It is not accidental that this attack on tenure, which historically defends a teacher’s right to speak his or her mind against an administrator and not be fired, is coming in the midst of one of the worst budget crises in the history of the public school system.
It's "historical," but if a no-good son of a bitch administrator wants you out, he or she can do it. The big problem isn't with the teachers, who have little power, it's the administrators who have almost unlimited power and it is largely unchecked.
That's how they get away with committing perjury at hearings, aided and abetted by school district lead counsels. My last administrator told THREE blatant lies* at my ridiculous hearing, a hearing which the results were preordained from the outset thanks to my ignorance at the time of what BINDING arbitration is all about (the "right" of teachers to have rigged hearings heard by people who are paid by both the district and the union, the latter of which is nothing but a subsidiary of the district, and the "right" to waive ALL of one's seventh amendment rights to a trial by jury, no witnesses, no right to introduce evidence, no right to appeal the decision, the whole works--in short, a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition and ALL in favor of the employer--and NEVER explained to me by the union's attorneys when I signed the dotted line I was waiving ALL of my constitutional rights)when I could have hired an outside lawyer and have prevailed in court, yet she still has a job at the school district. Human resources can commit brazen age discrimination and cheat one out of full retirement benefits as long as they can doctor evidence and use a trumped-up admonition from a previous corrupt administrator (who violated my civil rights as well as students' civil rights and is still at the district) having nothing to do with the issue at hand and not implemented per Nevada Revised Statutes anyway by the administrator who perjured herself at my hearing. All I ever heard, from the time the principal dismissed me under false pretenses, was "you had problems at __________," "you had problems with _____," etc., etc., etc. without knowing WHAT in the hell he did over there. Once these sons of bitches school administrators target you, and it has nothing to do with "incomptence" but has everything to do with whistleblowing, or not sucking their ass, or being simply too old, which I was, it is impossible to avoid termination. As a result of their wrongdoing, they have in effect lost a major lawsuit of which I am a defendant, a lawsuit which is frivolous and without merit, but a lawsuit in which the plaintiff will get a substantial settlement because of my refusal to bail the school district out of a major public relations disaster, which the allegations made in this particular civil action point out. The law firm representing the district knows of my intentions, as the attorneys recently received a ten-page doozy of a letter outlining my complaints. I have washed my hands of the whole filthy enterprise that is Nevada public education, despite my support of the concept of public education. The reality is something else.
In short, it is LAUGHABLY, RIDICULOUSLY easy to fire public school teachers, but it is nearly impossible to fire administrators, no matter how corrupt, incompetent, or even criminal they are. You simply have to have the bad luck of getting a sociopath for a boss and it is all over.
Public schools should be about the kids first and foremost, but it isn't in reality. It's all about crooks and incompetents keeping their jobs and doing everything in their power to preserve their fiefdoms.
That is what the WSWS is missing in its analysis, no matter how good it is. The fact is "at-will" employees have far more legal rights than do teachers.
*--These were the lies she told:
1. She claimed under oath at the hearing that when I first transferred over to her school that she suggested I get a mentor. That was a lie. I was the one who suggested it, for it was in the previous administrator's trumped-up admonition that I had to have a mentor and I wanted one anyway, but she never even looked at his admonition, refused even to look at my file, and never did, which she admitted at the hearing. A competent lawyer would have jumped on this obvious lie, for how would she have known I needed a mentor (I was post-probationary or "tenured") if she had never seen the admonition until right before she gave me the boot, an action which was a result of extreme pressure put on her by human resources and for monetary reasons, as she explained to me when I received my notice of an "investigatory hearing"? The union's lawyers let this slide, which should have told me where their allegiance REALLY was, and it wasn't with me.
2. Another (likely) lie was the claim that when she asked human resources to fax the previous administrator's admonition that she illegally never implemented to use as a template for her own bullshit dismissal (she had been a principal for six or seven years and had NEVER disciplined an employee, which should indicate just how little control she had over her staff--this school had and has a history of staff morale problems), but she laughably claimed, when it was pointed out that the second page of the admonition had the steps needed to implement the admonition, she never received the second page! Complete and obvious perjury, although I have no firsthand knowledge of this, but she was laughable to watch in action. You didn't need a lie detector to know she was lying. She was that obvious.
3. And then there was the issue of the school's staff handbook. This principal never went over the handbook with me which has the attendance and call-in policy in it; I had transferred over to her school, which had already been in session for several weeks, long after orientation. She never said a word about it, not until I returned from spring break after my illness and she handed me that notice of the hearing. I asked her if there was some kind of staff handbook with the attendance policy in it, and she said there was, and, after looking for a copy, said she was out of new copies of the handbook but that she would make a copy and put it in my box. Well, the copy was never put in my box; I received XEROX copies--no handbook--of the pages in question at the investigatory hearing AFTER I asked her for them. There were four people at this hearing: the principal, me, her boss, and the director of the union, so there were witnesses. The principal got the copies and read me the policies, which she didn't have to do. Her boss, stupidly, said it was MY responsibility to have asked for the handbook when I first arrived at the school, never mind it was the principal's responsibility to go over it. It is SOP at all businesses and school districts to go over the handbook, which should be signed. The district's filthy lawyer tried to use the district's matriculation form of three years' prior as "proof" I knew of their policy at the time I was deathly ill--but I followed all procedures in reporting absences via internet--her requirement was redundant. On my part I couldn't even call my union's executive director in as a witness to this meeting, for she had applied for a job to work as the district's representative--a clear conflict of interest in the first place and should NOT have even represented me when this dismissal came down--and got the job working for the "other side." No wonder she was totally worthless as a rep and never seemed to give a shit about me. Anyway, the principal volunteered information which was not relevant to the case and made it up solely to cover her own worthless butt. However, what struck me is her boss was on the witness list to testify on the district's behalf, even though she had no knowledge of anything other than the investigatory meeting (she didn't testify at the hearing). My feeling was she was on the list to lie for the principal. Disgusting.
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