Public schools / sexual predators

[Ken]

Continuing from above....

The first thing to understand about how teaching contracts work in a union state is that new teachers are always hired on a probationary status that usually lasts 3 years. Any time during the first three years that a teacher works for a district in that state they can be let go or "non-renewed" for any reason or no reason at all. Typically the district might say "x-teacher was not a "good fit" for our district" or some such, and they are gone. No appeal, no nothing, because they are probationary.

After a teacher has been working for a district for 3 years they gain tenure which means they are protected against being let go without cause. They can still be fired for cause (violations of policy, sexual harassment, or just plain incompetence). And they can also be laid off due to downsizing according to whatever seniority rules are in place. But the district has to follow procedures to lay off or fire teachers. It sill happens. If a teacher gets arrested and convicted of child abuse no question they can easily be fired. If they are incompetent, not showing up for work, or not doing effective teaching they can also be let go but that takes a process, usually an improvement plan, and lots of observations before they can be let go. So maybe a couple months.

Now what happens in real life is districts want to let go of staff for other reasons. The most common one recently is DEI initiatives which is something I personally witnessed. But they can't legally let go of teachers for DEI reasons so they get warehoused like in NYC. Here is what I'm talking about. The first school I worked at here in WA was about 25 miles away and sort of on the exurban fringe. The second year I was there the old principal retired and they brought in a young energetic "diverse" principal from Portland to shake things up and try to raise test scores and rankings. The school had a growing Hispanic and immigrant population as this area is growing and changing fast. This new young principal shows up and looks around and realizes that the bulk of her teaching staff is middle aged and White and somewhat conservative educationally speaking. So, you know, English teachers who want to teach Shakespeare and the classics and not so much Beyonce lyrics or rap lyrics or whatever is the latest hip new novel out of Harlem or East LA or Nigeria. Or maybe history teachers with rigid high standards and uncompromising grading who are uninterested in whatever is the latest inclusive grading scheme where kids can't fail, they can only be failed.

Now this new principal wants to bring in lots of younger new teachers, especially more "diverse" teachers so Black and Hispanic or the ones with purple hair and tattoos and they/them pronouns. That sort of thing. Except that she CAN'T because she has a staff of older graying conservative White teachers who don't plan on retiring soon or going anywhere. So you start looking for ways to ease some of the older folks out. Maybe it comes up in your performance review that you have various "needs improvement" items and it becomes obvious they don't plan to keep you around. Now the majority of teachers in this position are going to read the writing on the wall and take the resignation at the end of the year knowing that if they go willingly they are going to get a stellar letter of recommendation and will easily find another job and some other district, maybe they need to relocate or commute further. But veteran teachers with a good record can usually find work fairly easily. But there is a minority of teachers who are going to get their hackles up and refuse to go quietly, knowing that the district has no real grounds to fire them. So it becomes a battle of wills and teaching is like any other job, your bosses can make your work life miserable if they want with endless demands and critiques and drive your performance evaluations down and down. Sometimes these teachers get reassigned to some scut work position and they move a new young teacher into their classroom. I would be willing to bet that some portion of those teachers getting paid to do nothing in NYC fall into this category. They were the wrong age and wrong color to meet some DEI initiative and instead of going quietly they ended up in limbo.

I saw this happen personally. Some of the older English and social studies teachers started to disappear into early retirement or to take jobs in Arizona or whatever and their new replacements were young Black teachers with dreadlocks, or young Hispanic teachers with tattoos, or LGBT-ish teachers. You know, trying to make the school look more like the student body. That didn't reach into science when I was there because I guess it is a lot harder to find Black or Hispanic science teachers than English or social studies teachers. But I was already kind of crosswise with the administration for other reasons. Then the pandemic happened and when they went to virtual learning they wanted all the teachers to report to school every morning to teach zoom classes out of their empty classrooms. I had two daughters still at home, one in middle school and one in HS and there was no way I was going to leave them at home alone all day while I drove across the county to teach in an empty classroom. So I resigned and organized a home learning pod for my daughters and a handful of their good friends and we had class in our dining room with 3 of their friends every day during the pandemic. Luckily with a wife in medicine who was pulling in extraordinary overtime hours due to COVID my salary wasn't needed and I could take the year off to homeschool.

So without knowing anything specific about NYC, it would be my educated guess that no small portion of the teachers they have "warehoused" are simply teachers who didn't fit in with whatever vision some new administrator had for that school and who refused to read the writing on the wall and go quietly. And since the district didn't really have any valid reason to fire them, they would rather just warehouse them instead of going to an arbitration hearing where they might well be ordered to take them back in their old position. Rather than risk that the administrators would rather just leave them in limbo.

Now there are proper legal ways to make a teaching staff more diverse, younger, or whatever. Things like mentorship programs, bringing in young interns and student teachers, etc. But those things take time. And a lot of young administrators are very ambitious and don't have that kind of time. They are climbing a career ladder and only plan to spend a couple years in a school before taking the next promotion up the ladder to something bigger and better. So they want fast results they can point to as the feathers in their caps.

Unions and union contracts make it hard or impossible for them to come in and just re-organize a whole school to fit whatever different and more diverse image they might have for it. Whether you think that is a good thing or a bad thing is your point of view. That is also why charter schools are popular among a certain young educational reformer set. Because they can shape the staff to their own image of what they want and aren't stuck with the legacy hiring decisions of their predecessors like they are in the regular public schools.

Is that what is happening in NYC? To some extent no doubt. And some are no doubt being dismissed for causes but the district is too cheap or understaffed to do it properly in a timely manner. You tend not to see that sort of thing in suburban districts that are run more efficiently because they actually fire the teachers they have cause to fire and move on quickly, union or no union.

Point is, be skeptical when you read about how unions make it hard to fire teachers. That is certainly true. Or rather union contracts that the districts agreed to make it hard. But be skeptical. Lots of people in education have hidden agendas. Now I have no doubt that if a district wanted to renegotiate its teaching contracts to make all teachers at will with no tenure in exchange for say a 25% pay hike then many teachers would be tempted to take that offer. Maybe not a majority, but a whole bunch would be happy to take the money in exchange for less job security. But I've never seen that even get proposed.

[temporal1]

NYC famously has 600 teachers on payroll who don’t teach and the unions make it too hard to fire them.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009 ... ubber-room

They literally get paid to sit around doing nothing all day.

i remember these cases discussed on forum, i’m not sure if you were part of that.

i’d appreciate if the union posts could go elsewhere, they weren’t mentioned by Matt Walsh or in the other OP cases.

i have never been a member of a union, i’ve known various family+friends who have been or are members, my view of problems with unions is of decades of observations, i.e., esp the incompetent being protected and kept on the job, the heartbreak of lowering standards for all.

i believe there are many great, competent teachers, however, whether it’s unions or THE SYSTEMS, there are recognized problems in the gov school system, when i was young, teaching was an honorable desireable job, today, from what i gather, the best students don’t even consider it. even years ago when our children were in college, i encouraged them to teach - they didn’t want anything to do with it, nor did their friends - altho in the past, we had numbers of public school teachers and counselors in the family.

lots of teachers leave classrooms to go into admin. they say it’s easier and less hassle.
reports are, public schools are now heavy on admin.

who would want to be in a room full of students with cameras just waitng for a photo op to exploit, along with parents looking for lawsuits? teachers used to be highly respected, now they’re targets.

private schools and homeschools offer better, without the pay or legal protections (unions) provide.
the key is PARENT INVESTMENT. parents willing to go the extra mile in COST+TIME are most likely to have better experiences, get better results. non union teachers don’t earn as much, but the working conditions are better, personal satisfaction, etc.

i believe this is common knowledge, and it’s GENERALIZING, like saying dogs have 4 legs. there are always exceptions to generalizations. that doesn’t mean generalizations are meaningless.

i believe unions are sacred cows in need of improvement. too much power, without adequate means of accountability.
union loyalists are many, resolute and absolute.

my opinion.
not much altered by the idea it’s the correlating system, not unions, that are at fault.

[temporal1]

For some, when it comes to the Catholic Church, the focus is on CHILD ABUSE, ZERO TOLERANCE.
Wrt public schools, “nothing to see here”.

(several pages) in “Prayers for the Catholic Church”
viewtopic.php?t=1519&start=140

Matt Walsh, a grumpy Catholic, raises questions.
See his OP video. It’s not just about the one predator-teacher. He uses the word, epidemic, suggestion a million victims.
“nothing to see here” is a highly effective diversion tactic.

P.12

I do not think there is much question the Church will win this lawsuit. The compelling argument is that ONLY Clergy are named. The idea that a school nurse retains privileged conversation status or “therapist” who may well or even hold a medical degree yet the confessional alone is stripped of historical legal protections is a gross violation of Constitutional law.

Every religious person should object because this law is not about the Catholic Church, child abuse, or the seal of the confessional.
It is a bare faced open attack on religious practices and an example that many on the left have no real belief in the Constitution.

It is far more than a slippery slope.

^^JayP is Catholic.

[barnhart]

For some, when it comes to the Catholic Church, the focus is on CHILD ABUSE, ZERO TOLERANCE.
Wrt public schools, “nothing to see here”....

I think if there were a school system that covered up child sexual assault, shielded predators from prosecution, moved predators to new places and left them with access to children over decades, it would also fall under similar condemnation as the Roman church.

[JohnH]

For some, when it comes to the Catholic Church, the focus is on CHILD ABUSE, ZERO TOLERANCE.
Wrt public schools, “nothing to see here”....

I think if there were a school system that covered up child sexual assault, shielded predators from prosecution, moved predators to new places and left them with access to children over decades, it would also fall under similar condemnation as the Roman church.

What you described above is exactly what has happened across the country. But public schools aren't a bogeyman that attract the same kind of ire as a Christian denomination, so it's gotten not nearly as much attention.

The pattern in public education is that (union-protected) teachers are dismissed from one district with the hopes they will just go somewhere else. So a serial predator gets bounced around from place to place, or often state to state.

Despite this, there are no calls for the dismantling of public education (like we have heard about the Catholic church), multibillion settlements that bankrupt entire school districts, and there is a general smugness I note on the part of public educators who refuse to take accountability for how much damage their institution and its structures that are expressly designed to evade accountability cause.

[JayP]

As is so common here the threads wander. My being Catholic is completely irrelevant to my observation this law will be struck down.
The key phrase is the law “Except for members of the clergy…..”

When your law provides for privilege then explicitly singles out clergy you have demonstrated a clear violation of freedom of religion.

Now, the double legal mistake of those in favor of the law, is nothing will happen.
How will you prosecute someone for NOT revealing what was said in a confessional?

Unless you wire tap a confessional (and there is a legal loser) how do you prove a priest was told about abuse and did not report it?
If the penitent says something, it is at best a “he said, she said” situation.

Anyone going to convict on that?

This is not at all about the abuse issue. It is purely a legal analysis. No way this law stands a constitutional test.
And no one will EVER be prosecuted under that provision.
Can you see the legal circus of a priest going to jail because he would not break the seal of the confessional?

[Thomas_muntzer]

it’s madness to allow materials+behaviors “any random neighbor” would be prosecuted for - into classrooms with bells on!

i agree with Matt. some saw the failure decades ago. far too ignored.

You can't cite the books of sex ed your kids have in school because it's too inappropriate

[barnhart]

There are many things in the schools to critique but to make an accurate parallel with the sexual abuse of the Roman church you would need an unelected, unaccountable, unitary, trans national, with a track record of hiding abuse, shielding abusers from criminal prosecution, moving known predators to new locations with access to victims, locating proven predators into remote locations where civil law has fewer resources to push back on the abuse and sustaining this program over decades of not centuries.

[ohio jones]

So without knowing anything specific about NYC...

If only we had someone here who was actually involved in teaching and administration in the public schools in NYC at the time this was allegedly happening, rather than having to rely on uninformed speculation....
/s

[JohnH]

As is so common here the threads wander. My being Catholic is completely irrelevant to my observation this law will be struck down.
The key phrase is the law “Except for members of the clergy…..”

When your law provides for privilege then explicitly singles out clergy you have demonstrated a clear violation of freedom of religion.

Now, the double legal mistake of those in favor of the law, is nothing will happen.
How will you prosecute someone for NOT revealing what was said in a confessional?

Unless you wire tap a confessional (and there is a legal loser) how do you prove a priest was told about abuse and did not report it?
If the penitent says something, it is at best a “he said, she said” situation.

Anyone going to convict on that?

This is not at all about the abuse issue. It is purely a legal analysis. No way this law stands a constitutional test.
And no one will EVER be prosecuted under that provision.
Can you see the legal circus of a priest going to jail because he would not break the seal of the confessional?

One priest said (I paraphrase) "I will gladly go to prison in order not to break the confessional seal. They need more chaplains in prisons anyway."

This issue is basically just about power-hungry people in the state wanting to assert their power and dominance over the church and over religion in general. It has zip all to do with protecting children or helping the abused.