The recent decision by LAUSD's General Counsel David Holmquist
to no longer require the housing of teachers at LAUSD offices during
school hours, while teachers were under supposed investigation of the
charges against them, seems to pose more questions than it answers.
1.
If it's okay now to allow these teachers to remain at home, what is
different? Why couldn't this have been done years ago, instead of the
mass incarceration of teachers who should have been presumed innocent
until proven guilty by the District in a neutral forum, where LAUSD- and
not the teacher- had the obligation of showing culpable actions on the
part of the teacher in a timely manner and not the purposefully
protracted process designed to break teachers will and ability to defend
their innocence.
2. If Holmquist now feels
its okay to allow teachers to be housed at their homes, why has he done a
complete about face on this issue, what has changed? Why in the recent
past have some teachers been kept incarcerated for over 4 years, while
the charges against them were supposedly being investigated, but now its
okay to let them be at home during the school work day? In the past,
LAUSD justified the incarceration of teachers as motivated by protecting
students from these alleged bad/immoral teachers. As a matter of
course, LAUSD has hit almost every teacher it goes after with an alleged
violation of California Education Code 44939- a morals charge. This is
done so that teachers can be ultimately deprived of salary and benefits
in a move by LAUSD to make it harder for targeted teachers to resist
their firing. So what's different now?
3 Up
until this cancellation of "teacher jail" by Holmquist, how come some
teachers were incarcerated for as little as two hours, but other
teachers spent a full 6 hours required to remain at LAUSD offices doing
nothing in complete isolation? Did any of this have to do with the
inflammatory nature of images of teachers being shown by the media
sitting around a room and getting paid to do absolutely nothing?
4.
Is there any good faith belief on the part of any administrator at
LAUSD that teachers confined to "rubber rooms" have really done
something wrong or has this just been LAUSD's rather successful means of
intimidating teachers to force them to resign or retire?
5.
Superintendent John Deasy has said on many occasions that if the police
find a teacher innocent of charges against them, they are put back to
work immediately. This is a ball faced lie that mainstream media refuses to report.
6.
Some teachers like Sigi Siegel have actually won their case at the
Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) and still remain incarcerated in
their homes, while LAUSD lawyers stall her reinstatement by filing
endless appeals- there is no shortage of money at LAUSD for doing this
irrespective of the merit of any case, since in the aggregate, most
teachers roll over and LAUSD saves about $60,000 for every teacher they
are able to force into retirement or resignation.
In
her case, she even won the first LAUSD appeal of her OAH victory in
Superior Court, but LAUSD still keeps her isolated and under tremendous
physical and emotional stress by now forcing her to stay at home from 8
a.m. to 2 p.m., instead of at an LAUSD office. Is there any legal
justification for doing this under a system of law that presumes Ms.
Siegel innocent and where the only examination of the facts by neutral
legal forums has found her completely innocent of all charges against
her. While she continues to be paid, doesn't Ms. Siegel also have a
constitutionally protected property right to continue exercising her
profession as a teacher without LAUSD a priori depriving her of this
right without due process of law?
The simple
answer as to why LAUSD General Counsel Holmquist has reversed his
position on housing teachers without any justification is that these
targeted teachers had finally started to become proactive and were using
their time incarcerated together to organize effective legal opposition
to the witch hunt against them.
For too
long, the mainstream media has given LAUSD a pass, when it comes to
using any real journalistic standard for examining LAUSD's war on
teachers at the top of the salary scale, about to vest in lifetime
health benefits, or disabled, which account for well over 93% of all
teachers incarcerated by LAUSD. They have never asked the hard
questions.
As far back at December 17, 2012, I did an article about how LAUSD Superintendent John
Deasy lied to Conan Nolan and Patrick Healy of KNBC of KNBC
did reports on LAUSD teacher jails, where Superintendent John Deasy
outright lies to them. But neither one of these reporters nor any of the
others covering education in L.A. - Barbara Jones, Mitchell Landsberg,
Howard Blum, Jason Song- have shown any interest in outing these lies.
In fairness to them, and given the pro-charter ownership of their
newspapers, this would be impossible for them to do, if they wanted to
keep their jobs.
There is no love loss
between me and newly elected UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl, but if he
wants to convince anybody that he is any different than do-nothing
Warren Fletcher and his predecessors at UTLA, he needs to stop allowing
UTLA to sit quietly by, while doing absolutely nothing to stop its
teacher members at the top salary and benefits from being systematically
targeted and removed based on obviously fabricated charges by LAUSD.
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
We Love Do you find the media and their "teachers-suck," "power to
principals," "privatization is the best thing that's happened to public
schools" disgusting and distasteful? The powers that be may "control"
the main media but it's people like us who control the SOCIAL MEDIA.
Hungry for more information about crusading educators going against the
grain to do what's right for teachers, unions, communities, and
children?
"Lenny, overall this is another good article. However,
It would be totally unfair to the public education profession if the
UTLA took on a posture to distinguish teachers with greater seniority as
in need of any more consideration concerning teacher jail than lesser
experienced teachers. Forced isolation is a way to break a person's
will. Given time, most will succumb to such pressure. The problem is, we
have a serious ethical dilemma in the public school profession---a
professional ethics dilemma---that has never been brought into an ethics
focused resolution forum. This suggestion is not being offered for
media pundits to debate in abstract terms. Professional Ethical forums
exist on the state and federal levels through such agencies as
California Fair Housing and Labor, EEOC, The Office of Civil Rights
within DOE, et al. Individuals like you and organizations like UTLA
continue to totally overlook such agencies. Part of what causes these
government agencies to be "broken" is the unwillingness of citizens to
exercise their Civil Rights by filing complaints. The legal forum is as
potent as the existing ethical forum. One cannot be offered as a
solution to poor administrative practices while the other languishes in
contempt. Until existing ethical forums begin to gain more respect among
citizens, the legal forum will continue to be a way for legal
professionals to make money without any real resolutions to workplace
dysfunction. If not now, when?"
Educators, how would you respond to my words? Feedback is welcomed. Please feel free to share this email with others.
Respectfully,
Luis South, M.A
