The rubberization of teachers is a process that is founded on a lie. This lie is, that a teacher's value to a school can be judged by a single individual who may or may not know what the person reviewed does in a classroom.

The question "What makes a great teacher?" can only be answered if the circumstances are available for review and analysis, and the person who makes the determination wants to consider all factors of the teacher's performance and outcomes.

I just dont agree with the "pass the trash", "dance with lemons", "teacher jail" and "end tenure" discussions, because some of the "best" teachers are in the "Rubber Rooms of New York City. How do I know? I ask their peers in the schools, the children and their parents.

The venom sweeping America right now is warranted by a select few, yet everyone will suffer the consequences, when excellent senior teachers are no longer working in our nation's public schools. We simply cannot, and must not, let that happen to our children.

Betsy Combier

LAUSD teachers paid to stay home?
Friday, May 08, 2009
Miriam Hernandez, abc7.com News Team
LINK

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Despite budget cuts and looming teacher layoffs, the Los Angeles Unified School District is paying $10 million a year to 160 teachers who are not allowed anywhere near a classroom.

Thomas Shelden is the first to tell you: What he is doing is a waste of taxpayer money. He is an LAUSD teacher, awaiting an administrative investigation. Until there's a decision, he is ordered to stay at home during school hours. In turn, he collects his salary: $73,500 a year.

"I can use my computer and I can watch television and do dishes and vacuum," said Shelden.

In a separate case, teacher Matthew Kim and LAUSD are locked in a court battle. Kim is accused of groping the breast of one employee and touching the breast of another. Kim has cerebral palsy and says the movement was involuntary.

Kim, Shelden, and 150 others keep their paychecks thanks to union rules and despite objections by the district.

"Let me tell you that if I had my way, I would fire all 150 and they would not get another damn penny," said LAUSD Superintendent Ramon Cortines.

"The number of teachers, compared to the total number of teachers that the district says are incompetent, is minuscule -- minuscule," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Duffy blames poor vetting by the school district.

"If the administration would focus on the first two years of probation, they could get rid of bad teachers," said Duffy.

"They're milking the system," said Cortines.

What Thomas Shelden is doing, they call it "teacher jail."

An LAUSD teacher for 18 years, Shelden says he is falsely accused of sexually harassing a co-worker at Charles White Elementary School. He says he would prefer to be earning his salary in the classroom.

"I should not be sitting here at home," said Shelden. "I should be with those children. I should be teaching them English. I should be teaching them reading."

FAILURE GETS A PASS
L.A. Unified pays teachers not to teach

About 160 instructors and others get salaries for doing nothing while their job fitness is reviewed. They collect roughly $10 million a year, even as layoffs are considered because of a budget gap.

By Jason Song, May 6, 2009
LINK

For seven years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has paid Matthew Kim a teaching salary of up to $68,000 per year, plus benefits.

His job is to do nothing.

Every school day, Kim's shift begins at 7:50 a.m., with 30 minutes for lunch, and ends when the bell at his old campus rings at 3:20 p.m. He is to take off all breaks, school vacations and holidays, per a district agreement with the teacher's union. At no time is he to be given any work by the district or show up at school.

He has never missed a paycheck.

In the jargon of the school district, Kim is being "housed" while his fitness to teach is under review. A special education teacher, he was removed from Grant High School in Van Nuys and assigned to a district office in 2002 after the school board voted to fire him for allegedly harassing teenage students and colleagues. In the meantime, the district has spent more than $2 million on him in salary and legal costs.

Last week, Kim was ordered to continue this daily routine at home. District officials said the offices for "housed" employees were becoming too crowded.

About 160 teachers and other staff sit idly in buildings scattered around the sprawling district, waiting for allegations of misconduct to be resolved.

The housed are accused, among other things, of sexual contact with students, harassment, theft or drug possession. Nearly all are being paid. All told, they collect about $10 million in salaries per year -- even as the district is contemplating widespread layoffs of teachers because of a financial shortfall.

Most cases take months to adjudicate, but some take years.

Kim, 41, has persisted the longest.

He argued unsuccessfully in a lawsuit that he was the victim of disability discrimination. Born with severe cerebral palsy, he has limited use of his limbs, must use a wheelchair and requires a full-time personal aide (who is paid about $14 an hour by the district). He declined repeatedly to be interviewed, as did his attorney, Lawrence Trygstad.

Kim's long-term stay in paid professional limbo highlights how long it can take to move through the thicket of legal protections afforded educators in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second-largest.

"It's a glaring example of how hard it is to remove someone from the classroom and how the process is tilted toward teachers," said school board member Marlene Canter, who recently proposed -- unsuccessfully -- to revamp the disciplinary process.

National issue

The problem of what to do with teachers in trouble extends well beyond Los Angeles Unified. But not every district in California, or the country, handles it the same way.

In New York City public schools, which make up the country's largest district, teachers are confined to "rubber rooms." About 550 of the district's 80,000 teachers spend school hours "literally just doing crossword puzzles, waiting for the end of the day" until their cases are resolved, spokeswoman Ann Forte said. Some have been there for years.

In Chicago, the dismissal process moves faster and the 30 teachers waiting for their cases to be resolved are assigned clerical tasks. "They've got to be doing something," senior assistant general counsel James Ciesil said.

San Francisco Unified employees are either sent home or assigned to tasks such as working in warehouses, doing inventory or answering phones, said Jolie Wineroth, the district's senior executive director for human resources.

"I don't want to give anyone a free vacation," she said.

Former union leaders say teachers in the Los Angeles district used to be assigned non-teaching jobs when they were housed. "They should not just sit there like zombies," said Hank Springer, United Teachers Los Angeles president from 1975 to 1980.

But the practice has changed in the last dozen years or so. Now, district officials say, they are prohibited from assigning chores under the contract with the teachers' union. Although there is no specific reference in the contract to housed employees, an attorney for L.A. Unified pointed to Article 9, Section 4.0, which defines the "professional duties" of a teacher, such as instructional planning and evaluating the work of pupils.

With no mention of photocopying, stuffing envelopes or answering telephones in the contract, the district and union have interpreted this provision as prohibiting clerical duties.

"Why would we denigrate [teachers] by forcing them to do something they're not supposed to do?" said A. J. Duffy, who is now president of UTLA, adding that housed teachers are entitled to a presumption of innocence.

Los Angeles Unified Supt. Ramon C. Cortines thinks the policy should be changed. "I don't believe they should just be sitting -- that's taxpayer money," he said.

Some employees newly housed by L.A. Unified are dissatisfied with the practice for a different reason: They haven't been told what they are alleged to have done, nor whether the district is planning to fire them.

"Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have more rights than I do," said Jeffrey Brown, a ninth-grade teacher at Fulton College Preparatory School in Van Nuys.

In a lawsuit filed against the district in April, Brown alleges that he has been housed for roughly 70 days but told nothing about why.

His lawyer, Joseph Hart, said he was amazed at the secrecy of the system and its lack of regard for individual rights. "I'm surprised nobody has challenged it in court before," he said.

District officials said that with rare exceptions, employees are informed all along of the allegations against them.

Misconduct complaints

Despite severely restricted movement and speech that was hard to understand, Kim racked up remarkable achievements before beginning his teaching career.

As a child he learned to paint with a brush and to type with a stick -- both held in his mouth. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics from UC Berkeley, then went on to get two master's degrees, one in astrophysics and the other in special education. He was also active in the disability rights movement.

When he applied for a full-time teaching job, he was turned down by more than 15 schools in L.A. Unified, he said in a 1999 letter filed in court. Only after he threatened to sue the district for disability discrimination did he get a teaching job at Grant High School, records show.

Kim's troubles with the district began in 2000, when a classroom aide reported inappropriate comments and advances.

In class one October day, according to her testimony before an administrative panel, Kim asked her to stand closer to him while interpreting his speech for the students. When she moved closer, she said, he touched her breast with his left hand, the only one he could slightly control.

Students immediately started making comments about what they'd seen. One said: "Oh, come on, Mr. Kim, you know you liked it," according to a summary of allegations against Kim prepared by a state review panel in 2008. Kim responded to the students that he had.

Over the next two years, another adult andsixstudents would make similar complaints against Kim,according to the summary.

The same month the aide complained, Kim asked a girl if she had a boyfriend and if she was a virgin, according to the girl's testimony during an administrative hearing.

Another girl said that Kim kept staring at her and urged her at one point not to change her hair color, according to documents filed with the state.

Joseph Walker, then the principal at Grant, confronted Kim, who denied most of the allegations. Walker then wrote a memo to the teacher telling him that it was important "to stay out of the students' personal life and personal space," according to district records filed in court.

It was the first of several attempts by the principal to bring the teacher into line. In addition to chastising him for his conduct, he also found fault with Kim's teaching skills.

"Communication with the students is a slow and laborious process leading to frustration and loss of instructional time," Walker wrote in a letter later filed in court.

In 2002, Kim passed a major milestone: his second anniversary with the district. Under state law, he was now a tenured teacher, entitled to a detailed set of protections. These included taking the district to an administrative review hearing and to court.

Difficult process

Complaints of misconduct kept coming, according to district records filed in court.

After a male classroom aide reported that he had seen Kim touch a girl on the shoulders and near her crotch, Walker asked for advice from L.A. Unified's personnel division. The principal noted that Kim "has been charged with sexual harassment for the fourth time within a one-year period," according to his December 2001 memo in court files.

Two months later, a school counselor complained that Kim ran his hand back and forth across one of her breasts during a meeting, according to the court filings and the commission summary.

Walker now wanted Kim out, and the district personnel department agreed.

"I wasn't big on firing people because I knew what you had to go through," Walker said in a recent interview. He also was afraid Kim would sue him for discrimination.

But after so many complaints, Walker said he had no choice. "I was really compelled to do something," he said.

In February 2002, the district ordered Kim housed at an administration building while the allegations were formally investigated. The school board voted to fire Kim in October 2003.

For seven years, the district and Kim have battled in administrative forums and courtrooms.

Kim sued Walker and the district for disability discrimination and ultimately lost. By then, Walker had retired -- exhausted, he said, by the battle to fire Kim. He currently heads a charter school in Pacoima.

Separately, a Commission on Professional Competence -- a three-member panel with ultimate administrative authority over teacher firings -- concluded that Kim had indeed engaged in unprofessional conduct by touching three female students. But, the panel decided, he should not be fired because "his conduct was a result of poor judgment, rather than overtly sexual."

The panel found no evidence that Kim was a poor teacher or that he had injured his students. Instead it faulted the district for poorly documenting its case and not informing Kim promptly of the allegations.

The district successfully appealed to the superior and appellate courts, which sent the case back to the commission for reconsideration. Earlier this year, the commission backed Kim again, ruling this time on a 2-1 vote that all of the touching was the result of "involuntary arm movements."

And so it goes on, with no end in sight. As Kim continues to collect his teacher's salary, the district is planning yet another court appeal.

jason.song@latimes.com

Teacher Jail

Firing bad teachers isn’t easy, report says
Originally printed at http://www.laindependent.com/news/local/hollywood/44562892.html

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Unified School District responded with two news releases this weekend in response to a story in the Los Angeles Times that shows how hard it is to fire an incompetent teacher in California.

LAUSD school board member Marlene Canter said The Times report shows “the labyrinth and expensive process to fire teachers who have been removed (from classrooms) for cause.”

“Horrific stories like those discussed in the Los Angeles Times (Sunday) are the reason why I brought forward two motions last week to make it easier to remove teachers who have no business being in a classroom,” Canter said in the prepared statement isued by the district. “It is impossible to justify a dismissal process that fails to protect the children in our care.

“While employee rights are important, they should not trump children’s rights to safety and a quality education,” she said. “The time for discussion has passed — the time for action is now.”

The Times reviewed every case on the record in the last 15 years in which a tenured employee was fired by any public school district in the state, and where the teacher formally contested the decision before a review commission.

The paper shows that building a case for firing a bad teacher is so time-consuming, costly and draining for principals and administrators that many don’t make the effort except in the most egregious cases. Also, the vast majority of firings stem from blatant misconduct, including sexual abuse, other immoral or illegal behavior, insubordination or repeated violation of rules such as showing up on time.

Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can’t teach is rare, the newspaper reported. In 80 percent of the dismissals, classroom performance was not even factor.

And although districts generally press ahead with only the strongest cases, even those get knocked down more than a third of a time by the specially convened review panels, which have the discretion to restore teachers’ jobs even when grounds for dismissal are proved.

The Times reported that teachers have won strong job protections over the years, the legacy of labor battles in the early 20th century, when instructors could be fired for frivolous infractions. Some experts say the tenure system has outlived its usefulness.

But LAUSD teachers union leaders told The Times that tenure and collective bargaining are not the problem, and it is not fair to use egregious cases to indict the entire system.

“The union is bound by law to defend our members, and we do,” A.J. Duffy, president of the United Teachers Los Angeles told the Times. “That should in no way deter the resolve of the district to do their job, which is to help failing teachers to get better, or, if they can’t, to work to get rid of them.”

According to The Times, once a school board approves a dismissal, teachers may appeal to Commissions on Professional Competence, review panels that have final administrative authority on who gets fired or laid off in California schools.

In many other states, such appeals, are handled by administrative law judges alone. But California panels also include two educators, one appointed by the school district and the other by the employee under review.

LAUSD officials have struggled with the system more than most, The Times reported. Of the 15 tenured employees on record as fighting their terminations before review commissions in the last decade and a half, nine won their jobs back.

The main reasons, according to the paper’s findings, was that the commissions did not find the district’s evidence damning or persuasive enough.

School board member Tamar Galatzan said there are currently 150 LAUSD teachers at various points in the dismissal process and that some of the cases are several years old.

“A few of these ‘housed’ teachers, who have been removed from schools, are alleged to have committed egregious offenses involving misconduct and harassment,” Galatzan said.

But the issue of removing teachers from the classroom is not just a local issue, said Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines, adding that “erring on the side of adults instead of putting the needs of students is a statewide reality.”

LAUSD Chief Operating Officer Dave Holmquist told The Times that “if the dismissal process is not reformed, we will continue to face the choice of returning to schools some teachers that we don’t want working for us, or keeping them out of the classroom and paying them to do nothing while great teachers face layoffs.”