[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Warming up for tomorrow morning’s hour-before-classes rallies in front of all Culver City schools to convince the Legislature to aggressively pursue tax hikes to aid funding, an exasperating and familiar story hovered into view.
As revenue from Sacramento has increasingly dried up this century, the sacred, untouchable stature of teachers everywhere has expanded in direct inverse proportion to the fiscal shrinkage.
There are as many rotten, garbage-spewing teachers running free this afternoon as there are attorneys of the identical stripe.
We may call attorneys dirty names, however, and all of the peasants, on cue, will break into a chorus-wide giggle.
But horrors.
Say something nasty about a lousy teacher and you will be tasered into Where Am I World by the nearest five people, age be darned.
The World’s Perfect Profession
I was tempted to genuflect before starting this piece, but today’s trousers have an unexpected opening in the left knee.
In New York City and upstate for the last year, there has been a revolt that threatens to dwarf the Obama-Libyan War over what sacred teachers can be canned and what sacred teachers can be otherwise penalized.
Acting reflexively, the boys in Albany polled the teachers unions. The survey results came back: 20,000 teachers opposed to any action against fellow teachers, 0 in favor.
Golly, I wish I had been a teacher and guaranteed lifetime employment with benefits that would make me drool if I been fired from my forever employment working for a government agency.
Journalists, on the other foot, have a shorter shelf life than toast that has been in the oven for three days.
A Disappointment
Doesn’t anyone out there in Newspaperland acknowledge reality?
Teachers may be dropped — if you want your children to progress.
My sudden concern was sparked by a Los Angeles Titanic report this morning about a bill that would have allowed school districts to dismiss teachers because of lousy performance but did not even make it out of committee.
For the second time.
Defeating and discouraging such stomach-turning legislation is a dominant reason why most teachers unions exist.
No teacher ever should be laid off unless she shoots at least 13 students before breakfast.
A few months ago in Venice, I met a lovely young woman, a teacher, who has been closely tracking the devious legislators who have been trying to introduce sanity into the You Can’t Dump a Teacher, Ever, and Do You Hear Me? nonsense.
We were at a community dinner, and I asked her, because she was uncommonly reflective, what grounds were acceptable for dismissal.
Sadly it turns out she sides with the majority of her colleagues that laying off is tantamount to abuse in the workplace.
I made that disappointing conclusion because, on the spot, she could not produce even one reason.
My kind of job. Foolproof.
I have contacted her since, and the response has been the same.
And now dear readers, let us genuflect in non pareil homage to teachers, attorneys and why not throw in good-guy gangsters.
