More on LAUSD- strike is barred, teacher performance based termination changes in law requested

A couple of stories on the LAUSD teacher issues are continuing in the news.

And L.A. Times story. "School board members acknowledge swifter firings are needed; Four L.A. Unified board members say state laws need to be changed to get rid of underperforming teachers. Support for such efforts has increased in the wake of a Times investigation." By Jason Song May 13, 2009.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/05/la-schools-supt-reacts-to-teacher-dismissal-controversy-and-flu.html

There's the expected reaction coming from the recent series in the L.A. Times about the many teachers that can't be fired and that still get paid while housed at Beaudry headquarters. The LAUSD Board wants to have the state change laws but the Times items showed that the problems often came from mishandling of complaints and the processing by personnel that should be responsible for attending to hiring and continuing supervision. A lot of the problem is of LAUSD's own processes that you just don't see in the private sector, or if you do see it, the condition changes very soon upon discovery, and the people responsible have their own jobs to worry about.

There needs to be action to remedy situations like the one presented in the Times story, sounding similar in history to the various cases of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, including the Los Angeles Archdiocese under the "leadership" of Roger Mahoney. You may recall that there was the constant moving of priests and others accused or suspected of sexual abuse, instead of addressing the situation appropriately to end the conduct. Sometimes the people new location had some idea of the earlier problems and many times, nothing of the sort was mentioned, and the conduct was repeated upon other victims, usually children. The Archdiocese undeniably received favored treatment by law enforcement during investigations, and no one came in to clean out files and other records like what happens in other cases where it's not a church involved.

So let's not forget that. You had the D.A.'s office as another entity entangled with politics, not wanting to stir up a hornet's nest of controversy- but who suffers from that? It's justice that was shortchanged. It didn't help the victims. That entire scenario was not a good model to follow, but the impact on victims is no less serious when it's in the schools and not the church. In both cases, positions of respect and confidence allowed vulnerabilities of victims to be exploited.

The idea of easing restrictions on how a teacher can be terminated is one of the things that the Board voted for by a majority. President Monica Garcia is one of the persons usually in the union's corner, in the tradition of her benefactor, Mayor Villaraigosa.

Board President Monica Garcia, among others, cautioned that the solution would
be complicated and needed careful study.

Garcia seems to favor "studies" that are costly and that still leave you without any changes when much time has passed and much money has been spent. It seems that she is, in her own way, "running interference" for the union.

Look at her colleague, Board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, recently in the news when getting a big chunk of tax dollars as salary for consulting for state Sen. Gloria Romero, "Yolie Flores Aguilar, a longtime friend and political ally of some powerful California Democrats, last year supplemented her income as vice president of the Los Angeles school board with more than $32,000 as a consultant assigned to a state Senate committee that, during her tenure, did not meet or release any reports, " from the story, "California jobs go to those with connections; Lawmakers can hire anyone they choose. Sometimes that means friends and family." By Patrick McGreevy, March 27, 2009 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-nepotism27-2009mar27,0,1567133.story

Flores Aguilar is in step with Garcia's view of this situation,

"We need a comprehensive strategy, we need to present a well-thought-out
legislation, and we [need] someone who will carry legislation. We have to do all
of our homework," said board member Yolie Flores Aguilar.

It all makes you wonder how anything will change when you have such an influence of politics overshadowing the need to act responsibly which is not always to stall things with a "study" but instead to move on making changes. Maybe one of the most significant changes you could ever see would be something done INTERNALLY to make the Headquarters and Sub-District offices do a better job to keep everything up to date. Some training in legal issues would help and some teacher and administrator training to avoid allowing the conditions that create lawsuits. And another improvement might be a novel one: using some common sense, often a scarce commodity in bureaucracies, as I have noticed over the years with many governmental agencies. When somebody asks for explanations for things, there should be prompt and good ones. There should not be cases where people have to construct lies or, maybe notice at that point, that what they have is not a completely responsible situation and they should not have let it get to that condition.

A lot can be done NOW to make the District act responsively instead of being a runaway train that will either crash or take miles and miles to slow down for control to be regained.

The other story is continuing from yesterday's L.A. Times story on the court order stopping a strike- updated for May 13, 2009- "Judge prohibits L.A. teachers strike; He grants a restraining order against the walkout planned for Friday, saying it defies the United Teachers union contract." By Howard Blume May 13, 2009 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd-strike13-2009may13,0,1958124.story

This strike is still something that many wanted to participate in but the law is what controls. If any complaints are to be made by UTLA members, complain to your negotiators who made up the contract. They could look into seniority as the controlling factor for layoff notices while they are at it.

You see in the story that there still was an impact from the threat of the strike, where cancellations of events and changes in schedules had to be made in anticipation of the strike happening, including a Lincoln High trip to Glendale Community College. While maybe not all people are going to college, the things like this trip being lost for that day is another waste of time in the planning and need for rescheduling. Exposure of even Community College facilities to many students is often enlightening. Many have not been exposed to what many of us now take for granted as know by all. Students don't necessarily "know all" about anything, and assuming so itself is a reason for a less-than-the-best learning environment to be presented. Such things like a strike that upset the school day have to be subordinate to what gets an educational experience accomplished for students at every opportunity.

Lots in this area- imparting personal knowledge and skill- can be helped along by persons with such personal knowledge showing many or even just a few students, those things that they otherwise would have to learn about from reading books, or from "field trips," and maybe not learning at all. There are so many people who are themselves potential resources for information that would be able to give students a richer learning experience, more easily getting students "engaged" in the process to perform better academically and at least be sure of what they do know from such mentors efforts.

The mentor approach is something that even I as a former teacher and alum of the school don't hear about as "happening." If I were a parent of an LHS student I might have that information, but even there, I am not sure that parents, in general, know much about what happens in school. I see numerous learning opportunities lost through the short-sightedness of people in administrative roles who remain confined in thought to ritualistic procedures. Some other approaches that seem to be "new" are often explored, including the "small learning academies" ("SLCs") that still don't make complete sense to me- if small is the only way to educate, then why do other districts with comparable populations have academic performance so much better without resorting to SLCs?

I will get into SLC discussions later and I don't think it's the panacea for the poor performance that many believe it to be.

LAUSD easing teacher firing plans; Galatzin not happy with decision

"LAUSD backs off plan to ease firing of teachers;
The board fails to pass the proposal, instead creating a task force to study the issue." By Howard Blume April 29, 2009, L.A. Times, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd29-2009apr29,0,425306.story

A proposal to make it faster and easier to fire ineffective, unprofessional or abusive teachers failed to pass at Tuesday's meeting of the Los Angeles Board of Education. A slim majority instead voted 4 to 3 to establish a task force to study the issue.

The resolution had been presented by board members Tamar Galatzan and Marlene Canter, who said she had pushed the issue behind the scenes since last fall.

Galatzin was interviewed on the radio Wednesday afternoon, expressed thorough frustration with the Board's outcome, choosing to conduct "a study of the issue" instead. She acknowledged that this particular action was effectively, no action.

The influence of the teachers union on the issue is obvously pretty heavy. There is always the thought that one's job can be endangered by the subjective judgement of a few superiors. This is the usual reason for rejection of anything that would weaken teacher's job security, but also results in throwing up a formidable firewall for the teachers with tenure.

"Let's all sit at the table," said board member Richard Vladovic, echoing calls
from leaders of the teachers union. "Let's slow it down and do it right."

The successful amended motion to establish a task force was offered by Vladovic,
Yolie Flores Aguilar and board President Monica Garcia.

The hardest part of making this thing work is finding a way that removes as much subjectivity as possible from the evaluation process. If student improvement is a measure of teacher performance, then how is that going to be assessed? If a student is a high performer, how much higher a gain would be possible? If the student is a poor performer, what amount of that behavior do you attribute to the teacher and what part is the responsibility of the student? And there you see a few of the problems. For issues not including student performance, the evaluation might be made more objectively. But the presence of a lot of vindictive and some simply ignorant superiors looms over the situation, and will remain an obstacle acceptance of this change happening.

You have administrators who are in their positions and still don't know basic concepts of law where retaliation is a legally barred practice, but it gets done anyway. The actions actually constitute legal violations, whether the interpretationj by the actor conforms to the view that a violation has been committed. In a school situation, you have the irony present where there are many actions taken to "preserve" rights of students, and then the same people will do things violative of employment laws and other laws and common sense when it comes to dealing with the adults on the school site.

The other offensive basis that makes me wonder how anything would be carried out comes from seeing how a school can be managed or mismanaged in various forms or areas. There have been general and specific observations that I knew of where certain supportive personnel were not properly supervised, causing delays for teachers getting materials and equipment in operation in a timely fashion. The practice was generally acknowledge by many teachers but they were stuck with the condition, lest it be made worse by complaining. A lot of that is in the past at some sites as administrators change, but the practices result in a subpar level of support for teachers and others, ultimately impacting on delivery of services (teaching) to the students. So who do you trust to judge teachers?

I am a skeptical of fairness easily assured. Galatzin appears to be the most pragmatic member since David Tokofsky was on the Board. She's accessible to the media and her presentations don't sound contrived with a lot of platitudes and mumbo-jumbo that's supposed to sound legalistic and serve as a response to a question, like others on the Board. You might look to the local area for examples. Board President Monica Garcia sidetracked the plans and for any "study" to be done, you know that if it's an LAUSD project, it's going to be a huge WASTE OF MONEY - a prediction that so much of the Board's track record will support.

But some situations don't need that- where students have been hurt and a pattern and practice is found with these problems, you should act to terminate; but that would make the school liable, too, based on the inevitably long lead time allowed to fester by the District before any action is taken. Again, it's often a case of the personnel (including management levels, or especially management levels, I should say) absolutely ignorant of the impact of the laws (and for some, either just ignorant of law altogther or acting in spite of the law), in which case training is essential (and often missing or inadequate) if that exposure to more liability is going to be stopped. It's' a big problem and a having such a huge district does not make for a condition conducive for solutions to happen. Even small districts have their own large problems, but they can get to them sooner, in my opinion. If there was a whistle-blower provision in LAUSD for internal ills, I am not aware of it, but you would expect it to either need lots of extensions to take calls, or just an answering machine for lack of faith in the system acting and not retaliating against a caller for his or her trouble.