Maura Larkins: In my experience some schools have serious problems
behind the scenes that are caused by teachers who appear to be sweet and caring. Often these teachers have won "teacher of the year" awards. I taught at two such schools in the 90s/early 00s: Harborside and Castle Park in Chula Vista Elementary School District.
All the teachers at Harborside
Elementary were transferred out a few years later.
The same thing should have been done at Castle Park Elementary, but instead Superintendent Libia Gil, and Assistant Superintendents Richard Werlin, Dennis Doyle, Lowell Billings and Maria Guasp allowed themselves to be led by the nose by the teachers who controlled the school. The school had 11 principals in 11 years. Finally a few teachers, dubbed the "Castle Park Five", were transferred out in 2004.
In a stunning move, the
Cupertino Union School District announced late Wednesday night that all 24
teachers at West Valley Elementary School will be reassigned to other
district campuses.
As a result, the high-performing
Sunnyvale school will open in the fall with an entirely new roster of
teachers as well as a new principal.
The district and the Cupertino
Education Association agreed Wednesday evening to start with a fresh slate
at West Valley, which by the district superintendent's own admission was
rife with tension for a long time.
West Valley teachers were
alerted via email Wednesday night of the decision; included in the message
was an attachment of a memorandum of understanding jointly crafted by the
district and union.
The latest development came as a
surprise to teachers and parents, who had been told at a community meeting
Monday that West Valley teachers would have to reapply for their jobs; they
weren't told that the teachers would necessarily be sent to other schools.
Union president Dave Villafana
said the decision to reassign everyone at West Valley stemmed from a desire
to protect teachers from feeling singled out if moved elsewhere.
"We were looking at a fair
process of how you would elect the teachers that would stay (at West
Valley) and the teachers that would leave," he said. "The fair
process would be to move everybody and we agreed with that."
The Cupertino Education
Association would not have been involved in the rehiring process but wanted
to avoid any fairness or perception issues."
"[Teachers would be
asking], 'why did I get moved and somebody else didn't? And what criteria
did you use?' " Villafana said. "We're trying to protect all the
teachers when it comes to that."
The memorandum asks West Valley
teachers to indicate the schools and grade levels they prefer for the
upcoming school year, which begins in August.
It also states that special
education resource specialists, speech language pathologists,
psychologists, nurses, fourth- and fifth-grade physical education teachers
and music teachers are exempt from relocation.
It remains unclear what specific
event or series of events at the school resulted in the apparent turmoil.
The district, citing legal reasons, said it won't release details about
individual personnel or specific incidents.
But on Thursday, Superintendent
Wendy Gudalewicz sent out a letter to school parents elaborating on some of
the issues that sparked the dramatic changes.
"There has been a great
deal of tension at West Valley among and between teachers, support staff,
parents, and administration," Gudalewicz states in the letter.
"If you and your family did not experience or were unaware of this
tension--that's a good thing."
Gudalewicz adds that the group
dynamic at West Valley created "a culture that was not serving
educational needs" and that the district's decision to break up the
faculty was "not taken lightly."
The letter confirms that a
number of measures were taken to try to deal with issues that appear to
have been simmering even before this school year.
"Multiple interventions
took place throughout the year," Gudalewicz states in the letter.
"A new principal was put in place at the beginning of the year.
District level union leadership talked with staff. An all-day session with
a facilitator took place at the end of the year to access the school
climate. At this meeting it became clear that progress was minimal and
internal change seemed unlikely."
Teachers were first alerted to
the campus shakeup the last day of school June 11 when teachers were
informed by district administrators during a staff meeting that they would
have to reapply for their current jobs.
Despite continual problems growing out of the lack of an effective teacher evaluation system, the California Teachers Union ("CTA") prefers behind-closed-door politics and secret "investigations" to across-the-board evaluations of all teachers. Many, if not most, principals fail to do observations of their teachers from year to year. We need a system that puts impartial observers in every classroom on a regular basis. See SDER teacher evaluation plan.
Attorneys
for a nationally recognized Los Angeles Unified teacher, who was
removed from his classroom after allegations of misconduct, are issuing
an ultimatum to district administrators: publicly apologize and let him
return to work, or get sued.
Rafe Esquith, a longtime educator at
Hobart Boulevard Elementary School who has written several books on
teaching and received multiple awards for his work, has not been allowed
to return to school since district officials launched an investigation
in March.
Three
months later, L.A. Unified officials have not clearly outlined the
allegations against the popular teacher, said his attorney Mark Geragos.
But Geragos said he learned that the investigation stemmed from a
complaint by another teacher after Esquith read to a class a passage
from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain...
District officials declined to provide details, except
to say that “the goal is to complete the investigation before school
starts in August.”
Discrimination against females in science continues.
An in-house probe at UCLA concluded in 2015 that women face "demeaning" treatment at the Medical School, however, the person responsible, John Mazziotta, was promoted in March to vice-chancellor!!!
See article below showing UCLA Medical School refused to address problems even when a female instructor won a $2.95 million discrimination case in 2004. UCLA didn't mince words at the time: "The university respectfully disagrees
with the verdict, and we do not believe it was supported by the evidence,"
said James E. Holst, UC's general counsel.
Microbiologist Steve Diggle’s contribution to the #distractinglysexy
hashtag used to mock Tim Hunt’s comments about women in science.
Photograph: Steve Diggle/Twitter
‘There should be a rule against women having children in science’
“Following the recent comments made by Tim Hunt, I spent a little
time reminiscing about my experiences as a postdoctoral researcher at a
London University. I started this position full of enthusiasm but it
ended quite swiftly following comments from my principal investigator
(PI), such as:
‘There really should be a rule against women having children in science.’
‘I’m not going to teach you how to do it because you’re probably
going to leave for marriage and children anyway so why waste my time?’
‘Sorry about all the women in this laboratory, but at least they’re good to look at.’
"The former
neurology chairman, John Mazziotta, was promoted in March to vice
chancellor of UCLA’s health sciences and dean of the medical school.
Hiatt’s letter did not mention him and did not say what role Mazziotta
may have had in previous handling of the women’s complaints."
Women
faculty at UCLA's Alzheimer's disease research center faced "a climate
of conflict, tension, hostility and mistrust" for about a decade and
were treated in an "unprofessional, demeaning manner," an investigation
at the campus medical school has found.
The
probe upheld long-pressed complaints from three women faculty that they
were discriminated against by some men in the department and faced
retaliation for reporting breaches in research protocol, Jonathan Hiatt,
the vice dean for faculty, said in a letter sent to staff.
The
result was a significantly negative effect on the center and a working
environment that "compromises our research, teaching and patient care,"
Hiatt wrote.
The March letter, which was obtained by The Times,
did not identify the women who say they were discriminated against nor
the people who they say violated campus rules. Hiatt could not be
reached for comment Friday night.
Dale Tate, a spokeswoman for the
David Geffen School of Medicine, confirmed the authenticity of the
letter but said she could not offer any more details about the
situation.
"While
we cannot comment beyond the contents of the letter since it involves
confidential personnel matters, leadership within the university and the
health system is committed to a work environment that is welcoming and
free from discrimination of any kind. The letter was intended as an
internal communication to describe the measures taken by the university
in response to serious concerns brought forward in good faith by female
members of the faculty," she said in a statement.
In
the letter, Hiatt wrote that he brought in an external investigator to
look into the complaints, interview current and former faculty and
review documents. The resulting report was finished in October and
declared that the women faculty "had correctly identified and documented
the unprofessional behavior to which they had been subjected" and had
brought their complaints to the attention of administrators numerous
times without a proper response, he said.
Hiatt said he has made
some changes in the department of neurology in response to the
complaints. Without saying that anyone had been directly disciplined, he
noted that the department of neurology has a new interim chair,
professor Marie-Francoise Chesselet, and that another professor has been
appointed as a monitor for issues of gender and equity. He said he is
committed to a fair and "welcoming" school workplace. The former
neurology chairman, John Mazziotta, was promoted in March to vice
chancellor of UCLA’s health sciences and dean of the medical school.
Hiatt’s letter did not mention him and did not say what role Mazziotta
may have had in previous handling of the women’s complaints.
The
Alzheimer's research center has about 10 professors working there,
according to its website, and is devoted to improving the quality of
life for patients and caregivers, to develop new medications, treatments
and improved and earlier diagnoses.
August 05, 2004|Rebecca Trounson | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
A
former clinical instructor at the UCLA School of Medicine has won a
$2.95-million judgment against the University of California from a
Superior Court jury in a sex discrimination and retaliation case.
The
jury, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, found that UCLA had
discriminated against Janet Conney in her efforts to obtain a
tenure-track position at the university, then retaliated against her
when she complained.
Conney, 40, had worked at UCLA's
Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital from 1999 to 2002 after she
completed a year of specialty training at the university in geriatric
psychiatry. She filed suit against the institute and UC's governing
board in 2003, claiming that her supervisors had discriminated against
her on the basis of gender when they decided not to promote her from
clinical instructor to assistant clinical professor...
