…. Further, Judge Treu said, the least effective teachers are disproportionately assigned to schools filled with low-income and minority students. The situation violates those students’ constitutional right to an equal education, he determined….
(emphasis added)
This is SO not the way the union rules are written folks. The teachers with the most seniority get their bids for their next school assignments considered first by order of length of tenure. School assignments year to year have nothing to do with “perceived competency.”
How this plays out in the real world is that the teachers with the most seniority are often found teaching in the schools where they perceive to be the easiest to teach in. These are the schools where nearly every child has eaten breakfast at home and completed their homework the night before. In other words, schools where most of the students have stable homes with parent/guardians in residence who can regularly afford to buy a variety of groceries and have the time to see to it that their kids complete the work required of them.
If anything, the schools with the highest percentage of students eligible for free breakfast, lunch and/or whose students have the most parents who didn’t complete college and thus may need to work two jobs have the newest (and therefore typically the youngest) teachers whose attitudes haven’t yet been “jaded” by the travails resulting from longevity on the job whilst punching a school timeclock for 25+ years.
Why is this so? Because a public school teacher with less than 15 years tenure is unlikely to receive the school assignment of their choice due to union rules allowing too many of their more tenured brethren to grab the coveted classroom assignments in the perceived “easy schools to teach in.”
That’s the way the “system” works.
And using the word “minorities” in describing who is getting an “inferior” public education in CA (due to incompetent teachers?) doesn’t make any sense in real life as there really are no “minorities” or “minority groups” in CA, especially in the K-12 age groups.
I don’t see this decision holding up under appeal as the “facts” cited here (if they are truly part of the ruling) don’t comport with CA education law as it applies to the intricacies of how seniority is dealt with in collective bargaining agreements.
