What a ridiculous claim!

In a court case in California, a bevy or flock or pride of teacher-bashing organizations argue that teacher tenure violates the civil rights of students. The bevy says that bad teachers hurt students and tenure protects bad teachers.

Maybe next they will sue to eliminate tenure in higher education so everyone is an adjunct.

In higher education, tenure is a guarantee of a lifetime job.

In K-12 education, tenure is a promise of a hearing before they fire you. If a student falsely claims you touched him or her, you are fired without a hearing. If the principal doesn’t like your race, your religion, your face, he or she can fire you without having to say why.

Here is Ted Olsen explaining to the Jeb Bush foundation of rightwing extremists how this case will be a civil rights landmark.

No, it will be one more nail in the coffin of the teaching profession, one more chance to reduce the status of teachers and to increase churn.

Here is what the teachers of the Bay Area say.

“Just when you think that some of the big moneyed, right wing reformers might back off from their unsound, unproven and unrealistic schemes, along comes another one!

“Did you know that because of five sections of the California Education Code YOU have just become the enemy and you are accused of depriving our neediest students of their education?

“Forget about the damage done by unnecessary high stakes testing and fly by night charter schools. Disregard poverty, racism, homelessness, neglect and malnutrition. So what if the schools in California are ranked at the bottom in per pupil funding, class sizes, number of librarians, counselors and nurses in our schools. Not to mention that we have lowered the number of educators by over 30,000, in the California in the last few years.

“Don’t even think about the hard work that you and your colleagues do every day to teach the children of San Francisco under difficult and challenging conditions.

“David F. Welch, CEO of INFINERA, a fiber optics communication company, is the founder of NewSchools Venture Fund. Previously, the fund has invested in charter schools in Boston and worked in “school reform” in New Jersey, Washington, D.C. and Oakland. Now he has created “Students Matter,” and hired the law firm of Theodore B. Olsen, Theodore J. Boutrous and Marcellus Antonio Mc Rae, partners in the powerful law firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, to sue the state of California.

“In their own words, “The lawsuit seeks to strike down five provisions of the education code that, separately and together, push some of out best teachers out of the classroom and entrench grossly ineffective teachers in our schools….”

“They allege that “California’s schools hire and retain grossly ineffective teachers at alarming rates.”

“In the lawsuit they attack the due process rights that are referred to when you achieve “tenure.” They attack procedures called for when you are accused of misbehavior by a student, a parent or an administrator. They attack seniority when there is a need for lay-offs. And they want “objective evidence of student growth” to be part of evaluations.

“No one in the profession wants educators who are not competent and not doing the job they have been hired to do. No one in the profession wants to see students harmed in any way.

“But, all that tenure really means is that a person must be made aware of the reason they may be in jeopardy of losing their job. Educators should not be “at will” employees who can be fired at the whim of the administration. We do not want the careers of people ruined because they have been falsely accused of misbehavior. The unions seek to protect the rights of employees to know the charges made against them, and the right to defend oneself. That is what is meant by due process.

“The reformers have filed this lawsuit because they have failed to achieve their ends using the democratic political process. The Education Code of California was created by our elected representatives. If the public wants to make changes, there is a democratic process to do that. The people behind this effort have been unsuccessful in doing that and so they have resorted to going to court to push their anti-teacher, anti-union perspective.”

…in Los Angeles Superior Court thanks to Students Matter, a group backed by Silicon Valley billionaire businessman David Welch and other corporate reformers. They are attempting to use the courts to strike down due process, dismantle the state layoff statutes and tie teacher evaluations to standardized test scores. But circumventing the legislative process to strip us of our professional rights does not improve learning and hurts students.

On the first day, both sides presented their opening arguments and the plaintiffs brought their top witness and Superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District John Deasy to the stand. That continues today as does cross examination.

CTA State Council Condemns Vergara Lawsuit

LOS ANGELES – In a unanimous vote today, delegates of the CTA State Council of Education denounced the Vergara v. State of California lawsuit attacking educators’ professional and due process rights that’s being bankrolled by millionaires and corporate special interests.

Strongly reiterating CTA concerns with the “deceptive” lawsuit filed by Students Matter, a group headed by Silicon Valley millionaire David Welch, Council delegates adopted a resolution saying California’s teachers “stand for students, educators and local public schools and denounce the meritless claims, fallacies and fabrications of the Vergara lawsuit and its deceptive goals.”

“The Vergara lawsuit puts the professional rights of teachers on trial, which does nothing to help students,” said CTA President Dean E. Vogel. “CTA will continue to fight to ensure we have qualified and experienced teachers in our classrooms whose rights are respected, and not subject to arbitrary and capricious behavior or favoritism.”

The misguided lawsuit seeks to strike down state laws about public school educators’ due process rights for dismissals, dismantle the state layoff statutes and tie teacher evaluations to standardized student test scores. The CTA resolution says the lawsuit blames teachers for shortcomings in education while ignoring the impacts of “external factors like poverty, underfunding, lack of access to adequate healthcare and early childhood education” and how they have a “greater impact than any one teacher can overcome.”

The lawsuit trial begins Monday, Jan. 27, in Los Angeles Superior Court. CTA and the California Federation of Teachers have intervened in the case to help the state.

The Council’s nearly 800 democratically elected teacher delegates from around the state comprise the union’s top governing body and represent the 325,000 members of the California Teachers Association. Revealing CTA background on the lawsuit is online here. This is the full text of the Vergara lawsuit resolution adopted today:

CTA Resolution Supporting Educators and Students Against the Corporate Special Interest Lawsuit: Vergara v. State of California

PREFACE: With their ideas rejected by voters at the ballot box and by lawmakers, millionaires and corporate special interests have now filed a lawsuit to push their misguided agenda on our local public schools and attack educators and their professional rights. The corporate education reformers are attempting to use the courts to strike down due process, dismantle the state layoff statutes and tie teacher evaluations to standardized student test scores. But circumventing the legislative process to strip educators of their professional rights does not improve learning and hurts students. This lawsuit wastes taxpayer money, highlights the wrong problems, proposes the wrong solutions, and is deliberately designed to keep parents and educators out of education policy decisions.

WHEREAS, the Vergara v. State of California lawsuit, like other corporate education “reform” efforts, is backed by another Silicon Valley multi-millionaire, David Welch, who started the group Students Matter that’s behind the litigation; and

WHEREAS, the lawsuit is based on the false premise that state statutes that help to attract and retain quality teachers by providing professional rights are failing public education, when research confirms that most public schools are a success and student learning is improving in California; and

WHEREAS, this meritless lawsuit ignores the biggest challenges facing public education, including a severe lack of funding, inadequate resources, overcrowded classrooms, economic inequality, and student poverty; for the 2011-12 school year, nearly 56 percent of California’s 6.2 million K-12 students were considered low-income and qualified for free or reduced-price school meals; and while the passage of Proposition 30 is slowly repaying years of budget cuts, California still spends $3,500 per student less than the national average; and

WHEREAS, this lawsuit and trial are a waste of valuable taxpayer money that would much better be spent actually investing in our students, schools and educators; and

WHEREAS, contrary to what the lawsuit claims, not one teacher in California has a job for life, and teachers can be dismissed during the first two years of employment for no reason at all; students need a stable, experienced and high-quality teaching workforce; current laws ensure experienced teachers have a right to a hearing and are not dismissed for arbitrary or unfair reasons; and

WHEREAS, eliminating the professional rights of educators will actually make it harder to attract and retain high-quality teachers into our classrooms at a time when nearly 50 percent of teachers in urban and high-poverty schools leave the profession within the first five years; and

WHEREAS, this lawsuit ignores all research that shows teaching experience does matter and contributes to student learning; studies show that teacher experience enhances teacher effectiveness and increases student productivity in all grades in reading and math; and

WHEREAS, in the court of public opinion the verdict on testing is already in – parents know their child is more than a standardized test score and therefore that a single test score can’t determine teacher effectiveness; and

WHEREAS, while the role of the teacher is always an important in-school factor in student learning, external factors like poverty, underfunding, lack of access to adequate healthcare and early childhood education have a greater impact than any one teacher can overcome; and

WHEREAS, the long record of CTA support for students of greatest need includes the CTA-sponsored Quality Education Investment Act, the landmark school turnaround program which commits nearly $3 billion over eight years for proven reforms such as smaller class sizes, better teacher training, more collaboration time and parental involvement and is improving student learning in hundreds of California’s high-poverty schools; and

WHEREAS, this lawsuit tries to legislate from the bench and exclude meaningful input from parents and educators in education decisions, when the only way to have real educational change is to have the voices of all stakeholders, including parents, educators, administrators, students and community members, in the discussion; and

WHEREAS, the plaintiffs’ lawyers have tried to frame this lawsuit as a student-driven fight for educational equality, but the backers of this suit who are spending thousands of dollars on high-paid media consultants are a “who’s who” of the billionaire boys club whose real agenda is to privatize public schools and attack educators and their unions – the very people in California who have led the fight for free public schools, educational equality, equity and social justice for 150 years; and

WHEREAS, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers have intervened in the lawsuit filed against the state to defend our students and the education profession;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Teachers Association State Council of Education delegates, on behalf of all 325,000 members of CTA, stand for students, educators and local public schools and denounce the meritless claims, fallacies and fabrications of the Vergara lawsuit and its deceptive goals;

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that CTA will continue to fight this meritless lawsuit, will continue to support having highly qualified and effective teachers in every classroom whose rights are respected and protected as set forth by law and the Constitution of the State of California, and will continue to work with parents, educators, administrators and community members to provide quality public schools to all students of California.

Rep Council Agenda Jan. 28

**Our Health Care Committee is up and running! Thanks to Alyson Brauning who will chair the committee, and Brenda Hensley, Kent Puddy, Scott Bassett, Nancy Anderson-Louie, Lisa Aspey and Stacie Smith who have signed up to take on this job. The role of the committee will be to research alternative options and gather data that will help us make informed decisions about how we provide health care benefits to our members. The committee will report to the Exec Board, Rep Council, and membership, and solicit input from members to inform the bargaining process.

**There is a School Board workshop January 23rd at 5:30. The purpose of the workshop is to finalize the parameters for the Smarter Balanced (SBAC) testing and for the Board to share its vision for future technology in VUSD. One of the decisions before the School Board is whether to use wired labs with desktop computers or mobile carts with wireless notebooks for the SBAC testing we will be required to do this spring. There was much discussion at the January 9th School Board meeting on which option is best. Below is a link to the January 23rd workshop agenda and to the video of the January 9th Board meeting if you would like to get caught up on the discussion. I strongly encourage members who have an opinion about this topic to share it with Board Members. Their email addresses can be found on the third link.