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Health & Fitness

The Silence Is Stunning!

Stunning Silence & Absence of Evidence

 

Ever since I enrolled in the UW class “Constitutional Law and American Education” in 1974, I’ve been greatly interested in the legal aspects of my profession.   That accounts for my interest in the “Vergara v. California” decision of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu’, which was published on June 10, 2014.  It found CA’s teacher tenure laws unconstitutional.  In my initial blog on this case (Cat’s Out of the Bag! June 12, 2014), I went over the basic facts of the case and of the people involved.  Now, I will begin to address some of the questions and concerns that arose, as I researched this case.

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My primary concern is the stunning silence I encountered in the text of the decision.  Some important things were glaringly absent.  First of all, there’s no mention in the decision of how the plaintiffs were “harmed” by any of the “Challenged Statutes”.  I’ve been taught that one must first prove an action caused you harm, before you can demand redress of any kind.  I have great respect for the nine students who joined in this suit, as doing so must have been very stressful.  But none of them can produce any evidence of being harmed.  And their opinions, as to the competence of their teachers, are those of young and untrained participants and should be given no weight. 

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The following commentary is excerpted from the defense attorneys' post-trail brief:

 

“Plaintiffs have not established that the statutes have ever caused them any harm…” “None of the nine named Plaintiffs established that he or she was assigned to an allegedly grossly ineffective teacher, … , as a result of the challenged statutes.”

“The record contains no evidence that Plaintiffs Elliott, Liss, Campbell or Martinez were ever assigned a grossly ineffective teacher at all.”

“Of the remaining five Plaintiffs, most of the teachers whom they identified as “bad” or “grossly ineffective” were excellent teachers.”

“Nor could Plaintiffs link their assignment to purportedly “bad” or “grossly ineffective” teachers to the challenged statutes.”

“Not a single witness claimed that any of Plaintiffs’ teachers were granted permanent status because of the two-year probationary period, would have been dismissed in the absence of the dismissal statutes, or would have been laid off had reverse seniority not been a factor in layoffs.”

“Indeed, Plaintiffs did not call any administrator of any of Plaintiffs’ schools to corroborate their testimony or in any way connect the teachers they identified to the statutes they challenge.”

“Furthermore, any threat of future harm to Plaintiffs caused by the challenged statutes is purely speculative. Plaintiffs Elliott and DeBose are high school seniors who will almost certainly graduate in spring 2014. Plaintiffs Monterroza and Martinez both attend charter schools that are not subject to the challenged statutes at all. Beatriz and Elizabeth Vergara both attend a “Pilot School” in LAUSD that is free to let teachers go at the end of the school year for any reason, including ineffectiveness.”

http://www.vergaratrial.com/storage/documents/2014.04.10.Intervenors_Post-Trial_Brief.pdf

 

Absent any proof that the plaintiffs were “harmed”, I fail to see why this case was not dismissed upon the completion of the plaintiff’s arguments.  
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