WHEREAS, a lawsuit now being heard in a California court seeks to overturn the state’s laws granting teachers due process and seniority rights; and
WHEREAS, the lawsuit, Vergara v. State of California, is funded by a Silicon Valley billionaire, David Welch, who is founder of both the NewSchools Venture Fund that promotes the expansion of charter schools and the Students Matter organization fronting the lawsuit; and
WHEREAS, Students Matter filed the lawsuit on behalf of nine students in Los Angeles public schools who claim that their rights to an equal education are violated by tenure and seniority laws that, the organization’s website says, “entrench grossly ineffective teachers in our schools,” and are the cause for underachievement by low-income students of color in the state; and
WHEREAS, the state’s two largest teachers unions, the California Federation of Teachers and the California Teachers Association, have joined the state in defending educator’s due process and seniority rights; and
WHEREAS, teacher tenure protections in the U.S. date back to the mid-1880s when teachers in some states were granted protections against arbitrary dismissals; and
WHEREAS, seniority protections began to take hold early in the 20th century as a way of establishing an objective protocol for districts to follow in the event of teacher layoffs and to ensure that districts were able to keep the most experienced teachers in the classrooms when layoffs occurred; and
WHEREAS, due process and seniority rights remain fundamental job protections, essential to giving teachers the dignity and professional authority they must have to do their jobs effectively; and
WHEREAS, without due process rights, teachers would be unable to advocate for students without risking that they could fired, and without seniority protections, the most experienced teachers would be at continual risk of unjust firings or transfers by administrators anxious to hire newer teachers at lower pay; and
WHEREAS, the Vergara lawsuit puts the blame for California’s falling state test scores on teachers, while failing to note that since the 1970s, when California passed the Proposition 13 property-tax reduction measure, the state’s investment in public education has plummeted to at or near the bottom of the nation; and
WHEREAS, the lawsuit also seeks to further a pretense of the education privatization movement that child poverty has no bearing on a child’s ability to succeed in school, and that teachers bear all blame; therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the United Federation of Teachers strongly supports the vigorous efforts of our colleagues in California Federation of Teachers and the California Teachers Association in defending against the deceitful and dangerous claims of this lawsuit; and be it further
RESOLVED, that the UFT recognizes this court case as an opportunity to continue to educate the public about how teachers’ due process and seniority rights are essential for educators to maintain professional autonomy and for keeping our country’s public schools strong.