Pflueger’s Firing Prompts Anger, Agreement

* I attended the Capistrano Unified School District board meeting Feb. 8 and I am saddened and angered by what transpired.

I am the parent of two students who have had Paul Pflueger as a teacher. After hours of impassioned testimony from students, parents, former students and teachers, the overwhelming majority of whom rose to Pflueger’s defense, the board’s subsequent actions [in dismissing him] were a shock.

Hypocrisy was the only word I could think of in response to some of the board members’ claims that they were concerned about all students at Capistrano Valley High School.

They had just made manifest that they didn’t care about the vast majority of students who have him right now and turned out in droves, chanting and cheering for him. I doubt whether any other teacher at Capo could elicit such a spirited defense.

They talked about “disrupting the educational process” when they brutally disrupted the education of these students by replacing an inspirational teacher--for many, the first teacher who had spurred them to think and “turned them on” to history--with a student teacher.

These students spoke, but they weren’t heard, or weren’t believed. I would like to ask those board members who masked their dismissal as a desire to get to the “truth” in an evidentiary hearing why they found it necessary to remove this exceptional teacher before that truth was found.

I should have been prepared for this, I suppose. After all, I read the school administration’s “statement of charges” against Pflueger and thought it was clearly a case of evidence gathered after the decision had been made. The statement was padded, repetitious and at times ludicrous.

The spark has gone out of that classroom, and today my daughter doesn’t want to go to school.

DEBORAH EVANS

Mission Viejo

* In response to your recent coverage of the termination of Paul Pflueger, I would like, as a parent at that school for many years, to share a few facts.

While Pflueger may consider himself to be challenging his students to “think for themselves,” I take issue not only with his behavior but with the manner in which he conducts his evaluation of these same students.

It has long been known at our campus that if you didn’t agree with Pflueger’s personal philosophy you would not do well in his class.

It has also been known that if you were “smart enough” to keep your mouth shut and answer in a manner that extolled that philosophy, you would pass.

What his personal philosophy is does not matter. What does matter is that if you didn’t agree with it you failed the class. That is not teaching; it is control.

A lot of his supporters say they can look back now and know he was a good teacher. That is because they are older. As you get older, all personal assaults become easier to handle.

If they would look around, they would also find good teachers who do not find it appropriate or necessary to personally insult and bully their students to get them to excel.

SHARON M. PHILIPPE

Mission Viejo

* Regarding the so-called due process given Paul Pflueger, when was the last time this or any other Orange County school district formally dismissed a school administrator for “unsatisfactory performance”?

I suggest that parents and other interested parties do some fact-finding and then ask the hypocrite who serves as district superintendent and judge of this “kangaroo court” some hard questions about this teacher’s sham evaluation.

Pflueger’s comment says it all: “If they could pull this on me, nobody’s safe.”

KENT S. MOORE

Corona del Mar

* I was mildly amused to read of the brouhaha created by Paul Pflueger.

It would appear that his strictness and the demands he makes of his students have aroused the ire of administrators. A teacher who actually flunks students for failure to perform? Gasp!

It is also ironic that his insistence on “accountability” would fit the new paradigm of excellence as stated by Gov. Gray Davis to improve the scandalous state of education in California.

This, however, would appear to meet with opposition from school officials. Not surprising. Unfortunately, over the past decades, a defect has permeated and infected not only education but all levels of leadership in our society.

This has created a situation that penalizes excellence while rewarding incompetence. So it was not surprising that Pflueger reportedly referred to a school administrator as a “jerk.”

After 15 years of teaching in a local graduate school of education, I understand and empathize with his frustration. It was my clinical observation that the incompetence of administrators was only exceeded by their viciousness.

JOSEPH LEA

Associate professor emeritus

Graduate School of Education

Cal State Long Beach