Convincing Arguments Made in Teacher ‘Tenure’ Appeal
Fifth-grade teacher Gabby Ibarra speaks to the press prior to oral arguments for Vergara v. State of California in front of the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Los Angeles, February 25, 2016.
The deep-pocketed corporate interests who have been undermining public education across the nation had reason to celebrate on June 10, 2014, when a superior court judge in California ruled that laws governing teacher due process were unconstitutional. The court stayed the verdict in Vergara v. State of California, however, after the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), as well as California Governor Jerry Brown, and State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, immediately filed an appeal, denouncing the decision as “without support in law or fact.”
On February 25, Vergara headed back to court. Attorneys representing 400,000 educators asked a three-justice panel in the California Court of Appeal to overturn the meritless decision. Michael Rubin, the legal counsel representing California’s educators, emerged from the courthouse in downtown Los Angeles optimistic, telling reporters outside that he was encouraged by the focus and tenor of the justice’s questions, which zeroed in on the profoundly flawed reasoning behind the plaintiffs’ arguments. “We are confident we will prevail,” Rubin said.
The decision issued by Judge Rolf M. Treu in 2014 is riddled with judicial errors and represents an extraordinary example of judicial overreach. During the trial, the court ignored evidence demonstrating how California’s due process protections for teachers improve public schools, while pronouncing the laws to be deterrents to good teachers being hired in high poverty schools – a claim unsupported by the facts. “There is no evidence—zero—that these statutes are the cause of any constitutional violation,” Rubin said.
Because the evidence fell so far short of establishing any link between teacher due process and educational disparities, the court had no business striking down the statute, Rubin said.
“Disputes over education policy are for the legislature to resolve, not the courts.”
Gabby Ibarra, a 5th grade teacher at Niemes Elementary school in Cerritos, CA, told reporters outside the court that the relentless assault on teacher workplace Convincing Arguments Made in Teacher ‘Tenure’ Appeal - NEA Today: