Republicans keep pressing for tenure, layoff, evaluation reforms
Republican legislators are continuing to push for passage of three California teacher reform bills, but it’s unclear what the status of the bills will be when the Legislature convenes in January.
The Assembly Education Committee spent three hours discussing the bills last week, with no indication about whether the bills might come up for a vote next year. That lack of clarity frustrated the Assembly Republican leader and sponsor of one of the bills, Kristin Olsen, R-Fresno, who questioned why the majority of Democrats on the committee had voted to send the bills to “interim study,” a parliamentary tactic sometimes used when members don’t want to go on the record on controversial legislation. Interim study is an indefinite status that gives Education Committee Chairman Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, wide discretion to determine what, if anything, happens to a bill.
“In an effort to avoid casting ‘no’ votes on these worthy, important bills, the chairman and other members of this education committee invoked an obscure procedure that sent these bills to this interim study,” Olsen said. “And it truly saddens me that here we are, two weeks before Christmas, when people are out busy preparing for the holidays, that we’re holding a hearing when nobody is paying attention.”
The hearing was webcast but sparsely attended by the public; two of four Democrats on the committee were absent.
Assembly Republicans proposed the three bills as a package in response to the 2014 ruling in Vergara v. California, in which a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge overturned five California teacher protection statutes. Judge Rolf Treu ruled that the state’s two-year probationary period for new teachers, a layoff system based on teacher seniority and dismissal statutes that can make it difficult to fire the worst-performing teachers, violated students’ constitutional right to Republicans keep pressing for tenure, layoff, evaluation reforms | EdSource:
