Guest Opinion: Madison’s Lessons on Surrendering Teachers’ Involuntary Transfer Protections

The discontent within the Pasadena Unified School District teacher’s union tentative agreement with PUSD is mainly focused on its economic terms – i.e.,  a 6% raise January 1 of this year and a contingent 3% further increase on July 1 if PUSD gets sufficient State funds.  The certain 6%/maybe-3% compares unfavorably with the 10% for LA’s teachers and the 11% for Burbank’s teachers.

Less focused on but perhaps as significant in the long run is the tentative agreement’s weakening of the restrictions on PUSD administration’s rights to involuntarily transfer teachers.  The administration’s year-long effort to reconstitute Madison Elementary School provides valuable lessons for PUSD’s teachers and their union on the dangers in weakening the existing restrictions on the administration involuntarily transferring teachers.

The UTP’s pre-settlement argument against weakening protection against involuntary transfer

UTP’s President, with remarkably bad timing, published in the Pasadena Weekly an article “Why United Teachers of Pasadena May Vote to Strike” on the day the UTP reached the tentative agreement with PUSD.   The article set out the following argument against weakening the contractual protections against involuntary transfers: “Finally, the district has proposed abandoning the current criteria for involuntarily transferring a teacher from one site to another, offering up a catchall “needs of the district” policy in its place.  What the administration really wants is the ability to transfer anyone anywhere anytime for any reasons, or for no reason, for that matter.  The potential for abuse in such cases could be staggering.  And because of the potential for retaliation, it would have a chilling effect on teachers’ ability to speak on behalf of their students on issues like school safety and curriculum. ….  These proposals would lead to poor morale and offer no benefit to students or their success.”

Perhaps because the article was addressed to an external audience rather than the UTP membership, the rationale for preserving involuntary transfer protection doesn’t mention two other important reason for protections against involuntary transfers – i.e., to prevent the administration from reconstituting schools without following the statutory procedure and protecting the union’s own representatives from being undermined by the administration.

Involuntary transfer restrictions prevented the administration  from forcing UTP members having to work under Juan Ruelas

Before its repeal in December, 2015, the federal No Child Left Behind Law authorized reconstitution as a sanction for low-performing public schools.  PUSD reconstituted Muir High School in 2008-2009 in a lawful statutory process by requiring Muir’s teachers to reapply for their jobs; at the end of the day, 75% of Muir’s teachers were rehired and 25% reassigned to other PUSD schools.

This school year, PUSD has de facto reconstituted Madison Elementary School more drastically than Muir, but not by following the lawful, statutory process used at Muir.  Behind-the-scenes, PUSD’s administration and some Board members demonized Madison’s faculty as lazy and “entitled,” blaming the teachers for the low scores – ignoring that the demographics of Madison would predict its being a low-scoring school and ignoring the district’s blame in under-resourcing Madison for years. The administration assigned Juan Ruelas as Madison’s principal, and over the course of a few months his bull-in-a-china-shop management style alienated most of the faculty.  Many people in the community accurately saw what was happening as an informal reconstitution (and some of them approved of the reconstitution).  Others – including our clients in the Community Council for Equality and Justice at Madison – are resisting the de facto reconstitution.

The result at Madison has been the reverse of the 75%-retention/25% reassignment rates for Muir.  15 of the original 21 certificated teachers “voluntarily” transferred out of Madison or retired.  2 more of them have pending transfer  applications.  1 more has resigned effective at the end of the year.  The disaster for Madison has been that, unlike at Muir, there is only a tiny minority core of experienced teachers left at Madison.  Other than a couple of teachers who were closely associated with Ruelas, experienced teachers have not voluntarily transferred to Madison – because who would want to work under Ruelas?

The UTP’s contractual protection against involuntary transfer prevented the administration from reassigning experienced UTP members to work under Ruelas.  As sure as night follows day, 15 or more experienced UTP members would have been involuntarily reassigned to Roosevelt if there were not protection against involuntary transfers.

 Involuntary transfer restrictions prevented the administration  from picking off Madison’s union representative

The UTP’s Madison site representative is Patricia Guzman.  She’s still at Madison and still serving as the UTP’s Madison site representative only because UTP’s contract prevent the administration from involuntarily transferring her.

Ms. Guzman was suspended for 6 months.  Ruelas accused her of abusing one of her students – an allegation that PUSD’s own investigation found was not supported by the evidence.  Ruelas’ child abuse allegation was suspect from the outset – because he was present for the alleged incident of child abuse but kept the child in Ms. Guzman’s classroom after the alleged abuse, because he was legally required to immediately report child abuse but waited 8 hours to do so, because Ms. Guzman during that intervening 8 hours made unrelated complaints against Ruelas to the Superintendent and the UTP, and because the Pasadena Police Department found the accusation unfounded.  Even after the investigation was completed, PUSD kept Ms. Guzman on administrative leave.  Superintendent McDonald communicated to us that it would be best if Ms. Guzman transferred.   Despite the enormous stress from being in a hostile environment, Ms. Guzman has refused to transfer and insisted on continuing to represent Madison’s teachers.  Unable to involuntarily transfer her and without any rationale to prevent her from returning to the classroom, Superintendent McDonald finally relented in February and returned her to active duty at Madison.

Thus, the only thing that has kept Ms. Guzman as the UTP’s site representative has been the UTP’s contractual restrictions on involuntary transfer.  A union which does not protect its members who do the day-to-day tasks representing its members is a union which is becoming a toothless tiger.

The proposed settlement would add to existing limited involuntary transfer grounds the new ground of “legitimate documented program-related need”

Section 7.5.1 of the current collective bargaining agreement provides: “Involuntary transfer/reassignment shall be made only for the following reasons: A decrease in the number of pupils which requires a decrease in the number of unit members pursuant to Article X, Class Size; changes in course section needs of the master schedule as determined by student placement; elimination of program(s) and/or funding; or worksite closings.”  The UTP statement on the tentative settlement indicates that, in addition to preserving the foregoing language, “involuntary transfers/reassignments may be made for a legitimate documented program-related need” will be added as an additional ground by the tentative settlement.

Risks with the expanded administration right to involuntarily transfer teachers

The UTP’s tentative agreement does not give the administration everything  it wants; the administration wants, according to the UTP’s Weekly statement, the right to involuntarily transfer “anyone anywhere anytime for any reasons, or for no reason.”  But, by giving the administration one more ground for involuntary transfers, it gives the administration more latitude to manufacture reasons for involuntary transfers.  The meaning of the added language is not clear.  Could, for example, PUSD’ administration under the new provision legitimately generate a “document” that characterizes Madison’s entire faculty as subject to a “program” that “needs” more experienced teachers?  And would that justify transferring Ms. Guzman out of Madison and transferring 18 senior UTP teachers to Madison?  And, if so, who will it transfer next for what purpose?

 

Dale Gronemeier and Skip Hickambottom are local civil rights attorneys who represent the Citizens Council for Empowerment and Justice at Madison, the grassroots organization of parents, teachers, and community members who are demanding that Ruelas be removed as Madison’s principal.  Mr. Gronemeier was a vice-president of a teacher’s union local and on the executive board of another teacher’s union local before becoming an attorney.