Although teacher layoff hearings are continuing around the state, several CTA chapters have already scored some key victories in their attempts to save the jobs of their members.
CTA local chapters in Sacramento, Bakersfield and La Canada have all beaten back district-driven efforts to pink-slip teachers improperly. Their experiences are laying the groundwork for a CTA lawsuit that will attempt to make it obvious that service as an emergency permit or probationary teacher counts toward seniority.
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Helen Collins
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"We cannot allow teachers who have several years of experience working under emergency or temporary credentials to be laid off simply because districts don't recognize their seniority," says CTA Chief Legal Counsel Beverly Tucker. "We will definitely be looking into how time served can be redefined. It's become an issue of fairness in these current reduction-in-force hearings."
In Bakersfield, three days of RIF hearings before an administrative law judge revealed several flaws in the process that resulted in the rescission of 49 layoff notices sent to members of the Bakersfield Elementary Teachers Association (BETA).
The judge found that 23 certificated employees were given incorrect seniority rankings because they had not been given credit for probationary status while serving under emergency permits or intern credentials. Other violations of procedure by the district resulted in additional rescissions.
"There were several flaws in the way teachers were classified," says BETA President Helen Collins. "The district was very sloppy in the way it handled things."
In one case, for example, a teacher has been kept in a temporary position since 1997.
BETA has been through all this before. Last year's attempt by the district to lay off experienced teachers with emergency credentials resulted in a legal challenge from CTA that is still pending. Despite that lawsuit, the district did the same thing this year. Tucker vows that CTA will continue its suit from last year and will file another.
"We maintain the Education Code is clear on this: seniority begins on the first date of hire."
Some districts are passing over junior teachers who have Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development (CLAD) certificates or Bilingual CLAD to lay off more senior teachers who do not have the certificate in order to meet what they believe are the stringent requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as No Child Left Behind).
In the Sacramento City Unified School District, 130 members of the Sacramento City Teachers Association - some with 35 or more years of experience - were handed pink slips. Of those, all but 29 were rescinded. The district maintained it needed teachers with CLAD credentials and went after those who didn't have them, according to SCTA officials.
"The district took such an extreme position that even if a teacher had done everything to obtain a CLAD and handed it in to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, she could still be laid off since the credential wasn't in hand at the time the notices were sent," says Maggie Geddes, the CTA Group Legal Service attorney representing the chapter.
Of 16 teachers who were sent layoff notices in the La Canada Teachers Association in Los Angeles County, 14 were rescinded when the administrative law judge presiding over the hearing ruled that the district could not use the CLAD certification as a reason to retain less senior teachers over others.
"It was a very vindictive move on the part of the district," says La Canada Teachers Association President Mary Hufstedler.
LCTA will fight any layoffs, but feels it was particularly poor form for the district to use CLAD credentialing as a reason to keep some teachers over others, especially when only 2 percent of the students are English language learners who need teachers with CLAD.
If there's one lesson to be learned in the current RIF process, Hufstedler says, it's that "districts ought to be careful in how they lay off teachers."
Dale Martin
