A Scapegoated Teacher Wins the Battle

Let's hope he wins the war and he isn't harassed again.

Unfortunately, it is likely he will have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his career.

At least in NYC, teachers there at least have a shot to getting their jobs back via administrative hearings. Other teachers in other states, including yours truly, aren't so lucky.

More of his story can be found at the NAPTA site.

If a teacher dares speak up and risks embarrassing an administrator, God help him or her.

"Justice" for Teachers

"Justice" has always been for the rich.

If you are a teacher, however, you have fewer rights than accused murderers. That sounds like an exaggeration, I know, but it is really true.

Read the second link especially. While NYC teachers "enjoy" more "protections" than teachers in the rest of the country, the "hearings" are virtually identical in every single school district in every state in the United States. They are shams. That's because administrative law doesn't protect teachers but school districts.

Administrative law is so full of holes and is a major scandal. I wouldn't be surprised if the WCSD attorney, the (former) head of human resources, the attorney with NSEA's law firm, Dyer Lawrence, and the arbitrator all got together via conference call and decided they were going to uphold my sham termination when the district blatantly violated the law. Worse still, the arbitrator's "award" was issued right before Christmas of 2008. I never bothered to read the "decision" after I was told those hearings were garbage. That big pile of shit of a principal got only a slap on the wrist (reassignment to an "easy" school with a lot of gifted and talented students) and is still making 100k a year while I am fucking starving. Yes, I am still angry four years later because I can't get back on my feet. At least not so far. That cunt (excuse that vile word, but it is the ONLY word that truly describes her) gets to keep her job no matter how unfit she is to lead a school. I had my rights completely steamrollered so she could keep her job. The HR guy eventually was demoted to "housekeeping division" supervisor, but he is still making over 100k in salary. What "cut" in salary he got was hardly anything when one is making that kind of money. He should have gone to jail for his abuses of the law. Ditto for that school district's lawyer.

Assailed Teacher's description of how the attorneys and the arbitrator divvy up the "spoils" in NYC MUST be how it was done at WCSD. Some teachers WERE reinstated, but the ones I know about tended to have outside attorneys. Some of those who got their jobs back were treated even worse in the next school in an attempt by the district to get rid of them by pushing them into a resignation or retirement. In my case, I was starved for months without an income because Washoe Education Association was completely in bed with WCSD and told me I couldn't get UI because the district would "fight" any claim I would file. It was a lie, but this same person also worked in cahoots with HR and coincidentally took a job working under the very person, the person in HR, who spearheaded my termination, thus denying me a witness at my hearing. I wasn't allowed ANY witnesses at my hearing, which was totally surreal because there was NO CASE WHATSOEVER AGAINST ME. All they had were smears. It should have been a slam dunk for me, but it wasn't. So here I am today, underemployed and living in desperate straits so somebody else can rip off taxpayers in Nevada by pulling down obscene salaries.

I can empathize with the FB teacher who lost her job in NYC. Districts can and do try to "get" you for all kinds of stupid reasons; what is galling in this case is the guy who ratted her out was an alleged pervert. Being a pervert is okay, however, if you have some "in" with administrators.

The Education Wars: Lies About Teachers' Unions

As yours truly can attest, not only is it easy to fire teachers, but teachers' unions aren't even effective in representing teachers during these rigged "due process" hearings, which are a complete waste of time for teachers.

They STILL have to fight terminations in the courts, provided they can find lawyers willing to take their cases, which drag out for as long as ten years.

Anyway, this is a good piece:

Fact: Teachers can be fired. Who honestly believes a teachers’ union—whether in California, Oregon or Connecticut—has the authority to insist that management keep unqualified teachers? Since when does a labor union dictate to management? Since when does the hired help tell the bosses what to do? The accusation is absurd on its face.

Fact: During the first two years of employment, any teacher in the LAUSD can be fired for any reason, with no recourse to union representation and no access to the grievance procedure. Two full years. If the district doesn’t like you for any reason, they fire you. No union. No grievance. Nothing. Could any arrangement be more favorable to management?

Yet, the myth persists, the myth of the Unqualified Teacher. Instead of identifying the real problems facing California’s schools (daunting as they may be), and trying to solve them, people stubbornly insist that thousands of our teachers—every one of them college-educated, credentialed, and having survived two years of scrutiny—need to be fired.

...

Fact: The fault for unqualified teachers remaining on the payroll lies entirely with the school administrators. These overpaid, $120,000 a year, gutless bureaucrats want us to believe that we live in a world turned upside down. A world where, fantastically, the bosses answer to the employees.

Arguably, the problems facing America’s public schools are staggering. But because politicians are essentially spineless—fearful of doing or saying anything that would risk antagonizing their “base”—they refuse to address the real issues. Instead, they play little mind-games with the voters. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s where we stand.

The fact is principals answer to NO ONE. They can do whatever the hell they want, comfortable with the knowledge school districts--and taxpayers--will support them throughout the legal system.

The Education Wars: More Teacher-Trashing Twaddle

from the New York Times, which appears to be completely in bed with BloomKlein.

Here is what I wrote on a discussion board when somebody wrote his tale of woe about a "terrible" teacher who he claimed was almost impossible to get rid of:

It is fucking laughably easy, and districts will commit every act short of murder to get rid of a teacher it doesn't want.

I've been there. I have been fired--illegally. Don't hand me any goddamned shit it is "hard" or that a teacher deserves it. You haven't been there. I have. A teacher faces a complete stacked deck in these "due process" hearings: No witnesses allowed, perjury, subornation of perjury, falsification of documents, bribery, the whole ball of wax. And the union and its lawyers cut deals with the district to make sure a principal keeps his or her job at the expense of the teacher. This despite the fact a teacher will spend hundreds of dollars a year in union dues. That was what happened in my case.

I have NO career anymore because of what a negligent piece of shit of a principal did to me because she was pressured. See, when you're fired, you can NEVER teach again anywhere in the United States. It is serious business to fire a teacher--it is NOT like private sector work where your livelihood isn't destroyed forever. Meanwhile, this dirtbag of a principal gets to go on fancy vacations scuba diving in Hawaii and bragging about it on Facebook. This person pulls down over 100K a year in salary and benefits even though she has NO business whatsoever running a school. Not to mention she has utterly NO conscience whatsoever over what she did to me and committed perjury at my hearing--four times.

The ONLY reason firing was uncommon in the "old days" was because principals back then had ETHICS and understood that firing teachers willy-nilly would undermine staff morale and destroy kids' rights to a stable educational environment.

Principals now don't give a shit because they KNOW the district--with help from the taxpayers--will support them throughout the due process hearing garbage clear up to the Court of Appeals. Principals, unlike supervisors anywhere else in the economy, have TOTAL power over teachers and there is NO real oversight over their actions.

Education is NOT a fucking business and teachers should NOT be treated like shit. I wish people around here would get a clue and quit repeating lies from the privatizers.

Just because firing teachers in the "old days" was uncommon doesn't mean it was impossible to get rid of them. It's just the fact principals were much different then than they are now. Nowadays they don't know their asses from holes in the ground how to deal with subordinates.

The Education Wars II: Some Interesting Information

about termination of teachers, and my response to this post on Teachers.net:

On 12/24/09, 2 cents wrote:
> It is true that NYS teachers enjoy more protection than teachers in any
> other state, NYC teachers has a water-down version of 3020a than
> teachers in the rest of the state due to our 2005 contract. Teachers in
> most state have tenure or unlimited contract, in all but 7 states a
> termination decision/disciplinary actions on a tenured teacher is voted
> by the school board. Only in 7 states, the termination of a tenured
> teacher is decided through arbitration, 5 of which are paid exclusively
> by their school boards. Only in 2 of 7 states, NY and Washington State,
> the costs of the arbitration are shared or split between its school
> boards and its unions, NYS is the only state in which the school board
> and/or union can reject an arbitrator for his or her supposed bias
> toward labor or management.

That's why the situation in NYC is so serious for teachers nationwide.
If teachers there have their rights subverted, NO teacher anywhere is
safe.

At my old school district in Nevada, I believe the arbitrators or hearing
officers are picked by both the union and the district for "objectivity,"
and they are assigned to a teacher's case "at random." Of course the
reality is the union and the district are one and the same, so the
arbitrators will ALWAYS rule in favor of the district, no matter how
badly they screw up, as in my case. I still have to sue them.
Arbitration is a joke in Nevada and probably everywhere else.

The Education Wars III

There are many good reasons why public school teacher tenure, which exists in all states except Mississippi, should remain in place, according to this excellent article.

It is relatively easy to fire a teacher, even for mediocrity, contrary to misrepresentations by some legislators and journalists of this fact. The Fair Dismissal Act provides minimum due process protections: the teacher can be fired for "any good and sufficient cause;" the hearing is held before the teacher's employer (the local school board decides the outcome); the decision is always upheld on appeal if there is "any evidence" in the record to support it; and decisions are therefore rarely reversed. In my experience, fewer than 100 teacher dismissal hearings are held per year statewide. Many more teachers with tenure elect to resign without invoking their right to a hearing because of the evidence against them. Of the 40 or so teacher dismissals that are appealed each year, over 90% are upheld. If an administrator is doing his or her job, and has a "good reason," then it is relatively easy under these rules to fire any teacher. This is a small price to pay for a fair hearing, and for protections that hold the line against arbitrary, political, and unfair firings.

Does the Fair Dismissal Act make it impossible to fire an incompetent or even a mediocre teacher? Of course not. All an administrator has to do is evaluate and document teacher performance. This isn't brain surgery. School systems have three full years—540 classroom instructional days--in which to observe and judge a teacher before granting hearing rights. If a school administrator can't figure out in 3 years whether a teacher is going to make a contribution to student progress and achievement, then maybe it's the administrator who should be held accountable. Thereafter, if an administrator doesn't have the competence or integrity to build a case against a teacher who ought to be fired, then perhaps the administrator should be fired.

Fair dismissal is not about protecting bad teachers. The solution to the problem of the "bad" teacher is not the abolition of a fair hearing for all teachers. The hearing process protects good teachers from arbitrary, retaliatory, political, and discriminatory actions. We should all support that goal.

Tell it to the assholes at Washoe County School District who engaged in an unlawful firing of yours truly.

The Education Wars

With despots like Joel I. Klein running NYC schools, it is little wonder teachers have no input at all.

They don't have any real input at all, regardless of school district.
_____

Yep, termination meetings are interesting, but I am surprised anybody would be surprised these are taped. Hell, my sham arbitration hearing was taped; however, I was not allowed to tape the "investigatory hearing." What a goddamned joke. If these people didn't have anything to hide, they wouldn't mind being taped.

What IS unusual is that a media person was allowed in. Usually these meetings are closed to the public. That's why there is so much abuse and false termination of teachers--there is no accountability.

You hear an awful lot about how hard it is to terminate a tenured teacher and how much it costs. You only get the horror stories from the perspective of the anti-tenure crowd. What is often neglected is the issue of why a school system would choose to take a route to terminate in spite of the costs. The David Pakter case is a prime exhibit. I dropped in on David's 3020a hearing yesterday. You could write a book.

The reason they do is because they have unlimited funds to dispose of a teacher, just as they did with me. Never mind they knew in my case they had no case and knew they were caught when they realized I wasn't faking any illness at all, and hiring the lawyers and arbitrator would cost tens of thousands of dollars; it was taxpayer money, there is no bottom line to worry about, unlike business, so why NOT get rid of a "troublesome" teacher?