Cat's Out of the Bag!

OK, the cat’s out of the bag!  CA Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu has ruled that five so called “Challenged Statutes”, relating to public school teachers’ job rights, are unconstitutional.

The five “Challenged Statutes” relate to three issues:  (1) teacher tenure, something we in Washington state call a “continuing contract law’; (2) teachers’ due process rights, which seems mainly to focus around the procedures involved in disciplining, punishing, or firing teachers; and (3) a teacher identification process during lay offs that is referred to as “Last In, First Out” or LIFO.  Let’s look at these three issues more closely, saving commentary on the case for another day.

Tenure Statute (Referred to by the judge as the “Permanent Employment Statute.”)

According to CA’s teacher tenure statute, a teacher is eligible for tenure after two years.  (In Washington state, I believe the timeline is three years.)  During those two years, the teacher is supposed to be carefully observed and evaluated, so that a reasonable decision can be made about awarding tenure.  Apparently, there’s a timeline conflict between the time a teacher becomes eligible and the time the evaluation process is completed.  That is to say, in order to have the paper work completed before the deadline expires, a decision must be made sometime around the middle to the end of February of the second year.  That means about 18 months after the teacher begins working.  So, they don’t “really” have two years to look at the teacher’s work.  Because of that, the judge ruled the statute unconstitutional.  His actual words were, “leaving the applicable district with a non-credentialed teacher with tenure” was so egregious as to make the statute unconstitutional.

Due Process Statutes (Referred to by the judge as “Dismissal Statutes.”)

There are three statutes involved here.  The judge pointed out that, according to a CA case known as Skelly v. State Personnel Board, teachers have a “property right” to their employment and, therefore, due process is attached.  Apparently, CA administrators testified the due process statute’s requirements are too time consuming and too expensive to pursue, so they rarely do.  The judge, responding to this testimony, coins the phrase “uber due process” and finds it unconstitutional.

Last in, First Out (Referred to by many as LIFO.)

This statute allows districts to use seniority in district as a primary factor in determining which teachers will be laid off, when that becomes necessary.  Of the available criteria, LIFO is the most objective, since time in district can be clearly established and requires no “interpretation” of the data.  The judge described it as, “No matter how gifted the junior teacher, and no matter how grossly ineffective the senior teacher, the junior gifted one” is let go.  Leaving out the adjectives, that’s an accurate description of the LIFO process. 

Effective v. Ineffective

Throughout the decision, there’s repeated use of the terms “effective” and “ineffective”.  However, nowhere in the decision is there either a definition of those terms or any explanation of how teachers are identified as one or the other.

Students Matter, David F. Welch, Plaintiffs and the California Teacher Associations

Out front is a recently formed group known as “Students Matter”, which was founded and is backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David F. Welch.  There are nine students identified as the “plaintiffs” in the case.  There are no schools or school districts identified as plaintiffs.  Three school districts were released as defendants by the plaintiffs.  The California Teachers Association participated in this case as an “intervenor”. 

You can see Judge Treu’s decision at:

http://studentsmatter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Tenative-Decision.pdf