For the second straight year, legislation to quicken and simplify dismissal procedures for teachers is in danger of running aground.
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| Buchanan discusses AB 375 during a hearing July 3 before the Senate Education Committee. |
Last year, the state’s teachers unions thwarted a sweeping rewrite of the dismissal law that they argued was excessive. This year, teachers groups have signed on, but groups representing districts and administrators are objecting that the legislation would be ineffective, even counterproductive. Los Angeles Unified supports several amendments but is supportive overall, Edgar Zazueta, the district’s chief lobbyist, said.
The sponsor of Assembly Bill 375, Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, a former school board member who spent a year searching for a workable solution, defends her proposal as a vast improvement. A failure to reach a compromise, she said, would preserve a process uniformly criticized as flawed.On Wednesday, Buchanan came up one vote short of passage in the Senate Education Committee, with several legislators, including Chair Carol Liu, D- La Cañada Flintridge, declining to vote. Liu has granted a