No-Pay Policy for Jury Duty Upsets Teachers

It’s a standard classroom essay question: How did you spend your spring break?

Ask Los Angeles teachers the same question when they return to class next week and some will probably say they were on jury duty.

Although most government agencies give their employees unlimited paid time off to serve on juries, the Los Angeles Unified School District has a long-standing policy of requiring teachers to perform their civic duty on their own time.

Los Angeles Unified is the only one of the nation’s five largest districts to require teachers to serve as jurors on their winter, spring, summer or “off-track” vacations--time for which they are not paid.

“I think it’s unfair,” said North Hills elementary school teacher Tamrah Wein, who was in Van Nuys Superior Court last Friday using accumulated sick days off to perform jury service. “Everybody else here is getting paid for 10 days. I feel people should have a choice to do it during work and get paid for it.”

District policy misses an opportunity to teach students the importance of jury service, said Cara Schneider, a bilingual third-grade teacher at Cheremoya Avenue Elementary in Hollywood.

“All my kids are immigrants or their parents are immigrants,” said Schneider, who has twice been summoned while she worked for the district and has had to serve on her time off. “It would be a good educational experience for them to have their teacher serve on jury duty. It’s important for them to see they have a stake in their country.”

The Los Angeles teachers union is not thrilled about the policy either.

“It’s embarrassing,” said Steve Blazak, a spokesman for United Teachers-Los Angeles.

Under the labor contract, teachers who are summoned to jury duty during the school year must request a postponement until their next vacation.

Teachers are paid to serve in only one event: when chosen to serve as a juror during off-time and the trial carries over into the school year. Then, the district will pay up to 20 days.

The policy, which has been around for two decades, is meant to minimize teacher absences and save money on substitutes, district spokesman Pat Spencer said.

“The district has no problem with people serving on juries. We just don’t want to have the instructional day or time interrupted,” Spencer said. “If a regular teacher’s not going to be there, then we have to call in a substitute, which is a fairly expensive process,” Spencer said.

That hasn’t been an insurmountable problem in New York, Chicago, Dade County, Fla., or Philadelphia, which with Los Angeles are the nation’s largest districts. The other four all offer paid leave for jury service during the school year. Many other districts--including San Diego, Santa Ana and Orange--pay teachers for jury duty as long as needed.

“We grant a [paid] leave of absence for anyone to serve if they’ve been summoned. We feel that it’s their civic duty and we don’t want to interfere with that,” said Neil McKinnon, assistant superintendent of Orange Unified School District.

Kim Nissen, a former Los Angeles Unified teacher who now works at James Foster Elementary School in Saugus, said she applauds her Saugus Union School District for allowing teachers paid time off to serve.

“Teachers are good jurors and, unfortunately, some districts discourage it by not paying for it,” Nissen said.

The largest school district in California to deny paid jury duty, after Los Angeles, is Long Beach. Teachers there are paid to serve only in federal court. For state and municipal courts, they are allowed one paid day off--the time needed to show up at the jury room and ask to be excused for financial hardship.

“I think that’s a shortsighted view,” said Philadelphia teachers union spokesman Hal Moss. “When people start complaining about the makeup of juries, aren’t we then part of the problem?”

Bert Shanas, spokesman for the New York City teachers union, said he has never heard of any conflicts over the New York school district’s policy of allowing teachers paid leave to serve as jurors during the school year.

“It’s accepted,” Shanas said.

Los Angeles County and municipal officials say their policies of paying unlimited jury duty are deeply rooted. In the city, the law allowing paid jury duty is based on an ordinance that predates the city’s administrative code.

“If we take it as a tenet that we all have our civic duty to go to jury duty, I think the city would be hard-pressed to make it difficult for our employees to do that, or make it a financial hardship,” said Paul Cauley, assistant city administrative officer for Los Angeles.

Both Los Angeles and Long Beach school districts pay nonteaching employees when they serve. The districts argue that teachers traditionally get much more time off than others.

But teachers are paid only for the days they work, so those traditional long summers “are like a forced layoff. We don’t get paid for that,” said Michael Cherry, vice president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

Although judges can and often do excuse potential jurors for financial hardship when they are not paid to serve, Los Angeles Superior Court does not excuse schoolteachers because they can serve during their off time, according to the courts.

Postponements are commonly granted until a teacher’s next vacation.

This does odd things to jury pools.

“Good morning teachers and students of LAUSD,” one defense lawyer greeted a jury during opening statements in December.

The jury, chosen to decide the fate of a 31-year-old San Fernando man charged with assault on a police officer, was composed entirely of teachers and students on winter break. They convicted the defendant.

Damian Romero, the jury manager at Van Nuys Superior Court, said more than 400 potential jurors had been summoned to the court on Monday, many of them teachers who put off random summonses received earlier in the year until spring break.

Its not hard to tell when all the teachers have finally come in to serve, Romero said.

“They’re usually not the happiest crowd,” he said.