Today in Labor History—March 3

Slave Auction Advertisement (from Wikipedia)

March 3, 1859 - The largest recorded slave auction in U.S. history occurred on this date on a Georgia plantation. More than 400 men, women and children were auctioned in order to pay debts incurred by Pierce M. Butler through gambling and the financial crash of 1857-58. (From Workday Minnesota)

March 3, 1968 – Chicano students walked out of classes at Los Angeles high schools, calling for an end to racist policies. (From the Daily Bleed)

San Francisco School Board Waives Seniority

The San Francisco School Board voted 5-1 this week to do away with seniority protections in order to save the jobs of 70 low-seniority teachers in 14 low-performing schools in the “Superintendent’s Zone.” They also voted 5-1 to issue 485 layoff notices, including 210 teacher and counselor layoffs, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

An editorial in the Chron lamented that “low-performing schools won't improve if their most dedicated young teachers are the first to get pink slips.” This commonly believed and parroted delusion is based on the illogical premise that young and inexperienced teachers are somehow better than their more experienced peers. This is like arguing that an eager but inexperienced heart surgeon is better than an experienced veteran. In virtually all endeavors, experience improves one’s performance.

It also ignores the overwhelming causes of low achievement which are primarily socioeconomic in nature and have very little to do with their teachers. Even if we could staff low income schools entirely with the best teachers available and ensure that they were never laid off, low income students would still be coming to school sick, hungry, homeless, stressed and far behind their affluent peers in the requisite skills necessary for academic success.

Another argument that has been made in favor of protecting teachers at low income schools is that their schools tend to have the highest turnover rates and the largest numbers of layoffs during budget cuts. While this is true, it is important to look at the reasons for this tendency and find solutions that address the root causes, rather than slapping on ill-conceived bandages that do not really solve the problem.

SFUSD, like most urban districts, has high levels of low income students segregated in a portion of its schools. In San Francisco, the majority of these are located east of Twin Peaks in the Mission, Bay View-Hunters Point, Tenderloin, and OMI districts. And like most urban school districts, these low income schools tend to have the lowest test scores and highest dropout rates and the greatest pressure on teachers to work harder and longer to erase the achievement gap. Furthermore, the students at these schools tend to have greater emotional, intellectual and physical needs, placing further stress on the teachers. As a result, these schools tend to have higher attrition rates for teachers who burn out from all the extra demands or who transfer to less stressful teaching environments.

Consequently, the schools with the greatest need for quality teachers also tend to have the highest turnover of teachers, as well as a disproportionate number of young and inexperienced teachers who have low seniority. This is true even when budgets are healthy. However, during budget shortfalls, the lower income schools also generally lose more teachers to layoffs than their more affluent neighbors because they have higher percentages of novice teachers.

There is no question that this is unfair and a disservice to students. However, the solution is not to shred teachers’ contractual rights, nor to give younger teachers preferential treatment, as is being attempted in SFUSD (and as occurred in LAUSD this year). For one, there is no reason to believe that protecting those teachers’ jobs will solve the problem of high attrition at their schools. They will continue to face the same challenging students and be expected to raise test scores by impossible margins and implement a variety of new policies and curricula, without being provided the time or compensation to do it well.

Another reason why this strategy is wrongheaded is that it only protects teachers at 14 struggling schools, leaving open the possibility that teachers at other low performing, high turnover schools will still get the axe, including some highly effective veteran teachers. El Dorado, for example, which is not in the protected zone, will lose more than one-third of its teaching staff. The plan is ostensibly being done “in the name of social justice,” UESF President Dennis Kelly was quoted in the SF Chronicle. He went on to say, "You don't have justice for some," which is what will happen if the plan goes through. The union is considering filing a lawsuit to block the move.

One solution would be to reassign students more equitably, so that no schools are made up of mostly low income students. Unfortunately, the problem of Apartheid-like school systems segregated by social class seems to be intractable. It is one thing to offer lower income families the opportunity to bus their kids to a school far away from the gangs, drugs and poverty of their neighborhood, but quite another to tell affluent parents that their kids have been assigned to a ghetto school. Many of those with money will simply jump ship and invest in private school. Indeed, in San Francisco 29% of San Francisco kids were already in private schools in 2005, according to SF Magazine.

However, from the perspective of the teachers, a lot could be done to attract and retain the best and most experienced at challenging low performing schools, thus reducing the percentage of novice and low-seniority teachers. Perhaps the most important would be an abandonment of the accountability and testing mania that has been destroying public education for the past decade. This would take considerable pressure off of teachers to fix problems that are beyond their control and do wonders for the morale and climate at these schools. Simply “allowing teachers to teach,” combined with ample paid collaboration time and paid professional development, would also be strong incentives for retaining dedicated, high quality veteran teachers.

Teacher Seniority is a Labor Issue for All Working People

The final decision to deviate from seniority in the layoff procedure must be decided by an administrative law judge according to state law, which means the decision could stick, regardless of the unions’ position. Since seniority rights are collectively bargained between the union and SFUSD, such an outcome would be tantamount to the state ripping up the teachers’ contract. Keep in mind, teachers bargain with local districts, not the state. Allowing the state to trample on contractually agreed upon rights opens the floodgates for it to trample on other rights and protections.

It is also important to remember that seniority protections exist to prevent arbitrary and vindictive layoffs. Without seniority protections, higher paid veteran teachers can be laid off to save districts money. Teachers could also be fired for their union activities, being outspoken advocates for children or teachers, or for their extracurricular activities or lifestyles. Allowing the state to step in and override seniority could be used to balance continued budget cuts with a mass culling of the highest paid and most experienced teachers. It could also be used to weaken teachers unions by ridding districts of the most active and vocal union members.

Today in Labor History—March 2

Whipping an Enslaved Male, Serro Frio, Brazil, ca. 1770s

March 2, 1807 - Congress abolished the African slave trade. The first American slave ship, Desire, sailed from Marblehead, Massachussetts, in 1637. Since then, nearly 15 million blacks had been transported as slaves to the Americas. Overall, the African continent had lost 50 million people to slavery and the deaths associated with it. Another 250,000 slaves were continued to be imported illegally up to the Civil War. (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

March 2, 1937 - John L. Lewis, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and U.S. Steel President Myron Taylor signed an agreement recognizing the Steel Workers Organizing Committee as the sole representative for its workforce. The contract also included a 40-hour work week and pay for overtime. (From Workday Minnesota)

Judi Bari Portrait from the Lucha Continua mural, 3260 23rd St., Mission District, San Francisco (Image by Gary Soup)

March 2, 1997 – Earth First! activist and IWW organizer Judi Bari (b.1949) died on this date from cancer. Bari and her comrade Darryl Cherney survived a terrorist bomb in Oakland, CA, in 1990. The police and FBI immediately blamed her for the bombing, claiming that she was the terrorist and that the bomb was intended for the logging companies. She was arrested and handcuffed to her hospital bed. Bari and Cherney were eventually exonerated and won a hefty settlement for the FBI’s role in violating their civil liberties. (From the Daily Bleed)

Teachers: the New Satanic Serial Child Molesters?

Teachers Just Wanna Have Fun (Image from Flickr, by SKPY)

Attacking teachers’ unions, collective bargaining and due process rights, pensions, salaries and privacy has not ended the achievement gap nor mollified the critics of public education. Now the witch hunt for teachers is taking a new and twisted turn for the worse, thanks to several recent and coincidental abuse allegations against Los Angeles Unified School District employees and an orgy of hysterical media reports portraying the problem as rampant and due in part to the teachers union.

While it is, of course, imperative that schools provide safe learning environments and that everyone, including teachers, be held accountable for criminal misconduct, a cluster of child abuse allegations does not an epidemic make. Despite the fact that six L.A. Unified employees have recently booked on suspicion of sex-related crimes, while several others have been removed from duties pending investigations, local law enforcement officials have emphasized that they do not believe there is any increase in abuse or molestation, according to the Los Angeles Times. Rather, there has been improved reporting, as there often is following a high profile case. No one wants to get blamed for permitting abusers to flourish in their schools, so they are on heightened alert, looking more closely at any suspicious behavior, and promptly informing officials. Consequently, numerous teachers are under investigation for hugging “too long,” and similar allegations that may or may not be related to abusive behavior.

Nevertheless, LAUSD officials are now releasing information about allegations and pending investigations even before the investigations have been completed and the teachers have been prosecuted or vindicated, thus increasing the sense that molestation and abuse are rampant. In the past, officials withheld such information until after the investigations had been completed and credible charges could be made against the teacher.

Damage Control Through Teacher Control

LAUSD was justifiably worried about its credibility and potential litigation in the wake of the Miramonte scandal. Yet its response of firing the entire staff at Miramonte amounted to collective punishment for the misdeeds of one or two depraved individuals. Likewise, its new policy of publicly revealing accusations and investigations prior to their completion tramples on teachers’ privacy and due process rights in hopes of winning a cheap PR victory. Neither policy makes children any safer.

Now, Sup. John Deasy wants to abolish a contractual provision in which unproven allegations of misconduct are removed from teachers’ personnel files after four years because it could help the district bust potential bad eggs. The LA Times has contributed to the hysteria by calling it a “union” rule, rather than a collectively agreed upon provision in teachers’ contracts, as if the union itself is responsible for the abuse of children.

Both LAUSD and the LA Times have brought up the case of Miramonte Elementary teacher Mark Berndt, who was recently charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct against students. Berndt’s file contained nothing about past misconduct despite at least four past allegations against him.

If anything, this case tells us that LAUSD and LAPD were asleep at the wheel. If there had been four or more allegations against the man and he really was a molester, then LAUSD and LAPD should have been able to bust him long ago, particularly if they had four years to do so. This is the real scandal—not the union’s desire to protect teachers’ privacy and due process rights by purging meritless accusations from their personnel files.

If allegations do not lead to disciplinary action against a teacher, it is reasonable to assume that the allegations were frivolous, vindictive and/or meritless, which is why the contract requires they be thrown out, or they were poorly investigated, in which case eliminating a due process protection would be useless. Holding onto bogus accusations as if they were evidence of something that likely never happened is a classic tactic used by police states and in witch hunts and should not be accepted in lieu of responsible and thorough police work.

Channeling the Satanic Day-Care Molestation Hysteria of the 80s and 90s.

It may turn out that most or all of those currently under investigation in LAUSD are guilty. If so, it is good that they were caught and removed from classrooms. However, the hysteria and demand for teachers’ blood that has followed is reminiscent of the Satanic Day-Care Molestation Hysteria of the 1980s and 90s, in which a few bogus accusations led to the arrests and harassment of many innocent people and a mass fear that every little old lady running a preschool was really a wolf in disguise.

The most infamous of these cases involved the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, leading to the longest and most expensive criminal trial in U.S. history and perhaps the most frivolous. From the start, observers and police should have been skeptical of the absurd claims of hidden tunnels, ritualistic animal slaughter, Satan worship, coprophagia, bloodletting and orgies.  Furthermore, the credibility of the McMartin’s accuser, Judy Johnson, was suspect as she was a diagnosed schizophrenic and chronic alcoholic.

Rather than doing its job of investigating, questioning and critiquing with a skeptical eye, the media simply aped back the ridiculous allegations with prurient delight, thus pandering to the public’s lusts and fears, exacerbating parents’ anxieties about their children’s safety and creating mistrust of all preschools and day care centers.

The suspicion and mistrust lasted nearly two decades. In 1992, for example, a mother in Martensville, Saskatchewan, alleged that a local babysitting service was sexually abusing her child.  Over twelve people, including five police officers, were ultimately charged with running a Satanic cult called The Brotherhood of The Ram, which supposedly practiced ritualized sexual abuse of children at a "Devil Church.” The son of the day care owner was initially found guilty, but a Royal Canadian Mounted Police task force later determined that the original investigation was motivated by "emotional hysteria.” The defendants later sued for wrongful prosecution and won $100,000 each.

The hysteria did not end there. In 1994 and 1995, Washington state police and social workers launched what was then the most extensive child sex-abuse investigation in U.S. history, with 43 adults ultimately arrested on 29,726 charges of child sex abuse in. The main witness was the 13-year-old foster daughter of one of the investigating police officers, Robert Perez. In the end, the city of Wenatchee and Douglas County, Washington were found negligent in the investigations, with the jury awarding the accused couple $3 million.

There were several other similar high profile cases during the 1980s and 1990s. Wikipedia provides a good summary of these cases and includes numerous credible sources. Will LAUSD’s current abuse scandals lead to a similar national mass hysteria and backlash against teachers and their workplace rights?

Hysteria or Common Sense Defense of Children?
Last week, Sup. Deasy ordered school district officials to go back four years to look for any potential teacher misconduct that should have been reported to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. He also asked principals to review all employee files, including expired ones going back decades, to flag potential issues and alert law enforcement authorities of any cases that weren’t but should have been reported. Furthermore, he directed principals to report any allegations they felt had not been addressed appropriately.

While this seems like a common sense protection for children, one might wonder why it hadn’t been done before or isn’t done regularly. On the other hand, one might reasonably ask why any cases need to be reexamined if they were properly handled in the first place.

Yet even these “common sense” procedures are not so cut and dry. The administrators union is resisting, pointing out that the district never had clear procedures for what went into site files and the procedures for reporting suspected child abuse cases has changed over the years. Furthermore, as site administrators change, personal files tend to go with them or get discarded. Since these files are unofficial and “personal,” there is no reason why they should be expected to be saved or passed on to future administrators.

UTLA, for its part, is keeping quiet on the issue, probably out of fear that anything they say will be used to portray them as defenders of abusers. The question is will they resist Deasy’s demand that unproven allegations remain in teachers’ files indefinitely.

Today in Labor History—March 1

March 1, 1798 – U.S. printers went on strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

(Image from IWW.org)

March 1, 1907 – Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) struck sawmills in Portland, Oregon. (From the Daily Bleed)

March 1, 1912 – British miners went on strike for a national minimum wage. It was the largest strike Britain had ever experienced, with over one million workers participating. (From the Daily Bleed)

From lib.com

March 1, 1919 – 15,000 Soviet sailors mutinied at Kronstadt from March 1-17, against Bolshevik tyranny. The rebels adopted a 15-point program of political and economic demands in open defiance of the Bolshevik Party. On March 17, Kronstadt was subdued in a bloody assault by Red Army units. From the Daily Bleed)