The Vergara trial is an effort by a Silicon Valley multi-millionaire to eliminate due process rights for teachers in California. The theory of the case is that due process (AKA, tenure) makes it hard to fire “bad” teachers, and thus poor kids get more bad teachers who can’t be fired. This violates their civil rights. Los Angeles superintendent John Deasy testified for the plaintiffs. No one asked him why he has not fired the lead plaintiff’s teacher, who does not have tenure.
Here LAUSD board member Steve Zimmer explains his views on the case:
Steven Zimmer represents District 4, a wide swath of the western part of the city, on the Los Angeles Unified School District board.
Just over a year ago, I won re-election to the Los Angeles Unified School District board. It was an unlikely victory in what may have been the most expensive school board race in U. S. history. The wealthiest of self-styled reformers–Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, Michael Bloomberg, and Michelle Rhee’s followers–put in over $4-million to try and take over the L.A. Board of Education.
The stakes were high. Los Angeles Unified is by far the largest school district in the nation to be governed by an elected board. Our district has over 900,000 students, over 60,000 employees and an operating budget of over $7-billion. The reformers were clear about their goals. They sought to eviscerate the power of our teacher union by eliminating job protections, seniority rights, and tenure. They sought to link teacher evaluation directly to standardized test scores. And more.
Against this gale force, we were able to build an improbable coalition of families, teachers and classified employees, and community activists. We matched the billionaires’ money with authentic boots on the ground. We talked to people, and people listened. In the many struggles in today’s economy, battles often pit people’s interests against the interests of corporate America. This time the people won.
Or so we thought.
As it turns out, the election isn’t really over. It just shifted venues.
The same privatizers who funded the campaign to buy the school board are funding a court case here in Los Angeles that seeks to achieve through the courts what they could not win at the ballot box. Named for one of the student plaintiffs, Beatriz Vergara, the case will hear closing arguments this week. If it is successful, the Vergara case will eliminate some teacher tenure protections, limit seniority, and diminish collective bargaining rights.
To be sure, the Vergara case has dramatized serious and significant issues facing our students and their schools. I have spent my career working to narrow the opportunity gap that creates the sub-standard conditions for teaching and learning that so dramatically impact the achievement gap. At both the school where I taught for 17 years and the Board of Education, I have built partnerships that address the education disadvantages that saddle so many Black and Latino students struggling against our institutionally racist systems.
But the Vergara plaintiff’s team is much more interested in the spectacular than the substantive. Their case was presented with compelling optics and atmospherics, and it is part of a strategy that extends well beyond the courtroom. Students Matter, the umbrella organization advancing the case, hired a crackerjack PR team and paid them millions to spread what I call the Vergara Fiction across the nation.
The Vergara Fiction is disingenuous. This fiction, says that if it was easier to fire teachers and if teachers didn’t have strong tenure and seniority rights, many of the problems facing Beatriz Vergara would disappear. The obstacles built over decades would evaporate with one decision. In this fantasy world of precise causality, if no teacher had tenure, then they would be scared into performing better. If there was no teacher seniority, energetic new teachers would work around the clock for two years before burning out and moving out, being replaced by another young recruit. Make no mistake; the goal of the plaintiffs is to diminish the stature of teaching as a profession.
Addressing instructional quality for all students involves a complex series of changes in policy and practice. Who we recruit to be the next generation of teachers and how they are trained and supported necessitates a transformed relationship between school districts and universities. Improving teacher education is much more important than lengthening the tenure window. And collaborative teacher evaluation reform like LAUSD’s Frameworks for Teaching and Learning must be implemented with urgency and investment. None of this work is easy. It will take collective sleeve rolling from our teachers, our union partners, and civic Los Angeles. Eliminating seniority would be simpler, but it wouldn’t change a thing for Beatriz Vergara.
Finally, we should all come together to make sure criminals and pedophiles masquerading as teachers never enter a classroom. There are reasonable changes that can be made to statutes that ensure student safety without cutting due process for teachers facing accusations that have nothing to do with student’s rights.
But the plaintiff’s legal team and their private-sector backers aren’t interested in real solutions. That is not their agenda. The case is just a means to an end. That is why the public relations campaign is so much more about fictional narrative than concrete substance. They have woven together a story that ensures that if they win in court they win, but if they lose they win even more.
Because the next stop for the reform train is back at the ballot box. The court case is the trailer for the next series of ballot initiatives and school board races. By establishing a fictional direct correlation between Beatriz Vergara’s teachers and every aspect of her aspirations, the plaintiff’s have pitted teacher’s rights against the American Dream itself. And a campaign that is framed as a battle between adult job protections and children’s dreams is a sure fire vote getter. I can see the ad already: “Beatriz Vergara can’t vote but you can!”
The damage the Vergara case will inflict will be felt well before the verdict is read or the first post-Vergara campaign is launched. Every teacher that watched the trial or read the coverage felt the attacks personally. The defense team did an admirable job presenting their case, but no one is defending teachers or our life work. The unrefuted narrative of teachers standing in the way of the American Dream instead of defending and promoting it, will linger much longer than the verdict.
And there is one more thing.
I know Beatriz Vergara. Not personally. But I know thousands of Beatriz Vergaras. They are my students, my counselees, and my neighbors. Rejecting the billionaires and their plaintiffs’ attorneys cannot mean we reject Beatriz and the urgency of her struggle. In fact, we must redouble our efforts to make the complex and difficult changes to our systems that will truly honor her potential and her dreams. We must show Beatriz and her family and all our families that we go so much further when we turn towards each other instead of against each other. We must make her struggle our struggle in our every waking moment. We must forge new pathways to realize the promise of public education for all students. And today, we must have the courage to realize that standing with Beatriz Vergara means standing against the exploitive case that bares her name.
And how does the reasoned and research-supported role of poverty get completely ignored in this discussion? Public schools and education associations need to counter these specious arguments with their own PR campaigns!!
Just as with “think tanks” and bogus
“studies/results,” corporate reformers
commission bogus “polls,” with equally bogus
“results”… so the public would be influenced
into thinking in ways that—but for the bogus
poll and the publicizing of it—they never would
have. (the “agreeing with bandwagon” theory)
Some fellow UTLA folks were not having
any of this “manufactured consent”—present
in the right-wing on-line org “L.A. SCHOOL
REPORT,”—and then hit back hard!
These teachers—acquaintances of mine—blew this
bogus story wide open with in COMMENTS section.
Teachers shared their research about the poll—
the group conducting the poll, the funders, and
the ridiculous wording of the poll questions:
http://laschoolreport.com/poll-ca-voters-oppose-teacher-tenure-and-layoff-laws/
I have a question for the lawyers out there:
If Vergara is successful in denying “due process” to teachers, will it be legal to give police, firefighters, city librarians etc. due process, while denying the same to teachers? Thank you.
It’ll be open to a lawsuit. Teachers do NOT have “tenure” anyway. “Due process” rights for public employees exist because they are government employees and their jobs are considered a property right that cannot be denied them without due process.
I will bet not one single person involved in this case has stated that simple truth. I would have made a good witness because I KNOW this “due process” sham anyway.
All it is is just one more step in the process of terminating teachers. Teachers, however, most often take resignations in lieu of dismissals rather than going through the hearings.
Thanks for responding, but I’m not sure you’re right. After all, new teachers are on probation for two years and are essentially “at-will” employees. They have no due process rights under the law, at least in California. Other government workers, though, are probationary for six months and then they have a right to due process. I just can’t imagine affording due process to one group of government workers and not the other.
The probationary period for teachers may be different from state to state.
In Missouri it is five consecutive years in the same district.
Right. “Tenured” is just the word people use to refer to public employees who have become “permanent” employees with due process rights.
FLERP:
You say, “become ‘permanent’ employees with due process rights”
The use of the world “permanent” is misleading.
As you probably know by now, I taught in the public schools for thirty years and there is nothing “permanent” about teaching in the public schools. Earning tenure is not a guarantee that you will keep your job until you are eligible to retire and collect a monthly check.
Teachers may lose their jobs for a number of reasons and in some cases it is swift without warning.
A reduction in force because of decreasing student enrollment meant teachers lost jobs at the schools I worked at when the student ratio fell below 34 to 1. That was the contractual class load average we had in that district. The key word is “average” which means some teachers might have more than 34 to 1 and some less give or take two or three. When I transferred to the high school in 1989 there were 3,100 students. When I left, there were 2,300. About 91 teachers in 1989 were reduced to 67 in 2005. If there were opening in one of the other 19 schools in that district, then the qualified tachers would be transferred. If not, they were let go.
Teachers may be suspended without pay for moral causes such as the alleged crime of having sex with a student under the age of 18. In fact, even dating a student 18 or not was cause for a job loss and that was written in the contract. When I first started working in that district in 1975, teachers at the same school weren’t allowed to date or get married and if they did, they could lose their jobs or be forced to be transferred to another school if a job in their subject was available.
In California, teachers must have a specific credential and MA to teach the subject. For instance, if a teacher teaches wood shop or auto mechanics and the school closes that class and there is no other class in the district the teacher can be transferred to, that teacher is out of a job.
Due process usually applies to teachers who are accused by administration of being incompetent. Then there are specific procedures that must be followed before the teacher may be fired. The reason for those procedures is because in California teachers start out on probation for the first two years and they may be fired without cause at any time. During those two years, they are under intense observation if administration is doing their job. The new teachers are observed by more than one administrator and evaluational are written followed by meetings with the teacher. The department chair may also observe and write evaluations. This process is repeated several times during the probationary years. Therefore, if later, for instance ten to fifteen years go by, and it is observed this teacher is no longer operating efficenity and is considered incompetent, the district must offer a remedial plan to improve the teachers teaching ability.
What causes some teachers to become “incompetent”? Burn out resulting in PTSD is one major cause. A recent study in more than one intermediate school in Texas revealed that a third of the teachers were suffering from PTSD due to the intense pressure caused by a mixture of student behavior, lack of parental support and the abusive standardized testing culture that is coming out of Washington DC driven by both brutal greed and political/religious agendas to profit off the schools and/or gain control of the curriculum in such a way as to brainwash the young minds of children as Hitler did in Nazi Germany with the Hitler Youth or Mao in China with the teenage Red Guard. Once you have established that control, the next step is to have those student turn on their teachers, parents and neighbors to denounce them so they may be revoked from society and killed or locked up.
In fact, there was a French teacher at the high school who lost her job through “due process” and she had earned “tenure”. Her incompetence was they she lacked the ability to control the behavior of students in her class. To remediation that, she was assigned to observe and gain support from teachers known to have total control of their classrooms and she was sent to my room for my help. In the end, she didn’t improve. She just couldn’t bring herself to be that tough with her students as they disrupted her room and made it almost impossible to learn.
I suggest you educate yourself about due process rights. Maybe this YouTube video will help. They are talking about the 5th and 14th Amendments of the Bill of Rights—something our Founding Fathers provided to protect American citizens from the tyranny of power, of government.
Are you advocating that we take away those Constitutional rights from all teachers?
It’s a term of art, Lloyd, as distinguished from temporary or probationary employees who have no property interest in their jobs and thus no constitutional due process rights. You’ll find it in the case law.
Which explains the embedded video in my reply to your comment.
Sorry, I didn’t watch it. My point above was that Linda is correct, not all government employees have the due process rights that Susan refers to. They’re not conferred automatically or immediately. Who receives them, and what the protections consist of, is generally defined in state statutes. Those statutes sometimes call the employees with due process rights “tenured,” other times “permanent,” and probably other terms in other instances.
True, due process laws differ from state to state and in states dominated by the GOP, they may not exist at all.
“we should all come together to make sure criminals and pedophiles masquerading as teachers never enter a classroom. ”
Does this criteria apply to Kevin Johnson?
One of the more beautiful and reasoned writings on this subject that has come my way. In my view there are so very many ways in which the moneyed interests are destroying the democracy in which we have been taught to believe.
In the past educators were often seen as the intellectual, ergo, the important leaders for society. Since a “Nation at Risk” came out educators, public schools, have been vilified, denigrated, and the intellectual capital of reasoned, scholarly research has been supplanted by myopic philosophical and ignorant promotion. Whether this nation “can long endure” as a democratic society remains to be seen. People throughout history have had to fight for democratic ideals. In my view: we have reached that point yet once again.
Yes, Gordon, it is beautiful writing and reflects reason. However we cannot forget the real world votes that Steve Zimmer, in concord with most of the BoE, has made.
He voted in favor of Deasy’s ‘excellent evaluation,’ along with everyone with the exception of the deceased Marguerite La Motte, and Ratliff abstaining. He voted to renew Deasy’s contract despite that weeks before this vote, TEACHERS gave Deasy a 91% NO CONFIDENCE vote, and the public called for Deasy’s firing after the facts of the golden iPads emerged. He voted to allow Deasy to continue with the ill-conceived and exhorbitant iPad plan. He voted to put dozens more teachers in teacher jail, to fire more teachers for little to no cause, to open more and more charter schools.
Actions do speak louder than words!
When Zimmer was re-elected through the dedicated and hard campaign work of teachers and members of the public, and when Monica Ratliff also won election over huge odds and the millions of dollars poured into the coffers of their opponents, educators and much of the public were relieved that now there would be 5 teachers sitting on the BoE (Zimmer, Ratliff, Kayser, La Motte, and Vladovic). Surely, these knowledgable teachers would fix the Deasy debacle.
Well, we were all fooled, for these 5 continued to vote for Deasy directives…with Ratliff being the only one to occasionally deviate. When her finance committee finally shined some light on Deasy and
Aquino and their terrible management practices, Vlad shut her down, cancelled her committiee, and returned her to ostensibly a position of overseeing curriculum. Vladovic fell right into line with Deasy, and now Deasy has the leverage to run wild in fulfilling the role his puppet masters assign him, to destroy LAUSD so that it can be charterized for profit.
So we ask ourselves, what went wrong? Why are members of the BoE now in lockstep with Deasy? What hold does he have over them?
Yes, Gordon, we are at the edge of the precipice, and in clear danger of dropping into the freefall of fascism in our country. ALEC has determined to finalize their takeover. So where are the warriors for the side of reason and democracy?
Yes, why doesn’t he address why he voted for Deasy? It sounds like Deasy spread poison through the district.
I agree with Ellen Lubic. I worked hard on Steve Zimmer’s campaign and have been deeply disappointed that he has not been a formidable opponent to the forces of privatization.
He introduced a resolution that passed the school board unanimously to reinstitute arts as a core subject, and then gave the superintendent a job extension after he defiantly defunded arts in LA and continued to narrow the curriculum. He has voted for almost every charter that has come before the board. He supported the iPad boondoggle.
In contrast to his rhetoric, hiis actions have left many supporters feeling betrayed.
Most importantly, he has not advanced the agenda of public school advocates by leveraging his victory as a voter mandate against the corporate takeover of public schools. By failing to harness the energy galvanized by his grassroots campaign, he leaves the next election up for grabs.
A Nation At Risk was a document with no references! If you research the document, you find it was based on several individual opinions of things that were needed to improve our Public Schools. All have been implemented, except to pay teachers a professional wage on a level with other professionals. Please read it. It is an easy short read. However, like common core standards, which is based on no research, but the thoughts and opinions of a few select people, the same was true for the basis of A Nation At Risk! With all the Reseach Universities and scholars in this nation, it is almost unimaginable for important documents and related decisions based on these documents to be made without debate!
This is a great site that has all the testimony and background information in one handy link:
http://www.vergaratrial.com/testimony
“The obstacles built over decades would evaporate with one decision.”
The great reformer cry: One “great” teacher. One voucher. One nationally-imposed– I mean, “state led”– set of standards.
You may also wish to read this one, and all of the posts at Perdaily.com, that have been chronicling the corruption that has created the debacle in Los Angeles schools, and sent 17,000 veteran professional out the door to save money on the budget, and to hand over profits for education to the snake-oil salesmen who want to end public education so they can make trillions.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/04/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
On Sunday, March 30, LAUSD Supt. John Deasy was part of a panel at the USC Rossier School of Education where he discussed the Vergara v California, a lawsuit challenging teacher protections. During this conversation, we see how precisely Deasy and the case’s millionaire supporters have appropriated Civil Rights language to justify their cause. Throughout Deasy’s tenure in LAUSD, the single minded focus of Deasy, like Michelle Rhee’s, has focused exclusively on the boogeyman “bad” teacher as the BIGGEST impediment to a student’s success, and, by extension, those horribly craven “teacher” unions who stop kids from achieving their dreams by putting “adult interests” first.
Deasy has always (and insufferably) painted himself as the Nelson Mandela of public education. His “Civil Rights” solutions always end up helping the portfolios of the 1% while doing little to affect the massive inequalities and hardships my students deal with every day of their lives. He has never voiced outrage at class sizes or library closings or VAM’s or lack of true education enrichment and opportunities for the kids.
It has always been the “bad” teacher that is the Poster Child for everything wrong with public education. Deasy’s solutions have always been identical to the rich business interests who have shepherded his career and have kept him flushed in the good graces of LA’s Neo-liberal financial and political power structure. All of them believe if you can wreck teachers’ unions you can have control of the Kingdom of Education and the ability to be the authoritarian CEO of running a business intead of a democratic public education system.
In the two sides over all these issues of Education, the Civil Rights ideological lines are clearly drawn. Our side of this Civil Rights divide needs to expose the other’s grotesque line of reasoning. How did Malcolm X’s, Rosa Parks’, Cesar Chavez’s and Martin Luther King’s legacy get co-opted so easily and cynically by the Reformers? That’s a question for all of us and demands a vigorous response.
Meanwhile, I’ll let the article and Deasy’s own words speak for themselves and his psychology. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll try not to be sick.
This is from the April 1st LA SCHOOL REPORT:
http://laschoolreport.com/deasy-usc-vergara-next-civil-rights-case/#comment-983
“Deasy testified for three days, laying the foundation of their overall case [for the plaintiffs].
“Now that the trial has ended, the head of the largest school district in the state continues to make his case to the public, positioning Vergara as a civil rights issue.
“Deasy characterized the Vergara trial as the next point on the civil rights continuum seeking to strike down segregation in public schools: A major focus of the plaintiffs’ case is that low-income and minority students are more likely to be taught by ineffective teachers than children from more affluent families.
“Deasy characterized the Vergara trial as the next point on the civil rights continuum seeking to strike down segregation in public schools: A major focus of the plaintiffs’ case is that low-income and minority students are more likely to be taught by ineffective teachers than children from more affluent families.
“He spoke at length about Plessy v Ferguson and Brown v Board of Education, both historic cases that challenged the Fourteenth Amendment. And Deasy drew parallels between more the recent public education battles of Williams v California,Serrano v Priest, and Butt v California, as well as the peaceful protests lead by African-American students in the 1960s.
“Deasy said a group of well-dressed black students sitting at a segregated Woolworth’s counter in Greenboro, North Carolina decades ago, politely asking to be served is not unlike a group of nine California students asking for a better education today.
“’I would like a cup of coffee. I want to go to a good school,’ he said. ”We are still struggling some 60 years later to enact the promise of Brown v Board of Education. I am troubled how today we can witness such unequal, non-protected classes of youth at a single institution called public education. Our work is not done.”
It is such a con to claim this has anything to do with civil rights.
This should be required reading for every citizen in America who votes or should vote.
Lloyd, please reach me at
UCLApolicywonk@aol.com
to discuss your comments today about my Sol Stern rebuttal on our other blog site.
Thanks for your careful and worthwhile comments.
Ellen
I con cur with Ellen Lubic’s and Geronimo’s comments. Teachers worked hard on mimer’s campaign and what we get in return is a great evaluation doe Deasey. The framer teachers on the board know what is going on. but most of them have caved in to the oligarchs. I hold out hope for Monica Ratner.
I agree Charlotte that Monica Ratliff is our real hope for change at LAUSD. Please let me know if you will be attending the forum on April 10 at CSUN. If so, would love meet up with you there.
UCLApolicywonk@aol.com
A few days after Mr. Zimmer offered his insightful and thoughtful analysis, Ben Austin posted his empty rhetoric with the same stale talking points in the Los Angeles School Report. It is interesting to note that the executive editor of the LA School Report is Jamie Alter Lynton. Yes, the sister of the Mr. Punditry himself, Johnathan Alter. I wonder if there is a genetic disposition to Ed Reform and union busting?
I really find the attacks on teacher tenure and etc. by billionaires absolutely disgusting. I know of a teacher in Detroit’s EAA that was beaten by her student. The male student only got 10 days of suspension and will return to her classroom. This teacher is terrified. People have told her to tell the media about her situation. She is afraid to do anything because she needs her job.(like most people) This is one reason why teachers need protection. Deasy is a coward. He should be standing behind his teachers rather than kow towing to billionaires who have never spent a day in a classroom. They are disgusting people. When will the stories of teachers be featured on the nightly news?
Eclectablog could you tell this story about the EAA teacher? These teachers are being treated with such disregard.
Diane, you need to run Austin’s opinion piece. It is stomach churning. In it he blames teacher tenure and senior teachers for child sexual abuse by teachers, dead animals in schools and everything else that is wrong with our schools. In order to build up sentiment for war or oppression of a group of people that group must me made to appear less than human and the repository of all that is evil. Austin’s piece is the first step. He must be exposed for what he is.
Austin is a disbarred lawyer who is being paid a hefty salary to run Parent Revolution. He is in tight with Broad, Deasey, and other local reformers. Parent Revolution receives millions from the Walton Family Foundation. He pays people money who are given seating preference over other protesters (such as teachers) to attend school board meetings to push charters and the “parent trigger ” law.
On April 10, CSUN Dept. of Ed is putting on what they are calling a “parents forum” in the Oviatt Library from 5:30 – 7:30.
The panel highlights Gabe Rose, the slick, high paid, PR guy who represents Ben Austin and Parent Revolution, as a main presenter.
There is no voice of substance to rebut him as a responder.
I complained many times and offered the most knowledgable voices on this topic of parent trigger laws and their sponsors, The Waltons, Eli Broad, etc…to no avail.
Please LA teachers and parents, join me there to protest Parent Revolution. For more info please contact me at
Ellen Lubic, Director
Joining Forces for Education
joiningforces4ed@aol.com
It is time to walk the walk, and not only talk the talk.
PLEASE NOTE>
I made a typo about the date for the CSUN Forum. It is on April 16. Here is info from the professor who contacted me.
She said….
“I am organizing a public forum at CSUN that will include discussion of parent trigger, among other issues in the broader topic of parents’ voice in educational change, by a panel of educators, parent activists, and nonprofit organization leaders (including Parent Revolution). We’re hoping we can get a good turnout of K12 educators and community folks, as well as CSUN people, to get some dialog going, and I’d love to have folks from Joining Forces there. It’s Wed., April 16, 5:30-7:30pm (reception 5:30-6pm, program starts at 6pm) at the Oviatt Library Presentation Room. See flyers attached in English and Spanish.”
Sorry I goofed on the date…hope to see my LAUSD friends and colleagues there.
Please keep in mind that Ben Austin and Gabe Rose used manipulation, threats, and false promises to get inner city and non-English speaking parents to sign the petitions to turn their schools into charters at Adelanto, 24th Street, and in the desert.
Ellen
Steve Zimmer is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He had teacher support in his election bid and said that he would be our defender then fell right in line behind Deasy as did Vladovic. What hold does Deasy have on them?
Zimmer mouths the privateer party line about teacher training and evaluation while ignoring the issue of administrative accountability and creating a school climate that values teachers and their experience. He has rubber stamped every recommendation for dismissal based upon false charges that Deasy puts before him and even has the gall to claim that the LAUSD fulfills its duty to provide due process in teacher dismissal. He has lied to me in person on this point. He has overseen the unfair dismissal of thousands of permanent teachers. He is no more a champion of teachers and education than is Eli Broad or Bill Gates.
Lastly, the LAUSD had a program to teach children how to avoid sexual abuse and what to do if it happens. This program was cut in the late 1980s due to perennial budget issues even though it required very little money. How many child sexual abuse victims of LAUSD ADMINISTRATORS and teachers might have known what to say in order to stop this if the program were still in place?
Mike…we need your voice of protest at the CSUN meeting. I hope to see you there.
Diane, I wonder if you would put these questions to him? He seems to get attention from you on this blog and I think that your impression of him is perhaps based upon some charming PR on his part. Contact me at mykeyd1@yahoo.com if you are interested.
Mike is so true, teachers who have been denied due process by Deasy, the board of Deasy know how untrue Zimmer’s comments are. However, he is a politician who is playing both sides, what else should we expect. Well, I for one would. Like a school board that has integrity and respect for one of the most important foundations of public education and the source that pays all of their salaries, teacher’s effort and work with students. We do the work, politicians do the exploiting. These people left the classroom yet have the nerve to disrespect those of us who still work there and respect the process and interaction with the students.
Paula…please make these statements at the CSUN meeting on April 10. I have personally invited many of our fellow commentors on this site and have yet to have even one person agree to attend this rigged meeting with me.
It is vital that we have real unanimity and show up in force at meetings such as the this one at CSUN. Media will be there, so if only the Deasy/BenAustin/EliBroad side shows up, they are all the world sees as reformers of education.
I hope Mike, Paula, and Charlotte at very least will join me at this pro Parent Revolution meeting to present the anti parent trigger side.
Sorry. I’m in Europe and will not be back in time. I hope I will have another chance to join in with you another time.
PLEASE NOTE>
I made a typo about the date for the CSUN Forum. It is on April 16. Here is info from the professor who contacted me.
She said….
“I am organizing a public forum at CSUN that will include discussion of parent trigger, among other issues in the broader topic of parents’ voice in educational change, by a panel of educators, parent activists, and nonprofit organization leaders (including Parent Revolution). We’re hoping we can get a good turnout of K12 educators and community folks, as well as CSUN people, to get some dialog going, and I’d love to have folks from Joining Forces there. It’s Wed., April 16, 5:30-7:30pm (reception 5:30-6pm, program starts at 6pm) at the Oviatt Library Presentation Room. See flyers attached in English and Spanish.”
Sorry I goofed on the date…hope to see my LAUSD friends and colleagues there.
Please keep in mind that Ben Austin and Gabe Rose used manipulation, threats, and false promises to get inner city and non-English speaking parents to sign the petitions to turn their schools into charters at Adelanto, 24th Street, and in the desert.
Ellen
There is much more behind this lawsuit than some altruistic desire to protect kids. David F. Welch Co-Founder, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, and member of the Infinera Board
http://studentsmatter.org/our-team/founder/
he has been engaged with the reform of the public education system, partly through his role as an investment partner at NewSchools Venture Fund
“NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit that started out channeling philanthropic donations to charter schools and that now invests in a range of education groups and businesses, is entering into a partnership with a new venture capital fund that could result in millions more in financing.
At a time when venture capital interest in education technology companies is growing rapidly, Rethink Education Fund, founded last year to focus on education start-ups, has agreed to give part of its profits to NewSchools, based in Oakland, Calif., so the fund can invest the money in various projects.
NewSchools is well known for its financing of charter management organizations, including Aspire Public Schools, KIPP and Rocketship Education, as well as groups like the New Teacher Project, which recruits midcareer professionals into teaching, and Khan Academy, which creates online video lessons.
The fund, which has invested about $260 million over 15 years, receives financing from high-profile education donors like the Broad Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation. On its board are Silicon Valley leaders including John Doerr, partner in the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and Dave Goldberg, chief executive of Survey Monkey (and husband of Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer).”
Oh my there certainly is a bit of money motivating this lawsuit. How about that the guy who is suing to get rid of the teachers is also the same guy that is financing charters and getting funds from Gates, Walton and Broad to do it.