Jun 15 2014
OPINION: A Victory for Teachers and Students Across California
– Resident Bernard Pech calls attention to a June 10, 2014 Tentative Opinion on dismissal, seniority-based layoffs and “permanent employment”. –
With the help of ‘Students Matter’, nine California public school students filed a lawsuit against the state of California in May 2012. They argued that several state laws related to teacher staffing and employment blocked schools from prioritizing student interests — and thus violated their right to equal educational opportunity. The plaintiffs in Vergara focused on three primary areas of California law in their case: the “permanent employment” statute; various dismissal statutes; and the requirement of seniority-based layoffs or “last-in, first-out” (LIFO) for teacher layoffs.
Finally a path has been found to change the California Education Code: declare specific sections unconstitutional!
Refer to Tentative Decision “Vergara versus California”: http://studentsmatter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Tenative-Decision.pdf(link is external)
Bernard Pech, Piedmont Resident
As the Judge’s tentative ruling indicated, the two year tenure period is “2-3 months” less than 2 years and, in reality, even less than that as the decision to “reelect” must be made well in advance of March 15. The system allows a new teacher to be tenured; but, possibly not recommended for credentialing. (Page 9 of ruling) This means a district would have a permanently employed non-credentialed teacher.