Commission would be replaced with an administrative law judge, giving only advisory opinions to the local school board.
But Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who chairs the Education Committee, said it was “premature” to change the piece of the dismissal law dealing with unsatisfactory performance, because the Legislature has yet to create a teacher evaluation bill that defines satisfactory performance, with support systems to help teachers meet that standard.
Instead, Lowenthal and other members backed a more restrictive bill, SB 1530, by Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles. It too would replace the appeals board with an administrative judge, but only in those cases involving sexual misconduct, drugs, and violence by teachers against children. (Huff, in a comparison of the two bills, claims that Padilla’s would prevent dealing expeditiously with some recent incidents of abuse: using racial epithets, locking children in a closet and taping a child’s mouth shut for talking too much).
Padilla’s and Huff’s bills were partly a response to community outrage following criminal charges of sexual abuse against students by three former teachers at Miramonte Elementary in Los Angeles Unified. In two of the cases, the district failed to document and follow up on earlier investigations of suspected illegal acts.
Padilla’s bill would make it easier to suspend a teacher facing “serious and egregious” charges without pay; it would remove the ban in current law against filing dismissal charges during the summer, and it would remove the current prohibition on using evidence of similar violations that’s more than four years old against a teacher. In the Miramonte case of the worst alleged molester, the district paid Mark Berndt $40,000, including legal fees, to get him to drop the appeal of his firing. Berndt is facing 23 counts of lewd acts against children ages 7 to 10.
Saying that the average teacher dismissal case (not just for alleged misconduct) costs Los Angeles Unified $300,000, Deasy called Padilla’s bill “about-time legislation” to enable the district to deal quickly with teachers “who violate sacred trust.”
Los Angeles Unified board member Nury Martinez said the bill would fix an “antiquated” part of the education code that “ties our hands when we need to reassure parents with decisive action.”
“This is about extreme cases where a trusted employee has engaged in unspeakable behavior involving a child and we have to act,” she said.
The California Teachers Association and other unions, however, denied that any changes in law were needed, called both the Huff and Padilla bills assaults on teachers’ rights and little more than grandstanding.
“There are already very clear, very strict guidelines in the education code that give districts immediate authority to protect students and ensure that teachers who engage in that kind of serious sexual misconduct or immoral conduct are immediately removed from the classroom,” said CTA lobbyist Patricia Rucker.
But the Stull Act, which Gov. Ronald Reagan signed in 1971, also protects teachers with due process rights that should not be taken lightly, she said. What’s more, Rucker said the Padilla bill could backfire. Before the Stull Act created an objective commission, peer reviews would sustain slightly more than one third of dismissal decisions by school boards, she said. Since then, with the weight of the commission behind dismissals, Superior Courts uphold seven out of nine firings, she said.
Hanson and Deasy, however, indicated that those statistics are misleading, because most cases involving misconduct charges fall by the wayside – and not for lack of merit. Deasy said that since 2003, 667 cases involving charges of serious misconduct were brought forward in California; of those only 129 went to a hearing, with 82 resulting in dismissal. “This does not pass a reasonable smell test.”
Assault on due process
Ken Tray, political director of United Educators of San Francisco and a spokesman for the California Federation of Teachers, called SB 1530 “an attack on educators of California.”
“Sometimes politicians have to stand up for what is truthful, what is right, and what is good. Teachers are under attack,” Tray said. “And one of the ways to defend the people, the over overwhelming number of my colleagues who are the most highly moral and conscientious of California’s public servants is to defend their due process, so that justice is served.”
Padilla disputed that the bill would deny teachers due process. They could still request a hearing by an independent arbiter and present their own defense with an attorney and witnesses and the right of disclosure. It would not make teachers “at-will employees,” as the unions claimed. Teachers would retain their right to appeal decisions in Superior Court.
The bill is needed, he said, because appeals can be lengthy and onerous.
Hours after the Senate Education Committee acted, members of the Assembly Education Committee were even less included to change the current law. They stripped a parallel version of the Huff bill, AB 2028, sponsored Republican Steve Knight of the Antelope Valley, of all but two provisions. As amended, it would remove the four-year limitation for using evidence of prior allegations, and it allow the dismissal process to begin during summer.
That didn’t discourage Knight from proclaiming victory in a press release. “Parents and students across the state are cheering today’s bipartisan vote to enact these important reforms to protect our kids from classroom predators,” he said. “This is just the first of many steps that must be taken to enact these much-needed reforms and prevent a Miramonte-like tragedy from ever happening again.”
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“The California Teachers Association and other unions, however, denied that any changes in law were needed, called both the Huff and Padilla bills assaults on teachers’ rights and little more than grandstanding.”
That’s right, California has the best Teacher’s on the Planet…..We HAVE to protect their “Rights”
The reason why Education in California has been slipping for decades, to the very bottom is because of Unionized Teacher’s “Rights”, Tenure being the first and foremost. So we keep the worst, fire the best and brightest, and then ask for more “Rights”. Looking on the big picture, time on the job is no predictor of a competent, motivated and engaged Teacher
Teach Professionally or get fired. I’m OK with that and the Public should demand it.
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JIMH, I agree with all you posted. It seems it boils down to last hired and first fired which seems to eliminate the best teachers while the tenured teachers have no real incentive to achieve results with the students entrusted to them. Why not eliminate the ” unnecessary bureaucratic hurdle to firing teachers who behave badly and perform poorly.” I agree with this as well.
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As a teacher who was falsely accused of pushing a student, even when the student said I was a good teacher, and didn’t mean to touch her I strongly disagree with Bobc and JimH. Even when it cost the district $300,000 at least, The Superintendent has tried this tactic at least four times in our district alone. My investigations lead me to conclude that she tried it at least ten times in other districts in ten years. An entire business of District law firms have deloped gimmicks and tactics to prevent any real due progress. Without any rescrictions, can just imagine how this law will be abused. With such a low regard for teachers, who will want to go into the profession!
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One of the things we need to do is to ensure that we have good superintendents (and good school boards) to go with our excellent teachers. Certainly over the years there have been bad administrators, but just as we don’t want to tie the hands of great teachers because of the perceived actions of a few bad ones, we shouldn’t tie the hands of excellent administrators because of a few bad ones.
If all of a school board and superintendent are unjustly conspiring against a good teacher, honestly that’s evidence that they need to be removed for the sake of all the teachers and students in that system. They need to be accountable for those decisions.
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Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty” and the responsibility to prove “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?”
It’s very commonly done among administrators, and in the private sector in business, that an employee suspected or charged is put on leave until after the court proceedings have determined guilt or innocence. Why do people rush to judgment that it’s the bad teachers that must be fired without due process? How hard is it to fire an administrator? How easy would it be for administrators to fire teachers who have “bad attitudes” or who are falsely charged or who are, heaven help us, teaching students to think for themselves, and do we really want to give them that power?
Instead of looking at the extreme cases, like those cited here, we should look at the data on the bulk of cases. It’s impossible to legislate protection against really crazy, sick, perverted people because they are so far beyond the norm; there will always be exceptions and exceptional cases. It’s like, your chances of being eaten by a shark are extremely low, even if you swim in the ocean daily, but it does happen, and yet we don’t try to kill all the sharks. We need to make reasoned decisions based on facts, data, evidence, and reasonable expectations. Sure, evaluate and then train, promote, or fire people for incompetence and illegal acts. But that definition of incompetence had better be clearly and specifically defined, and evidence and documentation of that should be required. “In two of the cases, the district failed to document and follow up on earlier investigations of suspected illegal acts.” It’s a fundamental violation of human and civil rights to fire someone solely on suspicion or charge.
Lastly, it’s a well known fact that many right wing organizations encourage and train, and even pay, for people to blog and to comment frequently and regularly, on right wing issues. A lie repeated often enough starts to sound like the truth.
I think that most people still have respect for teachers. I think that most people don’t share the rabid anti-union hatred that you see and hear on forums. And I think that many of those who really do hold those opinions would be unpleasantly surprised at the kind of schools, and the kind of society as a whole, that would result if they really got what they say they want.
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I think you are talking about two different elements of teacher discipline but rest assure LAUSD won’t bother with such distinctions. Teachers being laid off now includes teachers with seniority , who are, by and large the targets for attack. The propaganda has an intelligent person like yourself parroting generalizations that defy logic and perpetuate an ugly stereotype . These exist because there is some truth to them , something I saw before these switch hunts began a few years ago. Teachers who were complacent , corpulent and contract quoting shrews turned me off. They complained constantly, insistd on schedules that put rookies in stressful preps with too many students to do any justice. It was sink or swim the first two years, and sink most would have if not for the sage senior teachers who stepped in to support them. So senior teachers , like all teachers , like all groups of people is composed of heroes and hazards.
The bill is more concerned about misconduct and believe me , it has merit and as Deasy says, it is long overdue. My issue with this measure is that it singles out Teachers for discipline when the reality is administrators, school officials and board members have no oversight , no accountability and rarely face any consequences for felonious behaviors that have deprived our children of an adequate education and protected perverts who prey upon them with unconscionable purpose.
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Gina, you are asking the right questions, remember a few years ago there was a fairly big story about an AP in south LA who was arrested after waving a gun at a parent? The father had confronted the administrator, Steve Rooney, because he was cavorting with his teenage daughter , a student at the high school where he worked. I believe it was Jordon or Freemont, both troubled, overcrowded campuses where students are consistently compromised by poverty, discrimination and injustice, LAUSD is in large part responsible for according to Feds, education experts and the public at large,
Somehow the gun and statutory rape charges against Rooney landed him a promotion, which is not really unusual because in the perverse universe of educRAT$ , protecting pedophiles, predators and principals at all costs is an unseemly priority that makes them all too complicit in crimes like those committed by Mr. Rooney.
The news items are no longer fresh in my mind and it’s easy enough to google and check this out, as we all should (I have learned the hard way) , but the director if the local district Rooney was assigned to, was made aware of charges against Rooney. I do not believe the sexual abuse of the student was part of the charges but the. Implication was clear. Had this happened in an affluent white area, can you imagine the media frenzy? Rooney was probably housed briefly after being quietly removed from the school where he had this relationship with a sixteen year old girl who police and school officials clearly didn’t see as a victim. She refused to speak against him.
At an middle school in the same stretch of a desolate demographic that Deasy’s cohort billionaire Eli Broad established when white flight in LA led to what is essentially self-imposed segregation that LAUSD has facilitated ever since, Rooney was on campus one Saturday morning as ESL classes were in session. He was probably assigned this day , which reflects the terrible lack of foresight his supervisor had. A 12 year old girl with limited English was on her way home when Rooney, who she naturally trusted as a principal at her school, offered her a ride home.
He didn’t take her home. He took her to his trendy condo in LA, he had his way with her. That evening he dumped her off near the school and she walked home I am sure he believed shed never tell a soul and wonder how many never have. He may have reasoned if she did, it wasn’t an issue, as she was probably “illegal” and her parents would never risk deportation by reporting what he did. Rooney was wrong. Police arrested him, at some point while he was at Freemont, where he was a well known bully teachers feared. As officers out him the car, students spotted the gun he often carried on campus. From accounts of witnesses in LAT, which did one of its final exposes of any merit on the Rooney debacle, this man was a dangerous psychopath. He was protected because he was an administrator. The director whom arranged his transfer, failed to report to report his credential to CTC (protocol for pervs @ Lausd) and ultimately enabled the AP’s escalating crime spree was also arrested , indicted and sent to prison with Rooney.
This should have awakened citizens in light of an infamous pedophile who was repeatedly transferred until he landed in a small harbor area hood, and it just so happened students and I were doing research of Megan ’s Law. I stumbled upon a blurb about the teacher accosted of fondling little girls in much better neighborhoods . He’d been demoted four times , and was working just a few blocks away from the HS where I taught. it was almost the last bell, I looked up to see students tracking sex offenders who lived on their blocks. It was scary how many we’re so close, but not as scary as one sitting in class with your little sister. Perhaps it was imprudent, impulsive and stupid, but back then we had the best principal and a great school. I could not not say anything.
I gave students the link, and saw them tense up before my class erupted with urgent concerns and righteous anger. Tell your parents, I instructed these kids, some who cried out, oh man, my sister is in that class.,tell everyone , I said as they rushed to the door before the bell rang. I pretended to be detracted by my attendance roster so they could flee home. The following morning as I watched the news, parents were pushing bay strollers to the steps of he ES and speaking angry Spanish as the principal peered at them behind a gate.
That teacher was not coming back, and he was lucky he was warned they were waiting for him. You’d think Lausd would have fired him then or transferred him to a book room or pencil pusher’s cubicle far away children. Instead he was made a sub, which gave him even less oversight and more opportunity to molest little kids. The teacher finally went too far and was arrested. A few years later Ramón Cortines would refer to his case in the notorious Lemon Dance pieces about rubber roomed teachers who are impossible to fire thanks to UTLA , which is a sordid mess, but has little to do with the pampered pervert cases. Read over the recent rash of sex scandal cases . You’ll notice the union is conspicuously absent.
Sources; LAT: Passing Failure, LAW ; Dance of the Lemons and various blogs, Perdaily.com, KPPC, The Broad Report, Noam Chomsky: the war against public education, Battling Corruption in America’s Public Schools by Lydia Siegel, Breaking the Silence by Joseph& Jo Blasé , Stop White Chalk Crime by Karen Horwitz, the scholarship of Lois Wiener, Diane Ravitch, ,K.. Carr, the Bartleby Project, Huffington Post, Washington Post , NY Times, Mother Jones, Scholastic Administrator Rubber Room Reporter, interviews with parents, students, housed teachers,, CA Education Codes, CBA circa 2011, CBS, NBC news, Fox and utla/Lausd.net
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One final thing. In less than 10 years Lausd administration has grown 26% while teachers are been fired , laid off and working harder than ever to pick up the slack while earning less money than they were four years go. We are seeing savages slashing to arts, music, preschool programs, magnate schools, academic decathlons and programs that serve the community’s needs . Indeed, Deasy has really tried to extort this city with an unreasonable parcel tax by letting adult Ed hang in the balance. Yet for all the budget woes we have seen little sacrifice from the suits. Deasy is pinching Title 1 to facilitate tests that require instructional teams , which are totally overpaid, underworked and as excessive and unnecessary as yet another standardized hoop to jump through. Moreover, the hypocrisy may be well hidden but there are numerous administrators assigned sham titles and paid full salary and benefits to sit all day . Unlike teachers who may languish years, especially when innocent and vigorously defending themselves because UTLA won’t, these principals, officials and so on do not face dismissal or have hearings before the board unless they are being targeted for obliteration like Dr. Frank Wells who dared to take the side of students at Locke HS. No children needed an advocate more than they did, but Wells’ dedication was punished harshly and still rankles the folks in staff relations. I imagine the cost for keeping and caring for tarnished EducRat$ is substantial, especially when one considers their crimes, which included embezzlement, kick backs, criminal indifference, harassment, fraud, child endangerment, noncompliance, nepotism,and lots of moral turpitude — which is probably defined much differently in their camp than teachers’; then there’s also all those legal costs.
As Mr Deasy announces the latest effort to raise money for a budget shortfall that seems incredible in light of the billions from which he has freely spent on everything but school’s and students, we should be asking ourselves more questions . Or example , where is the money earned from leasing space to charter schools, filming revenue the district regularly enjoy sand all that lottery money? There are big splashy headlines about grants, gifts, endowments and donations made by uber rich philanthropists, yet the district is claiming its beyond broke. A sort of telethon is now underway to raise money the parcel tax will not see if LA votes. That station was always Cortines’ pride and joy. He loved to ham it up in his Hermes tie as his tantrum erupted before the board.
What a tremendous waste of money and resources when YouTube is the venue of choice for die hard masochists following the banality school politics . Evil, as it turns out, is beige and speaks in sanitized syntax. Why not liquidate that asset, that television station we don’t need and no on watches? Why not cut what is actually fat instead of stabbing away at the meat?
I guess great minds think alike.
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From Roque Burio Jr., the lemon who can dance and can also sing. Here is my song for those who despise teachers alleged to have committed misconducts: The Law protects everyone including both the innocent and the accused. It is mandatory that the Law must protect the would be victim before the crime, and the same law must also protect the rights of the alleged accused after the crime. Hence the LAUSD Weapon of Mass Dismissal of Innocent Teachers AKA SB 1530 had to be defeated by its authors for it turns out to be illegal and unconstitutional. He, he, he, and hah, hah, had why not ask the Democratic Party members? Down with the Paper Monster LAUSD. Long live teachers, students and parents. Long live taxpayers.
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