The Truth

You can replace LAUSD with Washoe County School District, New York DOE, or the name of every other school district in the United States, and the problems facing teachers are virtually identical.

So is the absence of any kind of "due process" rights despite contracts, administrative law, and unions.

You are more protected in private sector employment than you are in public education because the latter isn't concerned about any bottom line.

Besides the fact that the vast majority of targeted teachers are completely innocent, what stands out most of all is how teachers, when assaulted with the most obscene, irrational, and patently false charges brought with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, start to defend themselves and by so doing assume a mentally and physically debasing and subservient position.

The most important reason for giving a person so charged the right to a speedy hearing is precisely that there is unimaginable stress that a targeted teacher is put under by LAUSD to try and get them to resign. The longer this pressure exists, the less likely the teacher will survive. Therefore, it is not a surprise that for both the in-house and outside counsel of LAUSD, there main legal tactic is to stall for as long as possible.

WCSD had me starve eight fucking months while their sham hearing process was going on. It was all planned in advance. Either my principal was told to fire me and to find any stupid reason for doing so or, most likely, she fired me to cover her own ass when she didn't do a goddamned thing. They actually had a meeting before I was kicked to the curb to orchestrate an "investigation" of "charges" about a stupid sick leave form over an illness they that KNEW about and ultimately kick me out from the district. This was without the human resources chief officer knowing one fucking thing about my situation from the previous school, let alone the reason I was out for the better part of a month with a bad illness. Then when he found out the truth, no problem. The sup rubberstamped the dismissal, and the HR crook and the district's general counsel merely rigged the hearing, colluding with the union and most likely the arbitrator to allow an illegal dismissal to go through. I believe what WCSD does is they will reinstate teachers who have outside counsel, but those who use WEA's won't get reinstated no matter what. The few cases I am aware of where teachers got their jobs back were those where outside lawyers were used. Meanwhile, the months of unpaid leave was to get me to settle with them for a piddling 10k, which of course a big chunk of it would have gone to NSEA's lawyers. I would have wound up with virtually nothing and probably screwed out of UI, unless I could have negotiated that. But I wasn't going to resign and make it look like I was guilty of something when I wasn't. Other school districts assume, when they ask you on applications if you resigned in lieu of a dismissal, that you did something wrong and admitted "guilt." That's why teachers should never resign in lieu of a dismissal. It doesn't help in the future job search anyway, and districts can simply badmouth you regardless. You're better off going through the sham hearings.