CYPRESS : Policy on Teachers’ Children Attacked

Lori Powell wants her children to go to school in the same place where she teaches. Her only problem is that the Cypress School District, which is her employer, won’t allow it.

She is determined to change the district’s policy, though she failed in her first attempt to do so earlier this month.

Powell and a number of colleagues were turned down Jan. 11 when they asked school board members to temporarily allow their children to attend the elementary schools where they work. Board members voted against the one-year test, 3 to 2.

“We are not giving up,” Powell said, adding that she plans to rally support from the community and other teachers to pressure the district into erasing the policy, which prohibits teachers and other employees from working at their children’s schools.

School Board President Donna McDougall and members Ellen Friedmann and Donna Erickson, who voted against the teachers’ proposal, said they fear problems could be created for colleagues of teachers whose children go to the teachers’ schools.

The district is the only one in the county that bars teachers from working at the schools their children attend, said trustee Ventura Cornejo Jr., who cast a dissenting vote.

“I don’t think there are any problems,” said Cornejo, who has grandchildren in the district’s schools. “I would really like to abolish the policy altogether.”

He pointed out that Supt. William D. Eller has a son attending a school in the district, and that board members’ children have attended the schools in the past without creating any problems.

But when the policy was drafted in 1971, teachers were having problems, according to Mary Lee, a 28-year district teacher and president of the Cypress Teachers Assn.

To find out how many teachers were satisfied with the policy, the association sent out surveys to the district’s 203 teachers and 135 classified employees earlier this month, Lee said.

The response was overwhelmingly in favor of the district’s policy. Those dissatisfied with the policy were outnumbered 2 to 1.

“They like it the way it is,” Lee said.

“If you have a good kid in your peer’s classroom, there’s no problem; but if you have a less than good kid, then it’s a very uncomfortable situation,” she said.

Lee said problem students require that teachers hold conferences with their parents and if the parent is a fellow teacher, things could get tense. Having to tell a peer “something negative about their child can make friends enemies.”

“You cannot remove people’s emotions,” she said. “A parent is a very protective person no matter how professional you want to be. . . . I can say my kid’s lousy, but you can’t say my kid is lousy.”

Powell disagreed.

She conceded that problems could arise but said that teachers can handle them in a professional manner. And the benefits of having children study at the schools where their parents teach far outweigh the possible conflicts, Powell said.

Abolishing the policy “would give me the opportunity to more fully participate in my child’s education,” she said. “Children whose parents are involved in their lives become more successful in the future.”

Powell plans to spread her views among her colleagues in hope of persuading them to change their opinions before she again presents her case before the school board within months.