If it weren’t so destructive, the hysteria from leaders of the teachers’ union over the proposed changes to the state’s teacher tenure law would be comical. In a manner reminiscent of Chicken Little, Alabama Education Association bosses are cranking out caricatures of their opponents, firing off vitriolic columns and posting online somber videos with a distinct “from the bunker” feel and message.
If they were telling the truth, Alabama’s education employees would have cause for concern. But they’re not. Not even close.
The proposed tenure reforms, called the Students First Act of 2011, simply restore sanity and sound management practices to the process for transferring and disciplining employees. Does it abolish tenure protections? No. Does it make all 125,000 public education employees “at will” employees? Not even close.
In fact, it mandates that currently tenured employees continue to enjoy “non-probationary status” – lawyer-speak for tenure – effective immediately. Those who haven’t yet earned tenure will receive it after completing three full, consecutive years of service.
Does Students First strip employees of their right to due process? Again, no. Due process is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when a property right is involved. Since tenure grants a property right, employees are constitutionally guaranteed due process. No state can take that away.
Alabama school boards and superintendents value their work force and recognize that the vast majority work hard every single day. We know they give tremendous amounts of their personal time and money to get the job done. But we believe each of those committed, competent, caring professionals will freely acknowledge there are individuals who do not belong in the classroom or school environment. Consider some of the employees fired by boards yet reinstated by arbiters under current laws:
The third-grade teacher who drove students to a ball game as a field trip, drank beer during the game and hit a curb on the way home, flattening her tire, and later showed up for work with a blood alcohol level more than twice the legal limit for a DUI. The arbiter put her back to work and ordered her to be randomly tested for drugs and alcohol for two years, after which her record would be expunged.
The middle school basketball coach who admitted that for six weeks he allowed his players to hit and kick teammates as a form of “discipline.” The arbiter called these episodes “beatings” and a “barbaric ritual” and the coach’s behavior “reprehensible,” but ordered the board to reinstate him.
The middle school custodian who had received two formal evaluations and 11 memos/letters addressing performance and behavior problems and who was accused of giving a student a marijuana cigarette and showing a student teacher a photo of male genitalia. Despite a litany of other complaints, the arbiter found insufficient evidence to support firing and ordered him reinstated.
The road to tenure reform also is littered with cases of workers with anger issues who had physical or verbal altercations with coworkers and supervisors around the state. Given the very real dangers of workplace violence, the decisions that ordered them back to work put every person in their paths at risk.
At the heart of these egregious decisions sit arbiters, who under current law can substitute their own judgment for that of the local school board. Arbiters, many of whom live hundreds of miles away, often lack experience with Alabama education law and education matters generally. Rather, their experience tends to be in resolving labor disputes in industrial and manufacturing settings. But an employee who comes drunk to work to a desk job or assembly line poses a far different problem from one who shows up drunk to teach third-graders – or worse, to drive those third-graders on a field trip.
Because local school boards and superintendents understand the school setting, the Students First Act would end the use of arbiters and return decision-making to school boards – who are locally accountable – with appeals going to the circuit court. Despite AEA’s allegations that firings could be for personal or political reasons, Students First specifies employees could be fired only for incompetence; insubordination; neglect of duty; immorality; failure to perform duties in a satisfactory manner, including a consistent and pervasive record of inadequate student achievement or performance; justifiable decrease in the number of positions, or other good and just cause.
The only one of these not in current law is the ability to dismiss a teacher for long-term failure to get her students achieving at an adequate level. And even then, that will require a long-term record that shows consistent or pervasive failure to move her students forward. After all, this is the most basic job of every teacher.
Students First also would give administrators flexibility to reassign employees to positions within a school without lengthy appeals. With more than 80 percent of a school system’s budget going for personnel costs, school systems must be able to put employees where they are needed most and can be fully utilized.
The Students First Act proposes a fair, sound, reasonable way for protecting employees and the students they serve. (For information, visit www.AlabamaSchoolBoards.org.) For far too long the needs of students have been the last concern when it came to the resolution of education employee dismissals. It’s time we all put students first.
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