North County Times attacks teacher tenure and seniority

Today the North County Times editorial staff published another in their perennial series of attacks on public schools and public school teachers. Today the editors attacked both seniority and tenure. Sadly the editorial staff did not bother to discover the difference between the two concepts before they wrote their hit piece.
Read their latest attack on dedicated public school teachers here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_d188a847-c70e-5b1f-a8a3-830474d41c43.html

If you took the time to go to the URL above and read the article you would have found that the North County Times editorial staff again failed to do basic research. Their editorial today confused tenure with seniority. Two different concepts used in different ways.

Their first error, they are beating a dead horse. There is no tenure at Oceanside Unified or any other California K-12 school district. Tenure does not exist in California K-12 public schools. It is not in our Education Code.

Second error, seniority is not tenure. It simply is one way to structure lay offs when times get tough and cut backs are made. Whether or not a teacher has tenure makes no difference in seniority. A tenured teacher could be laid off if that teacher had less seniority than another teacher during cut backs. Tenure and seniority are two very different concepts. Seniority means the last hired is the first fired. This is a common practice in many many kinds of jobs. It is a very fair concept. Everyone knows where they stand on the list.

A teacher hired on August 21st of a particular year is not laid off until one hired on August 22nd of the same year is laid off first. Nothing at all to do with tenure.

Third error, there are NOT fewer students in most California school districts. No teachers should be laid off. There is a need for every one of the potential laid off teachers. We should not be laying off any of them.

What there is, is a FUNDING CRISES caused by the obstructionist Republican Assembly persons and Republican State Senators who refused to allow reasonable FUNDING increases like a Sarah Palin oil producer's tax.

In Alaska the tax pays for most of all state operations. In California, the third largest oil producing state, there is NO TAX on oil production at all.

The Sacramento Republicans will not allow any tax of any kind to be considered. They hold our state hostage with only one third of the State Legislature due to our archaic two thirds majority constitutional requirement to pass a state budget.

The SAC Republicans vote in lockstep, Soviet Politburo style, and deny all reasonable fixes to our state's income problem.

The editors should be decrying the horrible immoral behavior of the Sacramento Republican mob--Martin Garrick, Diane Harkey, Nathan Fletcher and Mark Wyland. These and their fellow SAC Republicans have caused the mess in California.

The fiscal crises could be easily fixed. State colleges and universities, K-12 education, compassionate programs for health and welfare for the poor and disabled could be fully funded except Garrick, Harkey, Fletcher, Wyland and their immoral fellow "new" Republicans find cuts politically easy. A conscience is a hard thing to find among Sacramento Republicans.* (I write this sadly. I am a fifth generation Republican. I no longer recognize my party.)

*Check out the California Tax Reform Association website
http://caltaxreform.org/?p=211

Read the following article:
"Low Hanging Fruit in the Tax System: 10 Policies for $20 Billion"

Listed at the web site are ten relatively easy solutions to our INCOME problem for the state treasury. None of those ten would cost anyone reading this a single cent. In fact regressive taxes on the middle class and poor like car registration and sales tax could be reduced if these funding solutions were enacted.

Fourth how does one decide who is a good teacher or is not. It often is a completely arbitrary decision NOT based on classroom performance.

I know a young public school teacher living in Fresno who believes he was not rehired at the end of his second year as a successful middle school teacher because he refused to coach a fourth sports team after school. Each team required five days a week several hours a day after school during that particular sports season. He wanted to devote more time to preparation for his classroom duties, so he declined the fourth "opportunity" of the year to coach. The principal wanted male teachers to coach. The parents liked after school sports. The principal wanted happy parents. So the young teacher was dismissed.

Of course the young teacher cannot prove it. California state law does not require the principal to give new teachers any reason at all for not being rehired.

Until we elect someone else to Sacramento or chance our archaic two third majority for passing the California State Budget, the funding problems that has resulted in tens of thousands of lay off notices to public school teachers, immense increases in California college tuition, and heartless cut backs for the poor and disabled will continue in our state.