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.

Bill to Undermine Teacher Due Process Revived in California State Legislature

California state senator Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) has reintroduced legislation that is supposed to speed up the dismissal of teachers for gross misconduct, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. The new legislation, SB 10, will be very similar to a failed bill advanced last year by Padilla. The text of the bill was not available as of Monday.

In the wake of LAUSD’s sex abuse scandal (see here, here and here), it is understandable that the public would want a more efficient and effective process for removing child molesters from the schools. However, the problems in LAUSD were not the result of ineffective disciplinary rules. Rather, the school district was asleep at the wheel, routinely ignoring parental complaints, losing personnel records, and not doing the necessary investigative work when it did respond to complaints. Several parents are currently suing the district for its incompetence in handling the Miramonte case.

According to an audit released last week, LAUSD frequently failed to report teacher misconduct to state Commission on Teacher Credentialing authorities and took too long to investigate abuse allegations. In one case, a principal took eight months to notify an employee after it had concluded its investigation. Overall, the audit found that LAUSD failed to promptly notify state authorities about 144 misconduct cases. Some of the cases were report as much as three years after the allegations were first made.

Padilla’s previous attempt at “improving” the disciplinary process would have done nothing to make school districts more accountable, more effective at record keeping or better at their internal investigations. It would, however, have significantly reduced due process for teachers, by taking the final disciplinary decisions away from an objective state body and placing them in the hands of local school districts, which are often biased against their own teachers and which have a strong stake in controlling public perception, even at the expense of teachers’ due process rights. LAUSD demonstrated this last year when it fired the entire staff at Miramonte Elementary, even though only two of its teachers had been accused of abuse.

The state audit concluded that the lengthy and expensive dismissal process for teachers in California contributes to districts making settlement agreements with them instead of fully investigating and disciplining them. This is because certificated employees (i.e., teachers) who appeal their dismissals are currently entitled to a hearing before the Commission of Professional Competence (CPC). One of the goals of the Padilla legislation is to reduce settlements by speeding up the dismissal process, in part by ending teachers’ rights to a hearing before the CPC.

While it is certainly desirable to get molesters out of the classroom as quickly as possible, the right to an appeal is a necessary due process right, as innocent teachers are sometimes arbitrarily or vindictively accused of misconduct by administrators, parents and students. Ending this right will do nothing to protect children, as districts already have the right, as well as the legal obligation, to immediately remove accused abusers from the classroom, even while investigations are pending. While the new legislation would do nothing to expedite the removal of molesters from the classroom, it would reduce the amount of time it takes from the end of the investigation until a teacher is dismissed, thereby saving districts money that would have been spent housing teachers in “rubber” rooms or paying them salaries during the appeals process.

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.