Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Oh, those poor incompetent teachers
Up next is Prop 74, designed to make firing teachers a lot easier.
School, prison, what's the difference? From the against argument:
"PROPOSITION 74 IS UNFAIR TO TEACHERS BECAUSE IT TAKES AWAY THEIR RIGHT TO A HEARING BEFORE THEY ARE FIRED. We give criminals the right of due process, and our teachers deserve those fundamental rights, as well."
Well, criminals are being sent to the slammer, so they get a hearing. Teachers are getting fired. What other employees have this "fundamental right" to a hearing before getting canned?
I don't quite see how the alternative is better. From the rebuttal to the against argument, after an example on how a crappy teacher needed to be paid 25 grand to resign:
"Rather than pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawyers and conduct lengthy and useless dismissal proceedings, school districts are forced to actually pay teachers to resign because of outdated tenure laws."
I guess it's just the wording here that's poorly done. The way it reads now suggests to me that the current plan is to pay teachers to resign, rather than doing the "right thing" by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on hearings. I guess if you squint right, you can see the real argument that school districts are choosing to pay off teachers to avoid getting into the hearing process caused by current laws, but I would've made that explicit if I was writing this.
Ooooh, leftovers. While perusing the list of old reasons-to-fire that are included in the ballot text at the end, I found some interesting ones.
"(3) Dishonesty."
"Mrs. Johnson, you've been teaching here for a year, right?"
"Yes."
"Tell me... do you celebrate Christmas?"
"Well, sort of. I mean, our family does the Christmas tree thing."
"Do you tell your kids about Santa Claus without explaining that he's fictional?"
"Sure. I mean, they're young, they don't need me to..."
"Aha! Dishonesty! You're fired!!!"
"(10) Knowing membership by the employee in the Communist Party."
Yep, this one's still around. We should change it to fit the times, and throw in Al Qaeda or something.
Oh, right, the endorsement. Hmmmmmmmmmm. On the one hand, I don't go to these schools anymore, so I don't care. On the other hand, teachers' unions can be really annoying, and pissing them off is certainly a plus. On the other other hand, though, pissing them off will probably make them even more annoying. I guess it's a toss-up. Call it in the air! Heads for YES!
It's heads! I'll be voting YES on Prop 74.
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