Warren Fletcher, our new UTLA President, said it loud and clear at the meeting of displaced teachers held at UTLA Headquarters on Saturday August 27th. He said, “UTLA screwed up.” Our union screwed up by being “ambiguous” about Fremont High School when it was the first major secondary school in LA Unified to fall under the axe of “reconstitution.” According to Fletcher, reconstitution is analogous to a teacher threatening to send his or her entire class to the Dean’s office for discipline. It simply isn’t feasible to attempt such a thing. The Dean’s office doesn’t have the resources, but if you can get the students to buy into the threat, you can accomplish what you want to accomplish. The district wants the teachers to buy into the possibility of full faculty replacement.
The district was losing the game at first. The majority of Fremont teachers were not reapplying. This remained true until UTLA waffled on its commitment to back them up. As a result, the one reconstitution led to eight the following year, including Clinton Middle School, Huntington Park High School, and Jordan High School. “What’s going to happen next year? Will there be 64 reconstitutions?” Already, a list of Public School Choice 4.0 schools is being compiled for “reform” plans, which might or might not be accepted by the board.
Displaced teachers are still guaranteed employment with the district. They have not violated their contract by abandoning an assignment or by engaging in any sort of misconduct. They are not being let go due to economic necessity. Warren pointed out that it is important not to toy with new assignments once they are given.
When the district assigns a displaced teacher to a location, the teacher needs to show up there and report for work. Failure to do so could result in an AWOL designation and subsequent termination. The Human Resources office began “forced placement” of displaced teacher last week. According to Warren more than 100 secondary English teachers will be assigned as “pool teachers” for particular schools. A pool teacher will be paid as a regular teacher but function as a substitute for the school to which he or she has been assigned. Apparently, the district is waiting for the four-week “norm” day in September when a final tally of students takes place before it recalls RIF teachers who were let go for budgetary reasons.
Warren Fletcher refers to this delay in rescinding RIF notices and rehiring these teachers until Norm day as “maximizing desperation.” It is part of strategy to pit RIF teachers against displaced teachers and to pit the regular substitutes against both groups. Fletcher announced that the district has “wildly understated its enrollment” and corresponding teaching positions. The money is there for both RIF and displaced teachers to be regularly employed.
Displacement will continue next year if the district continues to reconstitute troubled campuses and give away new campuses to private charter companies. There is a movement among people in power to change the Education Code in order to allow school districts to terminate the employment of displaced teachers if they are unable to beat the stigma attached to displacement and convince an individual school to take them full time. Gloria Romero, an elected legislator in California, has inquired as to whether UTLA might be “open to new models” of reform. She claims that she wants to emulate the NY model, but does not know the specifics of this model. What attracts her is the idea that displaced teachers could lose permanent status after a year. According to Warren, UTLA has become “drunk on the concepts of local control and local autonomy.” Too much local control can work against the interests of displaced teachers. As Warren reminded everyone at the meeting, the mechanisms are in place right now for incompetent and poorly performing teachers to be released from their jobs. It requires due process. Most advocates for dismissing displaced teachers do not believe in due process for teachers.
Warren Fletcher told the group assembled on Saturday that he wants to know if anyone is being “strong armed” into a thin contract such as the kind that exists with pilot schools. He alarmed the group when he reported that the new district budget is allocating money for 20 new “investigative” positions to Human Resources on Beaudry Ave. in order to keep files on undesirable teachers in the hope of using information to dismiss them.
LA Displaced Teachers are making some demands from UTLA now that we have been afforded a kind of honorary chapter status. We want the union to enforce the contract. Displaced teachers have priority over most other categories of teachers when it comes to the assignment of teaching positions. We want a grievance to be filed by UTLA. We want to know if there is such a thing as a “no hire” list since so many displaced teachers have been routinely turned down in as many as a dozen interviews. Such a list would be a violation of the contract.
At the next School Board meeting on Tuesday, August 30, the board will vote on Steve Zimmer’s proposal that no more new campuses be given to charter companies since these campuses have been purchased with public tax money and charter companies are not making any strides in academic performance throughout the district. The latest collection of data has shown charter-operated schools to be underperforming regular public schools in student academic achievement. People need to be there to show support for Zimmer’s proposal.
The next displaced teachers meeting will be held at UTLA Headquarters on Wilshire Blvd. on Saturday September 17th at 11 am.
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SOME COMMENTARY:
Kudos to Warren for quickly pouncing on the claim that a “no hire” list and the act of displacement itself may actually have some legitimacy. This is not about improving schools or helping kids. It is utterly political maneuvering with displacements resulting from fictitious interviews staged for show. The best teachers are not retained. Teachers who think and speak are noted and discriminated against. Isn’t that ironic when state standards call for critical thinking? Ultimately, this is about the privatization of public education.
Already one can see a “dumbing down” of curriculum at HPHS and an easier grading scheme intended to make students and their parents happy without actually preparing students for further academics. Sending a student out of class is now viewed as an offense that prompts the new principal to question the abilities of the teacher.
Great update, very informative. Did Fletcher say what action he plans to take if the district does try to reconstitute more schools?
Gloria Romero is awful and simply wants us to be a third world country where teachers are paid 500 dollars a month.
Posted by: fremontwatch | August 28, 2011 at 07:42 PM
Excellent, Phil.
This is a clear narrative of the meeting and part of our "permanent record".
I just wanted to add that a steering committee was formed at the meeting which will mobilize to
help publicize and educate the public about the superintendent and the
nefarious Villaraigoza supporters in the board
(Monica Garcia, Tamar Galatzan,Nury Martinez and Dick Vladovic).
We want to spread the message far and wide that the superintendent is creating a crisis and
will be creating unemplyment by working against teachers in his school district.
Imagine a superintendent creating a branch of the KGB to "investigate" the dissidents.
I hope the public has had enough of the Brown-Shirt tactics and return this fellow to Microsoft
as defective merchandise.
Posted by: ComputerTeacherWithaCause | August 28, 2011 at 07:53 PM
Gloria romero ran for state superintendent of instruction she lost; strongly supported by charter school movement her money comes from them that is who she serves question her every decision I hope union is aware of all this its on google but they haven't done a good job at using it
Posted by: beware | August 28, 2011 at 07:55 PM