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Diane Ravitch's Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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We had that happen to us last year. All the teachers in the complete system were fired in order to “balance a budget” according to our illustrious mayor. They were not going to call us back by seniority either. When it was time to renew our contract, the union or lack there of, did get the teachers their jobs back, but only for the remaining time of the contract. When the contract is up, it seems like our jobs will be in jeopardy again. Someone like me would be one they want to dump. I have a Master’s, and I have been teaching 17 years.
School districts are doing this all over the country and always have. Unfortunately, “due process” hearings aren’t real legal proceedings despite the trappings. They are supposed to be, but districts treat them as mock trials. Anything goes when it comes to district malfeasance in removing teachers they don’t want. Administrative law has major weaknesses because it isn’t treated as real law. District administrators thumb their noses at teachers, daring them to file civil suits when they almost always lose the sham hearings. Try finding an attorney to take your case. It is almost impossible.
But I thought teachers couldn’t be fired?
I just want to add that administrative law needs to be reformed so that teachers DO have real rights to their jobs.
How do non-union employees make it in America?
Well, many don’t make a living wage. The minimum wage has been frozen around seven bucks an hour; not surprisingly, blue-collar labor is in pretty terrible shape. Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickle and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America is an essential text which documents the American underclass. Since the book was published in the 90’s, it’s only gotten worse in the States.
Make no mistake: the decline of unions has been disastrous for all classes of labor. Only the one percent has thriving (beyond anyone’s wildest dreams).
http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/nickelanddimed.htm
It is far more critical that a stable workforce is in education than Wal-Mart or Mickey Ds. Even there, employees are free to form unions.
Regardless, employers have no right to break the law.
“free to form unions” doesn’t make it any easier. Last I checked, there are only a couple of Walmarts that have any unions, and they have been restricted to specific departments (like meat packing). And the only unionized McD’s I know of is in Canada. The way the law is written, it’s cheaper for management to just fire the workers who are organizing than to allow the union – fines for violating the FLSA are notoriously low.
From “The Death and Life of the Great American School System – How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” by Diane Ravitch
(Chapter Nine): “That’s one important reason teachers joined unions: to protect their right to think, speak, and teach without fear. In my own research into the history of education in New York City, I discovered that teachers joined a teachers’ organization for many reasons. In the early decades of the twentieth century, most teachers were women, and most supervisors and board members were men. Consequently, the administrators and politicians who controlled the schools had an unfortunate habit of imposing paternalistic decisions on teachers. The Board of Education fired female teachers if they got married. When teachers won the right to marry without losing their job, the Board of Education fired them if they got pregnant. When the Board of Education finally relented on marriage and motherhood, female teachers organized to demand equal pay with male teachers. During World War I, the Board of Education fired some pacifist teachers, but the teachers had no teacher-led organization to defend them.”
My mother was a teacher and back in 1936, when she got married, she had to leave the profession as she might have become pregnant. As bad as that was, I think what’s happening today is far worse.
In Texas a teacher’s experience is no longer a consideration during ‘restructuring.’ Senator Florence Shapiro, mistakenly hailed as an education advocate, wrote SB8 which effectively raised the class-sizes of k-4 across the state, decreased minimum teacher salaries to $27,000 and eliminated due process. She has long been in the pocket of Pearson and was on the 2011 ALEC ‘Education Task Force’ roster, along with several other of our state representatives who voted for the bill.
I have read of teachers who were fired because the principal wanted to hire someone to coach a particular sport, and the coach needed to teach, so a teacher who wasn’t a coach was sacrificed. I know first-hand of school board members who have threatened teachers and administrators if they didn’t give their child “special consideration.” I know of a school board member who wandered into their child’s classroom (it was empty at the time) and went through her grade book. Intimidating? You bet; it was a first-year teacher. We have also had our pay frozen and insurance costs increased based on a supposed financial crisis while most central office people got major raises (20% in less than 5 years). Should we be protected in protesting against all of these injustices? Of course.