Guest Opinion | United Teachers of Pasadena President Elect Jonathan Gardner: PUSD’s Dr. McDonald, Classroom Defunder

Under the leadership of Dr. McDonald, for the past 8 years, there has been a consistent choice made: overfund the Central Office and ignore the classroom.

This Thursday, the salary agreement for teachers, for principals and for the Superintendent’s contract are up for a vote.

It is painfully obvious that teachers and other educators are the least valuable human resource to PUSD as they are receiving the least valuable compensation package being voted on Thursday.

This makes it crystal clear that my role, as a classroom teacher, is seen as the least valuable work of the District. I and my colleagues have to beg and plead for classroom supplies (or spend out of pocket from our lowest-in-the-county wages), or bare minimum equipment for the classroom over the years, or deal with graffiti that goes back 10 years, or peeling paint, unkept school facilities such as broken AC systems and broken clocks and furniture in our classrooms that linger for months.

All this despite assurances from McDonald that these sorts of issues would be fixed 8 years ago!

This string of broken promises has defunded our classrooms while overfunding Central Admin and the latest in education crazes, wasting millions. This in addition to enabling mediocre Principals and administrative staffers, who received the full backing of the Superintendent while costing the District millions in Special Education claims, bringing in federal agencies to investigate and ultimately demoralizing excellent staff leading to early retirements or movement to other Districts.

Even this year, there are unfilled vacancies in classrooms with students being taught by unqualified subject matter staff that will affect our students for years to come.

We do NOT need to add another 4 years of the most out-of-balance Superintendent contracts in the county. We do NOT need 4 more years of defunding our classroom, where our students come to learn.

I urge the community to speak out against this injustice and to demand that our PUSD classrooms be the focus, the heart of PUSD, not an after-thought.

Dr. McDonald has shown consistently that he will not focus on the classroom and so, if members of the School Board vote to extend his overly generous contract another 4 years, they are making the choice to continue defunding the classroom as well leaving our students to suffer the consequences.

Instead of renewing this contract a year early, we should let the voters decide this Fall.

Jonathan Gardner, is the President elect for United Teachers of Pasadena.