Teachers’ Union Sues School System…Again
August 26, 2008 2 Comments
From the Courier Journal:
The Jefferson County Teachers Association (KY) filed a new lawsuit late Thursday against Jefferson County Public Schools over its refusal to process grievances for 12 teachers whose contracts were not renewed earlier this year.
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The union first filed a lawsuit against Superintendent Sheldon Berman and the district in May over Berman’s decision to not renew the contracts of 18 teachers for alleged disciplinary and performance issues. That case is pending.
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According to documents filed in court by the school district, 14 of the 18 teachers had significant misconduct or disciplinary problems, in addition to having received poor evaluations for the 2007-08 school year.
Those problems include behavior such as excessive tardiness and absenteeism, berating students and permitting them to skip class. Others were more serious.
One teacher allegedly threatened to bring a gun to school. Another is accused of taking students shopping and having them spend the night in her home, and is under investigation by the school district and state for rewriting student portfolios. A third was absent without leave for a month, and a fourth called her students a “bunch of assholes.”
Everett Hoffman, an attorney for the union, has said there are “a lot of inaccuracies in what (the district has reported) … they have exaggerated or mischaracterized what actually happened.”
Hello, Progressive Conservative.
This is hard for me to understand.
I’m no big fan of the teachers’ union, but that’s because of the way that they act. I do, however, see a need for them, but it doesn’t appear as if they typically fulfill a benevolent role.
So, I was looking at this, following the steps, and what the real problem is here is that these greivances are not being processed. These grievances might be automatic under certain circumstances.
Still, the school board has given no reason to not close the files. This is probably pretty much a rubber stamp process.
I think this is a bit of posturing on both sides. The real movement is over on the sidelines.
Well locally this has gotten much more attention and the backstory is that every one of these teachers REALLY needed to be fired. It’s just scary as a parent to know that the teacher’s union cares more about their union dues than protecting kids from lousy teachers.
I think the union is using the ‘process’ to try and delay the matter. The school system made a bit of an end-run because they just want to get rid of them.