Discussion for article #239886
And this is the screw-up, here:
The arbitrator found that the district failed to provide Anderson with due process by providing him with a formal notice of inefficiency or by giving him 90 days to correct his failings before terminating his employment
I can guarantee that my HR counterpart (chapter president, here) wouldn’t ever have tried to fire him first.
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Look, I am strong supporter of teacher unions. Seen too many friends bullied by administrators for the most petty reasons. But the union here should be working to deal with this guy’s problems. Over 100 times late? That’s just beyond the pale.
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How do we know the union isn’t working on his tardiness issue. Due process is due process. The school was foolish not to follow the progressive discipline they have in place. They may have even delayed his termination by jumping the gun on this.
That said, I hope they deal with this appropriately and right away. Schools have a lot of moving parts, and when a teacher isn’t there for his or her duties, lots of people get shifted to cover for him or her. If he can’t clean up his act, they should follow the procedure and get him out.
On the other hand, if we are to take this story as evidence that unions are bad, I don’t think that’s fair at all. We’re talking about one guy here, not the majority of teachers. And we see how badly workers are treated everywhere these days–unions are more needed now than ever, even if that means a few bad apples get a due process that keeps them in their jobs an extra year. The benefits of unions outweigh the downside. Meanwhile, lack of regulations for management is just an invitation to abuse and instability.
I think the union is not so much “supporting” this man as protecting due process according to their contract; in that way, they are protecting all teachers.
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he won on a technicality. He should have been fired.
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Is he right? Is he a good teacher? If he is I don’t care if he comes to school an hour late and starts class by standing on his head and reciting the alphabet backwards and gets paid double.
This article is just another example of the disrespect shown for teachers and an trying to evoke jealousy of their pay levels.
Teachers get paid less than other people with equivalent educations. The bargain used to be thatthey got some control of their working conditions and a safe pension. That implicit bargain has been broken and suddenly there is a shortage of teachers. Odd, isn’t it?
I am neither a teacher nor a parent.
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Sounds like a prima donna. Why can’t he just take reposibility for his own actions?
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My only reaction to this article is this one:
There are teachers who earn $90,000 per year???
My lovely wife has been teaching since 1981. She holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Two degrees; 35 years of experience. She has yet to crack the $60,000 mark in salary.
She’s on time every day, too.
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I’ve been retired now for some time, but some of the most stressful times I had on the job was dealing with mega passive-aggressive types. His/her bar on the P-A scale went off the right side of a sheet of 8.5 x 11 sheet.
They would max the scale on that personality dimension.
Man! Did I despise those little shits!
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maybe just maybe they should learn him how to use an alarm clock ,just sayin
This article is not an example of disrespect to teachers, at all. I think you’re overlooking the fact that he wasn’t there on time! How is wanting teachers to be there on time to teach their kids disrespectful of teachers or indicative of jealousy?? What isn’t clear from the story is how late he was, or whether there have been any efforts to try to fix the problem before firing him - the arbitrator said he was entitled to progressive discipline, which he probably is under the contract, and that’s fine - if they didn’t give it to him, that’s their mistake. The story also lacks any detail on his tardiness, or the reasons for it. Are we talking a minute or two because he misjudges traffic consistently, or is he regularly very late, so that the elementary school kids are not getting the classes they’re entitled to get? Are they missing out on math instruction because that’s what they do in the morning and there’s no time when he gets there? Who is supervising the class when he’s late? Is he providing any notice, or just consistently but irregularly not showing up on time? It’s got to be very disruptive to the students, other teachers, and the school administration when a teacher just doesn’t come in on time.
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Whenever you hear that it’s nearly impossible to fire a public employee, the underlying facts will usually reveal a lazy, timid, or incompetent supervisor who fails to do the necessary work or follow the procedures necessary to get rid of bad employees. If the principal had done his job, this teacher would have straightened up or been removed long ago. Blaming the union is just scapegoating and misdirection. I wonder if the principal is now on a plan of improvement.
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He has been suspended several months without pay, so it’s not like there was no punishment. If the school had followed due process, he would have improved or been fired, but the school didn’t do that.
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i lived in NJ for about 26 yrs, could not believe teacher salaries.
Don’t know what it’s like now, but there was a downside to these salaries – least when I was there.
Boards simply withheld tenure to fill the positions with first year teachers on the low end of the pay scale.
That demand for 1st year teachers is what contributed to a false teacher-shortage.
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I am a chapter president, here, and the screw-up, (besides the obvious issue of tardiness) is on the part of administration, which should have started addressing this before moving directly to termination. Progressive discipline was ignored. And the arbitrator was right to point that out.
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I think the union is not so much "supporting" this man as protecting due process according to their contract; in that way, they are protecting all teachers.
This, about a thousand times.
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Late, does that mean that he arrived at 7:03 for a work day that begins at 7:00, or does it mean that he arrived at 8:15 when the kids arrived at 7:45?
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The person responsible for supervising him should be fired. His time is surely coming.
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Nope. Due process should have been followed. That’s not a “technicality”. It’s the whole fucking point.
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It is beyond the pale, but the ruling wasn’t that he was exonerated. It was merely that they had to provide due process and interim disciplinary steps…not just fire him cold turkey. One might wonder why he was able to be late 100 times without the interim steps having been taken in the first place. This sounds like just as much of a management/administration problem as it does an employee problem.
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