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Court Ruling May Reshape School District Teacher Evaluations, Layoffs

“We need a new system that works better," Board of Education President Scott Phelps said after the court decision

Published on Friday, June 13, 2014 | 10:36 am
 
Pasadena Unified School District Board President Scott Phelps

Pasadena Board of Education President Scott Phelps says he hopes a new system that evaluates teachers’ “effectiveness” will emerge following this week’s historic court decision ruling that longstanding state laws protecting the tenure of public school educators are unconstitutional.

“I know there’s powerful interest and a lot of money involved. This won’t be a simple thing.” Phelps said. “We need a new system that works better for schools, for kids, for teachers too.”

Superior Court Judge Rolf M. Treu ruled Tuesday that the tenure laws “impose a real and appreciable impact on students’ fundamental right to equality of education . . . The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.”

Phelps said the current system can hinder the school district from attracting the best teachers.

“The problem with the current system is that we can’t even look at the effectiveness of the teacher, it has to be just by seniority. And that is a problem,” he said. “[Teachers] may be very good, but we’re prohibited from even looking at whether they’re very good.”

Phelps said he is hopeful that a new evaluation system will emerge that provides “some fair way to evaluate teachers and be able to use that” when making layoff decisions.

The local teacher’s union is uncooperative with the proposed new system, Phelps said.

“We’ve been frustrated, locally, with our union. They don’t really want any changes to the evaluations,” Phelps said. “For example, we just talked to them for a year to negotiate, collaboratively, a new evaluation tool, and we agreed that we were going to adopt this by May. We agreed in January, but they are refusing to adopt it.”

“We’re only talking about piloting a new evaluation tool, and they want to delay that a year,” he added.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Pasadena Teacher’s Labor Unions, Teamsters Local 911 and UTP – Unified Teachers of Pasadena, representatives did not return phone calls seeking comments.

PUSD board member Tyron Hampton said the court ruling will encourage more students to enroll in public schools.

“I think this is a step in the right direction for the students in this case,” Hampton said.

Phelps said that a possible new system may still take several years to be implemented.

Earlier this week Treu said in a 16-page ruling that five provisions of the California Education Code, including “Permanent Employment Statutes,” “Dismissal Statutes” and “Last-In-First-Out” has violated the equal protection clause of the California constitution.

The ruling stated that the five provisions “denies basic educational equality to the students of particular districts.”

The “Vergara Vs. California” lawsuit was filed by nine public school students led by Beatriz Vergara on May 14, 2012.
The plaintiffs, represented by their parents and guardians, argued that the five statutes caused “grossly ineffective teachers” to be assigned to minority and low income students, in violation of the protection clause.

The plaintiffs also said that the tenure law had made “getting rid of grossly ineffective teachers…too time consuming and too expensive,” and may take from two to ten years, costing $50,000 to $450,000.

Many observers believe the ruling will be appealed.

 

 

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