Op-Ed: State leaders quietly dismiss tenure issue

If you are very still, you can almost hear it: our kids just lost — again. It can be difficult to hear. It better approximates silence than anything else, but it is deafening nonetheless.

Earlier this week, the California Supreme Court brought a swift and near-silent conclusion to the plight of schoolchildren around the state. These kids had sued California, claiming that teacher tenure, layoff, and dismissal laws violated our state’s constitution. At trial, they won. On appeal, they lost. And this week our state Supreme Court decided to pass on the case altogether — leaving in place the Court of Appeals’ decision.

And so California schools are, as they always are, back where they began.

The dissenting justices on the state Supreme Court noted the sheer significance of the laws in question to the lives of every child in our public school system.

Whenever California’s irresponsible budgeting leaves school districts on the hook, the state requires school districts to ignore local needs and considerations and to blindly lay off first their most junior teachers, no matter how effective they are.

California requires school districts to either dismiss or grant permanent status (i.e. “tenure”) after about 16 months of classroom performance. This status makes a teacher more legally entitled to his/her job than you are legally entitled to your physical property. You could fill about 3¼ Rose Bowl stadiums with all of California’s public school teachers in the last 10 years. Ninety-one of them — 0.003% — were tenured and lost their jobs. Of those, only 19 — 0.0007% — were dismissed for poor teaching performance.

No one is immune to a system so plagued. Not even La Cañada.

These restrictive laws force our board of education to make high-stakes decisions on impossibly short timelines. By March of a teacher’s second year with the district, the school board is given just two choices: let the teacher go, or keep them forever. Imagine the excellence that has slipped through our fingers in the name of abundant caution. We don’t need our imagination to know the harms of erring in the other direction.

And what about the state’s insistence on a blind allegiance to seniority? Think about your top five favorite teachers in the district. My guess is that at least one — maybe more — are among the newer faces to our family. The law requires that they be the first to go.

Public education makes up about 50% of our state budget, and nearly 100% of our state’s future depends upon us getting it right. While I would be skeptical of anyone who claimed they knew exactly what “right” was, I am equally skeptical — and horrified — at anyone who can’t see that what we are doing is patently wrong.

Which is why I am so embarrassed by our state Supreme Court, and I am so ashamed of our state Legislature. At every turn, those who would purport to lead, represent and serve us, have shown up only to abstain. It’s not just that they won’t find an answer, it is that they have declined even to ask the question. They have cowered at the question.

No doubt it is because something this important is, of course, very complicated. And even more to the point: There are those that benefit from the status quo and fight vigorously to defend it. But these are precisely the sort of challenges children are counting on adults to take on.

Children are resilient and forgiving; they will excuse our inability to strike at perfection every time. What they can’t afford is the complete abdication of our responsibility to build for them a better system. It is what our Legislature has done through its inaction. It is what forced nine schoolchildren — on behalf of millions — to seek redress for their squandered futures in the judiciary. It is what happened Monday, when they were told they would simply not be heard by the highest court in our state.

And it is what we enable, through our deafening silence.

This upcoming election represents our chance to be the loudest we have been in a while, and the loudest we will get to be for some time. Those willing to engage in these tough conversations — those unwilling to acquiesce silently to the status quo — will sometimes be demonized for their audacity.

But that’s a small price to pay. And I’m going to support those who think that — for our kids’ futures — it’s a steal at twice the price. I hope you will join me.

ANDREW BLUMENFELD, an educator and former member of the La Cañada Unified School District Governing Board, can be reached at aj.blumenfeld@gmail.com.