Parents protest Oakland district teacher
April 16th, 2010 -- posted by AlexA group of Oakland parents, frustrated by a nearly two-year battle to remove a reportedly abusive teacher, went on strike Thursday, pulling their children out of school and onto a picket line at the district’s downtown headquarters.
Close to 80 percent of Lazear Elementary School’s 300 students didn’t show up for school Thursday - a loss of almost $9,000 in state funding for the day - and apparently a wake-up call for district and teachers union officials who met with the parents Thursday afternoon to try to resolve the issue.
The boycott was a last resort for the parents, who were tired of the time-consuming and egregious process of getting rid of someone they say is a bad teacher.
In nearly two years of teaching at Lazear, the veteran third-grade teacher has repeatedly left his pupils unattended in the classroom and on the schoolyard, physically manhandled students, told children to “shut up,” and at one point locked a girl in the classroom because she wasn’t moving fast enough, said Olga Galavíz González, a parent organizer at the school.
Students fear him, she said.
About a year ago, parents began writing letters to district officials to complain. They held meetings with the principal and district board members. They signed and turned in petitions. They called the district. At first, they wanted administrators to admonish the teacher, and when things got worse, remove him. They got nowhere, González said.
Thursday morning, about 100 parents and children, carrying signs, marched in front of the school and then moved downtown to picket district headquarters. They demanded the teacher be gone by the fall and that the principal, who they say failed to respond appropriately, be replaced.
District officials said they have been following personnel protocols to address the parents’ concerns.
“This is taking longer than anyone likes, but we’re definitely trying,” said district spokesman Troy Flint.
The parents declined to identify the teacher, saying the action was aimed at getting administrators to do something, not at exposing the teacher. District and union officials also refused to identify the teacher, saying the issue is a personnel matter.
Thursday’s strike exemplified one of the more common complaints in public education. Too often, the solution to bad teachers is to shuffle them to another school to avoid the costly two-year process to fire them - what is known as a dance of the lemons.
Lazear parents said they don’t want the lemons landing in their yard. At the same time, many stressed that they love most of the children’s teachers.
“Our kids deserve better teachers,” González said. “Just because we’re here and not up in the hills, they deserve the same teachers.”
By “here” she meant Lazear, a predominantly low-income elementary school with a large Hispanic population on the other side of a chain-link fence from Interstate 880.
Schools like Lazear can feel like dumping grounds for tenured teachers the district can’t or won’t fire, said Oakland school board member Noel Gallo. The third-grade teacher at the center of Thursday’s controversy had moved around the district before he arrived at Lazear in fall 2008, he said.
“If the families don’t speak English, so what?” said Gallo, who stood with parents on the picket line. “They deserve the same fairness, equity, treatment and quality.”
Lazear Principal Pia Jara said she has been talking to and meeting with parents over the issue, and didn’t think pulling students out of school - a week before standardized testing starts - was the answer.
“Kids need to be here to learn,” Jara said.
During the afternoon’s meeting, district officials reiterated to parents that they are working on the problem, giving parents the impression the teacher would not be back next fall, González said. For some parents, that was not soon enough and they vowed to keep their children out of school again today.
“At the end, a lot of parents were still frustrated,” González said.
Let me get this straight. Oakland parents have the guts to do this, but no one is brave enough to stand up against junk teachers at Lowell who have been abusive for over ten years?!?!