LAUSD "TEACHER SHORTAGE"...CREATED BY LAUSD'S ATTACK ON EXPENSIVE SENIOR TEACHERS
(Mensaje se repite en Español)
Someone once gave me an explanation of the Yiddish word chutzpah by saying, "It's like killing your mother and father and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that you're an orphan." For another good example of chutzpah, one only need look at the present teacher shortage that in fact is only the logical result of a well organized and concerted attack on senior top-of-the-salary scale teachers who coincidentially??? make up 93% of teachers LAUSD continues to target with false morals charges under Education Code Section 44939- the assertion of which deprives them of grievance and arbitration through their union, before they are sent packing in a purposefully protracted process designed to financially and emotionally grind them down.
But this war on senior teachers could never have been "successful" enough to create a teacher shortage without the tacit collusion and outright support of a teachers' union UTLA that now has the chutzpah to ask for and receive a 30% dues rise, because it allowed thousands of senior teachers- and their dues- to be removed without lifting a finger to come to their aid as one would think is the union's obligation under Article V, section 1 et seq of the present LAUSD-UTLA Collective Bargaining Agreement.
With the attack on nationally acclaimed teacher Rafe Esquith and his $1 billion lawsuit brought by the Mark Geragos law firm on behalf of him and 2000 other similarly targeted teachers, the public is finally given a window into the invariable and completely fabricated process LAUSD and their co-conspirators at UTLA have used to remove thousands of completely innocent teachers in a reality where not one commercial or public media source has every published the fact that LAUSD saves approximately $60,000 in combined salary and benefits, when they replace these falsely targeted teachers with a fresh out of college "teacher" working on an emergency credential.
However, in going after senior teachers for the sole motive that they are expensive, it is important to note that neither LAUSD nor UTLA have the power on their own to accomplish such a blattant crime. Clearly, they are getting the greenlight from both the state and federal government in furtherance of a plan to privatize public education with a charter school system that objectively not only doesn't do better, but actually does significantly worse, while costing much much more.
Here the motive is a corporate bottom line that is covetous of the estimated 40% of the close to $3 trillion a year national public education budget that is already being significantly impacted by non-competitive contracts for goods and services that are often many times fair market value, which only succeeds in augmenting these corporations bottom line, while only negatively impacting public education.
In such a hostile work environment is there any surprise that enrollment in teacher credentialing programs is down as much as 70%? Or, one might ask, would this be allowed to continue, if our presently de facto (90%) segregated school system had been integrated as Brown v Board of Education supposedly made the legal requirement 62 years ago?
In the proposed State Auditor's investigation of how school districts like LAUSD remove teachers, it is clear before this investigation even takes place into why it takes so long to remove "bad teachers" and whether such district teacher removal processes are ""fair and just in their timeliness and appropriateness," that Representative Tony Mendoza's investigation is only designed to whitewash LAUSD's illegal behavior that has lead to the now critical and yet predictable shortage of teachers. This investigation seems more motivated as a response to the Rafe Esquith lawsuit than any real desire to uncover an illegal and disengenuous attack on senior teachers for the sole motives that they are either too expensive or are against teachers who have objected to going along with district policies that continue to socially promote students to assured future academic failure, who have fundamental deficiencies in all academic areas that continue to be allowed to be ignored by LAUSD and minority segregated districts like it around the country.
In proposing "market forces" be allowed to resolve the current shortage of teachers what is actually being proposed is to degrade the very nature of what it is to be a highly competent well-trained and professional teacher in favor of a novice fresh-out-of-college untrained 20-something whose only attribute is that they cost less and are projected to not stay on for more than 3 years. One need only look at the clear disparity between what charter schools like PUC pay their teachers and what a unionized teacher at LAUSD makes to clearly understand the sole monetary motive for getting rid of expensive senior teachers in favor of unformed and informed inexpensive recent college graduates working on emergency credentials for little money.
If you or someone you know has been targeted and are in the process of being dismissed and need legal defense, get in touch:
Lenny@perdaily.com
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No matter what new or select terminology is used to cover this process. It's been going on for years. It at least dates back over 10 years to the first round of Reduction In Force which flushed out thousands of teachers with less than 10 years in the system and left them with no choice other than signing up to become priority subs or leaving the system. Most left and never returned. It was a real coup for the district since UTLA, the teachers union was a paper tiger about defending its members. Of course, as is mentioned here, the process is much more aggressive when it comes to veteran teachers closing in the 20 mark which would vest them in life time health insurance. For that the district successfully employs low evaluations even if the teacher in question has previously had nothing but stellar reviews. If that's not enough to get the job done, suddenly there are lurid accusations of inappropriate behavior with students. Knowing that the union will do little if anything in support of the accused, this is usually a done deal.
What may have gone unnoticed in these purges is that the district has extended its target range to leave no stone unturned. It now targets veteran substitute teachers. For them, it's double indemnity because the union has long history of never lifting a finger for them although they're dues paying members. Part of this process is the hiring of new subs even though the district is anything but short of subs and, in fact, on any given day, there are positions crying out for subs and not being addressed by district's sub finder system to access those subs just sitting at home waiting for a call to duty and this includes long time veteran subs. To make matters worse, the union is part and parcel to this. If you were to take the time to go to LASUBS, the main website for district substitute teachers, you would find frequent complaints there. But that site has been thoroughly co opted and compromised by the union which uses its agents there to deflect complaints or to leave them unaddressed. Along with that, many of the subs there who participate in the Substitute Teacher Committee, the union's arm, long since sold out so that they could continue to work absences and vacancies and collect under the table stipends from the union.
If this is happening even within substitute circles, one can only imagine the level of corruption organized practiced against contract teachers.