Patch Blog: Senator Liu Should Support Tenure Reform

Like many LCUSD parents and taxpayers, I was shocked when I read about the $215,000 the District agreed to pay a teacher terminated for using ethnic slurs and abusive language in classroom.

On further reflection, though, it is apparent that the District's two other choices, leave her in the classroom, or fight a lengthy and probably doomed legal battle, were even worse.  One recent Patch article laid out the District's , and  focused on the role tenure played.

My friend Craig Mazin penned identifying the need for tenure reform and decrying our own State Senator Carol Liu's role in defeating the sensible and bipartisan SB 955.  

I quite agree with Craig both on the need for tenure reform and on the fact that SB 955 was a lost opportunity. In the tenure article, Governing Board President Scott Tracy noted tenure rules are set at the state level and that a non-charter district such as LCUSD is constrained by these rules.  Former Board Member Cindy Wilcox pointed out that results like the $215,000 will be "how it works," until the system is changed.  Current Board Member Andrew Blumenfeld referred to the current system as an "absurd" form of "statutory entitlement to one's job.

So what do we do?  We cannot expect the Board to remove "merely" poorly-performing teachers, where the cost to remove one who engages in verbal abuse and ethnic slurs approaches a quarter of a million dollars.  In addition to the tenure system, we need to reform the disciplinary process.  Two pending bills offer hope for parents and offer Senator Liu a chance to make amends for her regrettable failure to support SB 955.

Democrat Alex Padilla offers SB 1530.  This would preserve teacher notification and hearing rights but would enhance districts' ability to suspend or discharge for "unsatisfactory performance" (as opposed to typically requiring "unprofessional conduct," which is much harder to prove) and would remove in some cases the absurd prohibition on providing notice to a teacher between May 15 and September 15 of a given year. The bill also would streamline the process by which teachers accused of sexual or drug offenses would be reviewed, replacing a three-person "Commission on Professional Competence" panel with a single administrative law judge, who would issue an advisory opinion but would not usurp a school board's ultimate authority to protect children by removing the teacher.

Republican Bob Huff offers SB 1059.  This would prohibit collective bargaining agreement clauses that mandate the erasure from teacher files of performance and conduct issues after a period of time.  It would eliminate arbitrary notice periods of 45 days for misconduct and 90 days for poor performance before a school board could initiate disciplinary proceedings.  It would provide additional safeguards by which school boards could protect children by removing teachers from the classroom when under investigation by law enforcement for certain crimes.  And, it would make some of the other changes outlined in SB 1530.

Will Senator Liu support these common-sense, bipartisan reforms?  Her track record is not good.

The California Teachers Association opposes SB 1059 and SB 1530, claiming they would "quash" teachers' constitutional rights.  Senator Liu counts CTA among her strongest supporters, because it is apparently her view that our children exist to provide CTA members with jobs.  In a 2010 address to the Board of Directors of the La Canada Flintridge Educational Foundation, she asked the Directors, "who is the most important person in the classroom?"  She was taken aback when we responded in unison, "THE CHILD!"  She argued that it actually was the teacher (a/k/a the member of CTA).

As a parent of three school children and as an advocate for La Cañada schools, it is my fervent hope that Senator Liu will open her mind to the real reason public schools exist: to educate children, not to generate dues for CTA. I hope she will redeem her earlier vote to kill SB 955 by making pro-child votes in favor of SB 1059 and SB 1530. If you agree (or disagree), you can contact her by clicking here.

As the husband of an outstanding public school teacher, the brother of another, and the son of two more, I would never support any bill I believed would hurt excellent teachers. I think that the vast majority of LCUSD teachers are excellent. But they are not the ones the union protects.

Consider this: private sector employers are permitted to terminate employees based on actual or perceived subpar performance, or customer dissatisfaction. McDonald's does not have to tolerate a lazy counter employee; Regal Cinemas need not put up with a poorly-performing ticket taker.  Certainly, any waiter who referred to a customer as a "Jewboy" would be fired immediately.

CEOs, senators, judges, and celebrities have lost millions and seen their careers destroyed over a single insensitive comment. But teachers with lifetime tenure (usually obtained after just two years on the job, as young as 26) cannot be fired for misconduct without a massive undertaking by a district and commitment to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Forget about ever firing a teacher whose "only" shortcoming is performance but manages to avoid misconduct.

Thus, we LCF parents, who all struggled to move here to get our kids into these great schools, and who collectively donated an additional $2,000,000 to the schools through LCFEF last year alone (in large part to protect teachers' jobs to maintain reduced class sizes), can have more confidence that our restaurants and our movie theatre will protect us from poorly-performing employees, than that our school district can protect our children from poorly-performing (and even verbally abusive and epithet-spewing) teachers. 

Why do we tolerate this situation?