Administrators Union Protecting Bad Bosses or Just Business as Usual?

While the teachers unions have been quick to jump on the evaluation reform bandwagon in hopes of appearing “reasonable” and “professional,” the real movers and shakers behind the Eval Reform movement are primarily interested in making it easier to fire bad teachers.  Their presumption (at least the one conveyed to the press) is that there are a lot of bad teachers out there—how else to explain the deplorable state of public education in America. Never mind that graduation rates are higher than they were in the 40s or 50s and the number of kids from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds taking and passing AP and SAT exams is higher than ever.

Yet where in all this hysteria about rotten schools and our duty to the poor, innocent children is the scrutiny of the administrators, the ones who are ultimately responsible for all that occurs in their schools?

In Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD), Superintendent Deasy fired the entire teaching staff at Miramonte Elementary in response to sexual abuse allegations against two teachers, in a PR game intended to trick the public into thinking he and his under-administrators were doing a good job when, in reality, LAUSD ignored many prior allegations against one of the teachers and lost personnel files on him.

Now, in an unrelated case, LAUSD will have to pay $1.4 million to a fourth-grade special needs student who was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a male classmate. The incidents occurred at an after school program where LAUSD failed to provide adequate supervision. There was only one staffer supervising up to 100 students at a time. Consequently, the boy was able to take the 9-year-old to various secluded locations on campus away and sexually abuse her. The girl’s attorney said the district “minimized her harm throughout the trial,” according to the Los Angeles Times, and the “jury found that offensive.”

But hey, $1.4 million is chump change, right? No administrators will be punished. Business as usual will continue. And everyone can go back to presuming the classrooms are filled with pervy teachers protected by selfish unions.

L.A .Teachers Vote No Confidence in Deasy and Their Own Union

The Los Angeles times reported that LAUSD teachers “overwhelmingly expressed ‘no confidence’ in superintendent John Deasy last Wednesday, the first time such a vote has occurred in the nation's second-largest school system.

It is certainly significant that a majority of LA teachers voted no confidence in their superintendent—and not at all surprising, considering Deasy’s war on teachers. Under his watch, LAUSD has implemented teacher evaluations based on student test scores. There have been numerous charter school conversions, furloughs and layoffs, as well as ongoing budget shortfalls. There have also been abuse scandals in which the district has covered up misconduct or obstructed investigations and then punished teachers en masse for the wrongdoings of one or two teachers, while trying to redirect blame onto the union.

However, it would be a gross exaggeration to say that teachers overwhelmingly supported the no confidence vote. Only about 17,770 teachers (slightly more than half of UTLA’s 32,000 members) participated in the vote. Of those who voted, a whopping 91% expressed disapproval. Yet, as a percentage of the total membership, this only constitutes slightly more than 50%. Looked at differently, one could say that nearly half of Los Angeles teachers did not feel strongly enough to vote at all.

Low voter turn-out for UTLA is nothing new (see here and here). Poor organizing by the union is one likely explanation. Simply placing “vote no confidence” posters on its website is not enough to get teachers to actually participate in the vote. They should have had organizers talking to teachers at every site and agitating for action, should the vote go their way, because in the end, a vote of no confidence has no teeth. If LA teachers want Deasy out, they’ll have to drive him out. Indeed, Deasy responded to the vote by asserting he was too busy trying to provide quality education to needy children to be bothered with such “nonsense.”

Another likely reason for the low voter turnout is general discontent with UTLA by its members. As bad as Deasy has been, UTLA has been complicit with many of his policies, including evaluation reform and furloughs.

Ironically, another measure on the same ballot that criticized UTLA only won 77% approval (probably because the teachers most frustrated with their union didn’t bother to vote). This resolution explicitly criticized UTLA for “weakening and dividing” its members, and for not organizing and mobilizing its members and community allies. The measure called for a reduction in standardized tests for evaluating teachers and an end to reconstitution of staff at low-performing schools.

The Times reports that UTLA president Warren Fletcher embraced the second resolution, despite its criticism of his leadership. Question is, will he do anything about it?

Fixing LAUSD’s Rubber Room With Hot Knives

Teachers Locked Down in LAUSD's Notorious "Rubber Room"

Los Angeles Superintendent John Deasy’s take all prisoners approach to teacher discipline in the wake of the Miramonte Elementary School molestation case last year (see here and here) has swelled the number of teachers in LAUSD’s rubber room (teacher jail) to over 300.

Today the school board will consider a proposal to speed up and “improve” investigations, ostensibly to speed up the removal of criminals and exoneration of innocents. The problem is that the only true innocents, in the eyes of Deasy, are the children. Deasy has repeatedly asserted that his primary goal is to protect the children (never mind if that means punishing or firing innocent teachers).

Under the resolution by board member Tamar Galatzan, employees would have to be told why they were being removed from their job (unless it would compromise a law-enforcement investigation). This leaves open the possibility that a teacher could be placed in the rubber room based on spurious accusations by discontent parents or students, and not be told why they were there. According to the Los Angeles Times, the resolution would also require that they be quickly advised about the expected length of the investigation and whether or not they would be paid in the interim.

There are several other problems with the resolution. If the LAUSD bureaucracy did not have time, expertise and willingness to complete its investigations promptly and competently before, why would they have this ability now? Additionally, speeding up the timeframe for an investigation runs the risk of weakening teachers’ due process rights. Though the goal is to protect children, it is important to remember that people get accused of things all the time which are untrue, including teachers. Speeding up the inquiries could limit teachers’ abilities to defend themselves against specious accusations or exaggerated punishments for minor infractions.

Protecting Children by Punishing Whistleblowers

Carol Buchanan, a former Moraga School District teacher (in the SF Bay Area) was told by students in the 1990s that science teacher, Dan Witters, had been sexually abusing them. She reported it to school officials, but was ignored and punished, Cheryl Hurd reported last week. While she was never fired, Buchanon claims the district did strongly urge her to take a “leave of absence,” which she ultimately did, retiring after a 25-year career.

Last year, University of California, Berkeley swim coach, Kristen Cunnane, came forward saying she was abused by Witters and another teacher. Cunnane later release the following statement: “I can’t believe how many people at the school knew about the sexual abuse and how many warnings the district ignored. To find out that there was someone at the school actually trying to help us and that she got punished for it is incredible.”

While it is tragic that so many children were thrown to the wolves by administrators who were either too lazy to do the right thing or too concerned with covering up the potential bad PR, it should no longer come as a surprise, either. Indeed, it is relatively common for large institutions to value their own reputations over the safety of children (and the law). Consider the way in which the Catholic Church, at virtually all levels of its hierarchy, has protected accused priests. This case is also strikingly similar to the case of Mark Berndt, in LAUSD, who had been reported by numerous parents, and allowed to remain in the classroom for decades, before finally being arrested last year. In Berndt’s case, not only did the district fail to investigate thoroughly the prior claims, but it also punished innocent teachers, by firing the entire staff at Miramonte Elementary school, even though only two of its teachers had been accused of abuse.