An Appeal for Action
Seniority, Tenure and the Vergara Decision
On June 10, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu issued a ruling that threatens to strike down California education code statutes protecting teacher due process rights, including seniority and “tenure”. The lawsuit on which Treu ruled, Vergara vs. California, was brought by nine California students, but it was supported by an array of corporate education “deform” forces, among them President Obama’s education secretary (Arne Duncan), the Los Angeles school district superintendent (John Deasey), a corporate-funded education “reform” group (Schools Matter) that has pushed anti-union initiatives in several other states, and a right-wing Silicon Valley billionaire foe of teacher unions (David Welch).
The Vergara lawsuitasserts that laws protecting more senior teachers in times of layoff cause the schools to keep “grossly ineffective teachers in classrooms while pushing highly effective, but less senior teachers out.”Judge Treu agreed, stating in his written decision: “The number of grossly ineffective teachers has a direct, real, appreciable, and negative impact on a significant number of California students. The evidence is compelling, indeed it shocks the conscience…ineffective teachers disproportionately impact low income and minority students and that getting rid of bad teachers is nearly impossible,”
The state’s largest teacher unions, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and the California Teachers Association (CTA), issued a joint statement describing the ruling as “misguided”. CFT President Josh Pechthalt said that far from protecting students of color in vulnerable urban districts, the ruling “is fundamentally anti-public education, scapegoating teachers for problems originating in underfunding, poverty, and economic inequality.”
This description of the ruling is only half right. There is no doubt that both the lawsuit and the decision are anti-public education, anti-union and fit entirely within the narrative of all that is wrong in public Seniority, Tenure and the Vergara Decision » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names: