Administrators prevail over teachers and students who follow them to lunchtime trysts

This case interested me because it is somewhat similar to what happened at Castle Park Elementary, except that it was not students, but teachers, who followed a district administrator to a lunchtime tryst in the California case. Castle Park Elementary had a very disturbed culture among the teachers, who wanted to retaliate after several teachers had been transferred out of the school.

The teachers didn't seem to appreciate that the district was in the middle of a court case in which it paid $100,000s to lawyers to defend these very teachers for illegal actions. The teachers styled themselves as "The Castle Park Family", and they were furious.

They caused a big public brouhaha, but the lunchtime stalking incident did not reach the newspapers. The board and the district administrators should have disciplined the teachers at the beginning instead of paying $100,000s of tax dollars to conceal their illegal actions. They became drunk with power, and could not be controlled by any principal. The school had eleven principals in eleven years. Also, one of their leaders, Peg Myers, became the President of Chula Vista Educators, and retains that position today. During the strife at Castle Park Elementary, Peg Myers worked closely with CTA director Jim Groth.

Court Decisions Favor Schools
BY ANDREA BELL
nassp.org
National Association of Secondary School Principals
Nov. 2000

Principal Prevails

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas found in favor of a school principal on legal issues related to the intended use of dubious photographs that could have potentially compromised the principal’s integrity.

In Riggan v. Midland Indep. Sch. Dist. (86 F. Supp. 2d 647 [W.D. Tex. 2000]), Casey Riggan, a senior at Midland (Tex.) Senior High School, along with several o f hi s f r i ends, followed the school’s principal to the house of a teacher and photographed the principal’s car in front of the house. Not long after, administrators investigating rumors of the principal’s sexual impropriety learned that Riggan had photos that might be linked to their investigation. The principal himself also learned of the photos and contacted Riggan’s father for a conference.

Although the parties disputed exactly what was said at that meeting, the principal alleged that Riggan intended to print the photograph on a T-shirt with the statement “I never had sex with that woman” for graduates to wear during graduation to publicly humiliate him.

Additionally, the principal charged that Riggan’s photos were taken in retaliation for prior disciplinary actions and attempted to punish Riggan by suspending him and temporarily assigning him to the Alternative Education Program and requiring him to write apologies or be banned from graduation. Riggan claimed that the photos were absolutely protected under the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression and that, as a result, the school could not regulate the photos or their use. The court held that although the photo-bearing T-shirt would be considered an expressive activity, regulation of the photographs in this case would not violate the First Amendment because Riggan did not have the absolute right to publicly humiliate the principal at graduation. Additionally, the court explained that if the p h o t o h a d b e e n p r i n t e d o n t h e Tshirts for graduation, the resulting disruption would have justified Riggan’s punishment by the school.

60 percent of students in Texas study were suspended or expelled

Peg Myers, the president of Chula Vista Eductors, and former teacher at my school, Castle Park Elementary, would come in to the teachers lounge in the first week of school and identify several new students as troublemakers. Here's the problem. She complained about those same kids for the entire school year! I don't think she realized the implications of her unchanging complaints: she was implicitly admitting that she was not able to help a single one of those children improve their behavior. This also seems to be the case in Texas:


How do school discipline tactics affect children?
Florence Shapiro and John Whitmire
Statesman.com
July 18, 2011

..."Breaking Schools' Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students' Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement" found that 60 percent of students studied were suspended or expelled based on an examination of records of nearly a million public secondary school students, spanning their six years of middle and high school. About 15 percent of students studied were disciplined 11 or more http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftimes; nearly half of those students were involved at some point in the juvenile justice system...



This isn't "No Tolerance." It's More Like " Mo Ignorance!"
Half of Texas' Students Suspended, Study Finds
By Nirvi Shah
Edited by I, Praetorian; MA, PPS, PVC, ATM
Disenfranchised-Educators
July 20, 2011

...“We hope other states will follow Texas’ lead and put their systems under similar scrutiny,” said Michael D. Thompson, director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Justice Center. He raised a key question he said state education leaders should ask themselves: “Is our state’s school discipline system getting the desired results?”
The study found that the average number of days on which students missed at least some class time due to a disciplinary incident was two days for out-of-school suspension, 27 days for a placement at an alternative school, and 73 days if they were placed in a juvenile justice program.

While the numbers gleaned from analyzing student discipline in Texas may be shocking, the state’s rate of expulsions and out-of-school suspensions, at 6.9 percent, is lower than that of some other states, including California, at about 13 percent, and Florida, at about 9 percent.

Repeat Offenders

One statistic uncovered by the analysis of Texas discipline and juvenile justice records was that 15 percent of students were punished by suspension or expulsion 11 or more times. Those repeat actions make the effectiveness of those types of punishments questionable, Mr. Thompson said...

California Teachers Association head counsel Beverly Tucker used to be a counsel for the ACLU

California Teachers Association head counsel Beverly Tucker used to be a counsel for the ACLU in Northern California. Obviously, she wasn't a true believer in civil rights, or she wouldn't have spent so much money and effort on silly efforts to violate my civil rights. Tucker didn't plan her actions well.

Tucker had no good reason to support the two teachers who said I was going to come to school and shoot everybody. Her reason for doing so? It was an election year for the teachers union affiliate in Chula Vista, and the incumbent (Gina Boyd) was afraid the two teachers might make trouble for her if she insisted on a proper investigation.

I think Tucker was careless. The matter simply wasn't important to her, so she didn't bother to use any energy thinking about it. Only a very tiny amount of brain work was required to reach a sensible solution to the problem. The teachers should have been told to apologize to me. Instead, Tucker has spent years forcing teachers to lie under oath, wildly contradicting each other, among other shameful actions.

Tucker has enormous power. The people who supported her in my case (Gail Mendes, Jim Groth and Peg Myers) are rising fast in CTA. This delights me, because it makes my case more newsworthy and it reveals the politics inside CTA.

Click on the labels below to see older posts about the individuals involved.

Who blanked this blog yesterday?

Peg Myers is facing an election in May as President of Chula Vista Educators.







I woke up yesterday morning and found all the posts missing from this blog.

Who could have done it?

Someone seems to have gotten really angry about the last article I published before my blog went blank; it concerned the deposition of Chula Vista Educators President Peg Myers.

I have a prime suspect.

By looking at the IP addresses of computers that hit my site, I know that the first person who looked at the Peg Myers story (on Saturday morning, March 1) was also the last person who saw it in the earlier hours of the next morning, at 12:21 a.m. on Sunday, just before the blog went blank.

Interestingly, this person was using the same computer as the anonymous person who posted this comment just a few days ago:

Anonymous said...

Thank goodness for the perseverance of the attorneys in Shinoff's firm...some day this crazy nonsensical web site will come down!

This angry visitor also looked at all four pages of Peg Myers deposition in my San Diego Education Report website--twice. No one else came close to that level of interest.

A witness told me that Peg Myers used the word "crazy" to refer to me. Putting all the information together, I am suspecting Peg Myers, who is facing an election in May if she is to continue as President of Chula Vista Educators. It's perfectly understandable that Myers wouldn't want her deposition to be exposed during a campaign. It should be noted that Peg Myers was one of the celebrated "Castle Park Five."

I know that California Teachers Association protects sitting presidents of CTA locals, and that CTA information has previously disappeared from my website.

This is the information I have about the anonymous visitor:

IP Address
72.220.30.144
Cox Communications
United States
California
Chula Vista
Time of Visit Mar 1 2009 12:21:31 am
Visit Length 10 minutes 6 seconds
Page Views 2
Out Click SAN DIEGO EDUCATION REPORT WEBSITE
Time Zone UTC-8:00

Deposition of Peg Myers, President of Chula Vista Educators

Peg Myers, current CVE President and one of the Castle Park Five, did not want to testify about events that occurred when she taught at Castle Park Elem. School.






























































Teacher and union member Maura Larkins finally deposed Ms. Myers in Nov. 2004.
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