CTA Overwhelmingly Supports Easing Teacher Dismissal Rules

Teachers Unions: Protecting the Bosses at Teachers’ Expense

A common misperception is that unions exist to protect the interests of workers. If this were true, if unions really fought vigorously for the interests of workers, they would not be tolerated at all. The fact that they are legal, and that a large body of laws has been written to regulate their activities, is evidence of their acceptance by the employing class. Indeed, they serve the interests of the employing class by acting as intermediaries that help maintain the peace between employers and workers, keeping them on the job and working efficiently.

When looked at from this perspective, it should come as no surprise that the California Teachers Association (CTA is the state’s largest teachers union) is giving its unconditional support to new legislation that would make it easier to fire teachers. Assembly Bill 375, written by Democrat Joan Buchanan, has already received unanimous approval by the Assembly’s Education Committee and overwhelming support by both parties. It has also been praised by the CTA:

“We support AB 375 and AB 1338 because the bills reflect CTA’s goals to keep students safe, safeguard the integrity of the profession, and protect the rights of educators. CTA supports these bills because they provide immediate protections for students and streamline and shorten the dismissal process to ensure charges are handled fairly and in a timely manner. We commend Assembly Education Committee Chair Joan Buchanan for her hard work in developing the legislation and Senator Alex Padilla for signing on as co-author. We look forward to working with lawmakers as these bills make their way through the legislative process.”

—California Teachers Association website

The bills stem from the mass hysteria that there are rampant perverts in the classroom and the unions are somehow complicit in protecting them—a panic fed by the arrest of Mark Berndt (LAUSD) last year from for engaging in lewd acts with students, and accusations by University of California, Berkeley swim coach, Kristen Cunnane (among many others), that former Moraga science teacher Dan Witters and physical education instructor Julie Corea had molested them. (Witters committed suicide and Corea is serving an 8-year prison sentence for rape and sexual battery of students).

As tragic (and frightening for parents) as these cases are, there is no evidence that molestation in the schools is any worse now than in the past or that the unions bear any culpability. However, there is ample evidence in both these cases (and in many other school molestation cases) that the perpetrators were either protected by their school districts or that credible accusations and evidence against them were ignored, covered up or lost by their districts. Legislation that streamlines the firing of teachers does nothing to mitigate these problems or make children any safer, nor does it eliminate districts’ incentive to protect their reputations at the expense of children’s safety.

Weakening Due Process for Teachers Contributes to Declining Union Membership

In addition to doing nothing to protect children, these bills significantly weaken teachers’ due process rights, thus increasing the chances that innocent and excellent teachers will be dismissed. The bills allow the use of evidence older than four years if a judge deems it “relevant”—a nebulous term that leaves open the possibility that a teacher will be punished a second time for small infractions or oversights (e.g., using district websites to check personal email) that have no effect on their skill as teachers. The new rules would also weaken the discovery process and pretrial evidence-gathering proceedings, further eroding teachers’ due process protections and chances of beating a spurious accusation.

Furthermore, the legislation is not limited to violations of the law or accusations of abuse and molestation. The new rules also streamline and speed up the dismissal process for teachers deemed “unsatisfactory.” As districts increasingly adopt evaluation systems that assess teachers based on their students’ test scores (using methods that are notoriously unreliable), districts could soon have skyrocketing numbers of “unsatisfactory” teachers to dismiss, thus making a quicker dismissal process all the more urgent.

The wording of AB 375 explicitly states that the number of teacher dismissal proceedings will increase under the new rules: “these revisions would increase the number of employees subject to immediate placement on compulsory leave of absence. . .”  This could lead to declining union membership if an equal number of unionized teachers are not rehired to replace them. With the Parent Trigger law and No Child Left Behind rules requiring failing schools to adopt “reforms” that include charter school conversion, it is entirely feasible that schools with large numbers of dismissed teachers could be converted into nonunionized charter schools.

Making Public Education More Profitable to Capital

Buchanan supported her bill by saying that districts don’t issue more dismissal notices because they don’t want to spend the money. Thus, one goal of the new legislation is to reduce education expenditures, something that allows the state to reduce overall education spending and maintain record low tax rates for businesses and the wealthy.

However, implicit in Buchanan’s statement is the assumption that there are hordes of rotten apples hidden in classrooms throughout the state—bad apples who, more often than not, are only guilty of being outspoken advocates for children, critics of idiotic “reforms,” union organizers, or veterans at the higher end of the pay scale. An unspoken (and likely the most urgent) goal of the legislation is to make it easier to get rid of the teachers who cost their districts the most in salaries, time or trouble.

Some other troubling aspects of the legislation include the sweeping, overly broad and moralistic definitions of misconduct that could result in a teacher’s firing. Under the law, teachers can still be dismissed for “immoral” conduct—another nebulous term that could include polyamory, drunkenness, or other behaviors that occur outside of school or that do not affect performance in the classroom.

While the new legislation would eliminate prohibitions on membership in the Communist Party (which apparently is still an offense for which teachers in California can be fired), it will maintain the antiquated and anti-union prohibition against committing or advocating “criminal syndicalism.” Curiously, while California’s 1919 Criminal Syndicalism Act was repealed in 1991, its prohibitions are maintained for teachers under AB 375. Under this rule, teachers would continue to be prohibited from being members of the Industrial Workers of the World.

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.

Deasy Sued in Miramonte Molestation Scandal

When Los Angeles school teacher (LAUSD) Mark Berndt was arrested for molesting students at Miramonte elementary school, Superintendent John Deasy fired the entire staff at Miramonte in a lame attempt to whitewash the tarnished image of LAUSD. Yet there was ample evidence at the time that LAUSD had engaged in years of incompetence and outright obstructionism in the investigation of molestation and abuse claims, though Deasy did not fire any district administrators. Now a lawsuit has been filed against current Superintendent Deasy, plus four former superintendents—Ramon Cortines (who has been sued independently for sexual harassment of an employee), Ruben Zacarias, Roy Romer and David L. Brewer—for deliberately not reporting complaints of teacher abuse.

According to the LA Times, the lawsuit claims the superintendents created an environment in which administrators were discouraged from investigating complaints of misconduct or reporting them to state authorities and law enforcement, while shielding teachers from scrutiny. The lawsuit also accuses the superintendents of lacking a clear and effective policy on child abuse allegations and deliberately not maintaining files on such complaints. A state audit released last November found that LAUSD officials failed to promptly report nearly 150 cases of suspected misconduct to state authorities.

The attorney leading the lawsuit said the officials had a “calculated plan over 20 years to facilitate child abuse at the expense of the safety and welfare of the kids.”

LAUSD’s Rubber Room for Victims of Abuse Hysteria

Following the January arrest of former teacher Mark Berndt, who was charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct in the classroom, the entire staff was fired at Miramonte Elementary School, in Los Angeles. Last week, at least 40 displaced teachers and staff members rallied outside Augustus Hawkins High School in South Los Angeles, the “Rubber Room” where they have reported for the past three months while awaiting reassignment. (Hawkins High is not currently in operation). More than 150 students and parents also joined the demonstration.


Superintendent John Deasy said he was replacing the staff to restore confidence in the school. Yet only 2 staff members have been charged or even accused of misconduct. Teachers at the rally expressed anger and frustration at having “been publicly punished and humiliated for the alleged acts of one person," according to the Los Angeles times. Another teacher said, "I no longer tell people I'm a teacher. Until very recently, I was proud to be one."


In a particularly disturbing consequence of the mass firing, staff members who are also parents of Miramonte students have not been allowed on campus to drop off or pick up their children, or to meet with a teacher during school hours.


In related news, a lawsuit was filed this week against LAUSD for negligence on behalf of 20 former Miramonte students (see LA Times Blogs). The lawsuit claims the district did not do enough to protect students who had complained about inappropriate teacher behavior and that it ignored student allegations. Berndt’s personnel records contained no records of prior sexual abuse allegations, despite the fact that there were at least four past sex abuse allegations against him prior to the most recent case. In fact, the Los Angeles Times reports that LAUSD has no record that it ever conducted an internal investigation.

LAUSD Bans Blindfolding and Eating in Class

Last week I compared the situation in Los Angeles Unified School District to the Satanic Child Care Abuse hysteria of the 1980s and 90s, suggesting that a few high profile abuse cases could lead to excessive and absurd responses by the district. Of course the most obvious and egregious example of this was the mass firing of all staff at Miramonte Elementary School, even though there was only evidence linking two of the teachers to abuse.

Banned in L.A. (Image from Flickr, by edenpictures)

 Now LAUSD is banning the blindfolding of students, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. The reason for this new rule is that it "may be perceived negatively," Deputy Sup. of Instruction Jaime Aquino wrote in a Feb. 23 memo to principals, in light of the accusation that one of the accused teachers, Berndt, blindfolded his students before feeding them his semen.

The image of blindfolded children being spoon fed semen is certainly disturbing and one that the district would understandably want to go away. It could also reasonably be argued that blindfolding children, particularly younger children, is unnecessary, risky and inappropriate. Yet the district’s new rule seems rather superficial and silly in light of the fact that it allowed a supposed monster to slip through its fingers for years and was incapable of dismissing him despite at least four prior abuse accusations. The new rule does nothing to improve the districts’ ability to monitor or discipline abusive teachers, nor does it make schools any safer for children.

One might ask what justification could there be for blindfolding students in the first place? There are, however, numerous situations in which a “blind” test would be reasonable and appropriate, including for K-5 children. Most of these can be done simply by asking students to close their eyes. For example, during a unit on the nervous system, I have students taste jicama and apple with their eyes closed and noses plugged, to demonstrate how other senses, like olfaction, contribute to our sense of taste. Apparently a fourth-grade reading activity that is part of the new California Treasures curriculum also involves making sensory observations and suggests that students be blindfolded.  This would be forbidden under the new rule.

This, Too, Banned in L.A. (Image from Flickr, by Nomadic Lass)

 While many “blind” activities can be done without blindfolds, LAUSD’s response to the hysteria goes so far as to entirely ban the consumption of foods prepared in class, even without blindfolds. The Times says that substitute teacher Prentiss Moore teaches elementary-school students how to make butter, which they later eat on crackers. According to Moore, "It is a standards-based lesson with elements of science, social studies, language arts and art." However, in the wake of allegations that Miramonte’s Berndt served students tainted cookies, Moore’s butter lesson is now prohibited.

Keeping children safe should be the first priority of schools. This is not what LAUSD is doing. They are looking for cheap PR victories to mollify anxious and frightened parents and cover up their own incompetence.