The union contract mandates the last teachers hired are the first laid off. However, the school district in April asked for flexibility in placing teachers at the three schools academically ranked in the bottom 5 percent statewide, as well as for magnet programs that require special training.

That would have applied to about a dozen of the 568 teachers who received layoff notices as the district grapples with a $130 million budget gap. But the union, which has been in bitter contract negotiations with the district since May 2009, dug in its heels.

“There are no provisions to exclude schools or specific positions in schools based on magnet programs or the achievement level of their students,” the union wrote to the district. “The procedures contained in the contract … should be observed.”

Frustrations about student achievement and teacher accountability have been growing nationwide. This year, it prompted Florida’s failed attempt to tie teacher pay to student performance and the federal government’s billion-dollar grant competition demanding states turn around their lowest-achieving schools.

Still, Dane Ransom, the union’s chief negotiator, said any exemptions to the seniority provision must be discussed at the bargaining table, not in memos.

“We know as a union that seniority prevails, but we also know that there are some situations where flexibility should be allowed,” Ransom said. “[The district] never brought it to the table. They should have asked us in May [2009] to fine-tune what went wrong last year, to look at it with experts to protect certain programs.”

The idea that finger-pointing and political bickering is taking precedence over what is best for their children angers parents such as Candace Russo.

“I want the teachers who are passionate and love what they do and have faith in their students,” said Russo, a mother of three whose children’s band director at Crystal Lake Middle in Pompano Beachwas laid off. “Not because they’ve been teaching 20 years.”

School Board members say they have been inundated by phone calls and e-mails from students and parents lobbying to keep teachers in place, but their hands are tied.

“The board members hate this [seniority] provision in the contract, but unfortunately we have to follow the BTU contract,” said board member Stephanie Kraft.

Experts say there’s been little research on the importance of the role of teacher stability in student achievement. But studies show that quality teachers help students learn a year and a half’s worth of material in just one school year. Under the instruction of a “bad teacher,” students learn just a half-year’s worth of lessons, according to studies.

“If the teachers who leave low-performing schools are below average, such movement would be beneficial,” said Stanford University economist Eric Hanushek, who studies teacher effectiveness. “On the other hand, if the better teachers are leaving, the school may be put in a very bad position.”

Acting Associate Superintendent Gracie Diaz in April asked the union to exclude from the layoff process teachers at Coconut Creek High, a D school for six of the past seven years; Sunland Park Elementary in Fort Lauderdale, an F school for the past three years; and Larkdale Elementary in Fort Lauderdale, which has improved from an F to a C in the past three years. The state considers the three schools as being in the lowest 5 percent of student achievement.

“They have made significant gains, and to disrupt the teaching staff would be a tremendous disservice to the teachers and students,” Diaz wrote. “We would sincerely like the input of the BTU as to how the processes could be better accomplished to reduce the negative effects on employees.”

Diaz also asked if teachers in the rigorous college-prep International Baccalaureate magnet programs at 11 schools would be exempt. Teachers in the program must receive specialty training from the IB organization every few years.

Her request was rebuffed.

Laying off school district employees is a complicated process based on collective bargaining agreements that allow one employee to bump another based on seniority.

When slicing programs, principals posted which subject areas would be cut, sending those teachers to the surplus list. The teachers then had to list 10 schools within the county to which they would prefer to be transferred. Teachers who did not end up placed at an alternative school were laid off.

All the layoffs will be effective July 1. However, many of those laid off could be rehired as vacancies emerge from unexpected resignations and retirements and from those who do not meet their certification requirements by June 30. Another factor that could affect the numbers: The teachers union agreed on Tuesday to consider furloughs if it would save jobs.

Last school year, the district laid off 394 teachers. All but about 20 were rehired.

Many teachers are angry that some sort of compromise couldn’t be reached to save jobs, and their anger is directed toward the union.

“The teachers union, I don’t even understand why it’s called a union,” said Monte Dilworth, 35, the head track coach and a P.E. teacher at West Broward High in Pembroke Pines. “They took $2,000 away from me for the last two years, and they haven’t done anything for me.”

Tyson was one of four people charged with second-degree trespassing after they interrupted the board’s meeting, locked arms and sang songs.

Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP, Nancy Petty, a pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh and Mary Debbin Williams, a Wake County parent staged what Barber called a “non-violent conscientious objection,” disrupting the meeting for about an hour to draw attention to a move by the board they believe will serve to re-segregate Wake County schools.

College professor Tyson is protesting the school board’s decision to go back to a community schooling model.  According to wral professor Tyson have the following words of wisdom regarding the matter:

“If the anti-diversity coalition of the school board thinks I’m a pain in the neck wait ‘till they meet my mama who taught fourth grade for 40 years and knows what to do with people who don’t do their homework,”

La Vergne, TN (Vocus) June 16, 2010 — To help meet the demand of orders and interest of F.A. Hayek’s work The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents–The Definitive Edition (ISBN 978-0226320557), The University of Chicago Press turned to Ingram Content Group to maximize the availability of books sold and delivered to customers.

Orders for the book increased dramatically following a recommendation by talk show host Glenn Beck on June 8. By the next morning, the Ingram team was working with colleagues at The University of Chicago Press to help them capitalize on the title’s new popularity.

“As a long time customer of Ingram, we knew that we could call on them to help us meet demand for this break-out title,” said Garrett Kiely, Director, The University of Chicago Press. “Because of their innovative and integrated solutions, we had one conversation and we’re meeting the needs of our customers – we have books when and where we need them. This is a prime example of Ingram’s print-on-demand and distribution efficiency at its best.”

Noticing a large surge in orders for the Hayek title, Ingram reached out to The University of Chicago Press on the afternoon of June 9. The publisher’s on-hand print inventory could not satisfy demand. The expected replenishment offset reprint copies were not expected to arrive for days. To minimize order loss and maximize sales, the Press turned to Ingram to fill the gap.

By June 11, the title was digitized and available from Ingram with Lightning Source manufacturing books against orders. By June 15, over 20,000 copies of the book had been printed and shipped. Thousands of additional copies will be printed by the end of the week to meet demand.

David “Skip” Prichard, President and CEO of Ingram Content Group, observed how rapid digitization, manufacture and fulfillment of the Hayek title is an excellent illustration of the total value that Ingram provides to publishers.

“Our Lightning Source print-on-demand service is just one of the many innovative content delivery solutions we provide to publishers to get books where they need to be when they need to be there,” Prichard said. “Our team heard about this late on Wednesday, and by Friday, the book was available on ipage® and we were fulfilling orders.”

Mr. Prichard continued, “No one else in the book industry can meet market demand like Ingram and I’m thrilled that we could assist The University of Chicago Press meet the surge in demand for this title.”

First published by the University of Chicago Press in 1944, The Road to Serfdom gained immediate attention. The first printing of 2,000+ copies was exhausted immediately, and within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter was distributed as a Book-of-the-Month Club title. A perennial best seller, the book has sold millions of copies worldwide and has been translated into more than twenty languages.

About Ingram:
Ingram Content Group Inc. provides a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry. Ingram’s operating units are Ingram Book Company, Lightning Source Inc., Ingram Digital, Vital Source Technologies, Inc., Ingram Periodicals Inc., Ingram International Inc., Ingram Library Services Inc., Spring Arbor Distributors Inc., Ingram Publisher Services Inc., Tennessee Book Company LLC, Coutts Information Services, and Ingram Marketing Group Inc. For more information, visit www.ingramcontent.com

Contacts:
For Ingram:
Keel Hunt (615) 321-3110
For The University of Chicago Press:
Stephanie M. Hlywak (773) 702-0376

###

Elizabeth Fielding
6153213110
E-mail Information

(Latimes) Thomas Shelden, a Los Angeles city schoolteacher who spent nearly two years outside the classroom with full pay and benefits while district officials investigated accusations against him, has been dismissed by the school board.

Shelden was a fourth-grade teacher at Charles White Elementary in Westlake when Los Angeles Unified School District officials removed him from the campus in May 2008. At that time, the district had about 160 employees assigned to administrative offices while claims against them were under review.

Under a long-standing practice, those employees are not given any assignments and receive their full wages and benefits.

Shelden, whose annual salary was $73,500, had been accused of sexually harassing another instructor, who later took out a restraining order against him. A district inquiry did not substantiate that claim, but Shelden was assigned to an office for allegedly contacting the woman repeatedly against district orders.

In a brief e-mail Friday about his termination, Shelden said he is “trying to talk them out of doing such a foolish thing.”

He has said that district officials targeted him and that charges against him were false.

In February 2009, he was required to work from his home, from which he had to check in with his supervisor twice a day.

His activities were highlighted in a Times article last May. Shelden spent the day napping, watching television, taking walks and lifting weights.

The school board voted to dismiss him at a closed-door meeting April 6. He had 30 days to appeal the decision, which would then be heard by a state board that has final say over educator dismissals.

A Times article found that the state board, known as the Commission on Professional Competence, overturned nearly a third of dismissals statewide over the last 15 years.

District officials declined to comment on Shelden’s firing or to say why the investigation took so long to complete.

Shelden sent numerous faxes, e-mails and letters to a Times reporter that contained part of the district’s complaints against him and one of his performance evaluations.

According to the documents, Shelden:

– Received a satisfactory evaluation in 2004 while teaching at Union Avenue Elementary in Westlake.

– Was admonished in December 2005 while teaching at White Elementary for allegedly yelling “shut up” to students and ridiculing a student in front of classmates and ordering the student to write “I will not lie to Mr. Shelden” 150 times on the blackboard.

– Made abusive or threatening comments to students, failed to properly supervise his class and made statements with “overtones of racism and/or discrimination.”

– Yelled at co-workers while assigned to the administrative office, causing one to complain that the office was “not a safe work environment.”

The time he spent away from the classroom will count toward his pension and retirement benefits, according to district officials

(AP) NEW YORK – Hundreds of New York City teachers who are paid full salaries to do nothing while they await disciplinary hearings will be released from the city’s “rubber rooms” this fall, officials announced Thursday.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the teachers’ union announced a deal to reassign most of the teachers to administrative or nonclassroom work while their cases are pending.

About 650 educators, more than 500 of them teachers, are in the teacher-reassignment centers, costing the city tens of millions of dollars a year, including $30 million in salaries, officials said.

The teachers generally spend months or even years in the so-called rubber rooms playing Scrabble, reading or surfing the Internet while still collecting full salaries of $70,000 a year or more. The nickname refers to the padded cells of asylums, and teachers have said the name is fitting, since some of the inhabitants can become unstable.

The city has blamed union rules that make it difficult to fire teachers, but some teachers assigned to rubber rooms say they have been singled out because they blew the whistle on a principal who was fudging test scores.

“The rubber rooms were the result of a broken and protracted teacher-discipline process,” Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said Thursday. “This deal goes a long way in improving the way the union and the department deal with teachers accused of and charged with wrongdoings.”

Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room in 2004-05, said he was ecstatic to hear they would be closing.

“We want to coach those that are not prepared for this profession to move on. However, we also want justice for those who have been accused of wrongdoing,” Ramos said. “The rubber room has been the wrong answer for so long.”

Ramos, who is now a middle school principal in San Jose, was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and moved to California.

David Suker, a teacher who is currently assigned to a rubber room in Brooklyn, said educators there were waiting Thursday to hear details about how the system would be dismantled.

“It’s just another typical day in terms of powerlessness,” Suker said.

Instead of going to rubber rooms, most teachers will perform administrative work in department offices or nonclassroom work in their schools, according to the agreement.

The deal expands the list of charges for which school officials can suspend teachers without pay to include violent felony crimes.

Officials also agreed to increase the number of arbitrators who hear teachers’ cases from 23 to 39, and said they hope to catch up with backlogged cases by the end of the year.

(Onlineathens) Cornel West revealed himself for what he is Thursday night in a talk at the University of Georgia’s Tate Student Center – a philosopher.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said West, drawing on sources that included not just Socrates and Sappho and latter-day voices such as James Brown and Bootsy Collins.
Famously controversial for his views on race in America – a country where white supremacy still is a dominant influence – West told his audience to look beyond the fact that the United States now has its first black president.

“Barack Obama is a fulfillment; he’s not the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream,” West said.
But poor people still suffer while the wealthy get corporate welfare, he said.
Children still live in poverty, he said – 38 percent of the black children, 39 percent of the brown children and 42 percent of the red children in the United States, he said.
“They are too little to rescue, but the banks are too big to fail,” said West, a religion professor at Princeton University and a self-described blues man.
National leaders justify violating the rules of capitalism with the Wall Street bailout by saying it’s a state of emergency. But poor people in many parts of the country, including white people in Appalachia, have endured Depression-era unemployment rates for 40 years, West said.
“There’s been a state of emergency going on for a long time,” West said.
Too many people are like Tennessee Williams’ Blanche Dubois, living in a fantasy world instead of confronting reality, he said.
The country should face some important realities from the present day and also from history, he said.
For nearly the first 100 years of the Untied States, the country was pro-slavery, he said. President Obama now lives in a White House ironically built by slaves, he said.
People had courage to fight to end slavery, just as people in the American labor movement later had courage to fight for decent working conditions, he told an enthusiastic audience of almost 1,200 that nearly filled the Tate Center’s Grand Hall.
“You wouldn’t have a weekend if you didn’t have a labor movement (that fought to end seven-day work weeks),” West said.
Black people in the United States knew terrorism long before Sept. 11, 2001, he said – through decades of lynching and horrific attacks such as those that killed 14-year-old Emmett Till, a black boy brutally killed in 1955 by white supremacists in Mississippi.
“He’s a victim of American terrorists. (Black people) didn’t have to wait until 9-11 to know what American terrorism was,” West said.
His mother showed courage by insisting her son’s coffin be left open at his funeral, so the world could see how badly he was beaten, West said.
It takes courage to lead the examined life as we all head inevitably to the grave, he said.
“What kind of person are you going to be?” he asked the crowd, then quoted poet William Butler Yeats: “It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on the battlefield.”

Reporting from Washington – President Obama will nominate UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, The Times has learned.

Liu carries credentials that some conservatives love to hate — including a leadership position in a progressive legal group and a record of opposing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

But he has conservative admirers too. Liu has supported school choice as a solution to problems in urban education, and has served as faculty advisor to the California College Preparatory Academy, a public charter school. He came to the White House’s attention with the recommendation of some conservatives.

If confirmed, he could be the only full-time Asian American judge on a federal appellate court. A senior administration official revealed his nomination on condition of anonymity.

In the political world, Liu is sure to be remembered as an Alito critic. When Alito was nominated to the high court, Liu co-wrote a report critical of his record on capital punishment, saying Alito’s appellate opinions “show a disturbing tendency to tolerate serious errors in capital proceedings” and “reveal troubling perspectives on federalism, race and due process of law.” Liu testified against Alito during his 2006 confirmation hearings.

Liu, 39, also is chairman of the board of the American Constitution Society, whose mission statement opposes the “activist conservative legal movement.”

“Keeping Faith With the Constitution,” a 2009 book that he co-wrote, discusses the shortcomings of “originalism,” a conservative legal theory maintaining that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its 18th century framers’ intent. Progressive judges tend to see the Constitution as a living document, shifting with the times, and to validate rights that they see as logical extensions of it.

Even without a possible ideological fight, the confirmation process is highly charged for Obama nominees, with Republican lawmakers stalling votes even on those whom they later support. At the moment, 26 judicial nominees await Senate confirmation, including seven to appellate courts.

But Obama’s judicial choices have won strong bipartisan support on the Senate floor. Liu’s supporters hope that his personal story and slightly unpredictable politics will help him win confirmation.

Liu is the son of Taiwanese immigrants. He was born in Georgia, grew up in Sacramento and has a history of public service.

Unafraid of television cameras and news interviews, Liu has a reputation as being affable and savvy. He has written several opinion pieces for the Los Angeles Times, most recently analyzing the legal issues surrounding Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

Given Liu’s prominence in legal circles, his nomination does not come as a surprise. His name has been bandied about among candidates for the appellate court, which Obama, a constitutional lawyer, can shape as a pool for future Supreme Court nominees.

“He’s as sharp as they come, with a kind demeanor and a good temperament,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “And he’s someone who has earned the broad respect of his colleagues on the left and the right.”

The only Asian American serving on a federal appeals court is Judge A. Wallace Tashima of Los Angeles. But he took “senior status” in 2004, which means he hears fewer cases than his colleagues. Another Asian American, Denny Chin,has been nominated to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court in New York, but has yet to be confirmed.

The 9th Circuit is the busiest federal appeals court in the system, reviewing about 16,000 lower-court decisions in most years. It is also the most second-guessed: Last year, the Supreme Court overturned the 9th Circuit at least in part in 15 of 16 cases it reviewed.

Liu is associate dean and a professor of law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, where he has been on the faculty since 2003. He was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University and earned a degree from Yale Law School before clerking for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2000.

He worked at the Department of Education during the Clinton administration and at the Corporation for National Service, a government agency that supports community service and volunteerism. He helped launch the AmeriCorps national service program.

At Berkeley, Liu has worked on a research and advocacy project to improve the finance system for California public schools, and served as consultant to the San Francisco Unified School District. He’s married and has a 2-year-old daughter.

In a recent letter supporting Liu’s anticipated nomination, the director of the conservative Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation referred to a law review article that Liu co-wrote. In the article, Liu supported school choice as one way to improve education in urban schools. Many Democrats and progressives oppose school-choice measures, contending that they will weaken schools in struggling neighborhoods.

“It took a great deal of courage and integrity” for Liu and his co-author to take that position, Clint Bolick wrote in the letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Having reviewed several of his academic writings, I find . . . Liu to exhibit fresh, independent thinking and intellectual honesty.”

cparsons@latimes.com

Times staff writer Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

All three of those killed and two of the injured were faculty members. The third injured person was a staff member. No students were involved in the shooting.

Huntsville Hospital spokesman Burr Ingram said two of the injured were in critical condition and the third was in stable condition.

Nick Lawton, the son of a biology professor at the school, said his father was not among the victims, but he did not know much more.

Lawton, 25, was exercising when a friend phoned him to tell him about the shooting. He called his father, Robert Lawton, and found out that he was not hurt, then he let rest of his family know.

“All I know is that my father is OK,” Nick Lawton told The Associated Press.

Sophomore Erin Johnson told The Huntsville Times a biology faculty meeting was under way when she heard screams coming from a conference room.

University police secured the building and students were cleared from it. There was still a heavy police presence on campus Friday night, with police tape cordoning off the main entrance to the university.

The Huntsville campus has about 7,500 students in northern Alabama, not far from the Tennessee line. The university is known for its scientific and engineering programs and often works closely with NASA.

The space agency has a research center on the school’s campus, where many scientists and engineers from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center perform Earth and space science research and development.

The university posted a message on its Web site Friday afternoon telling students the campus was closed Friday night and all students were encouraged to go home. Counselors were available to speak with students.

It’s the second shooting in a week on an area campus. Last Friday, a 14-year-old student was killed in amiddle school hallway in nearby Madison, allegedly by a fellow student.

“This town is unaccustomed to shootings and multiple deaths,” Garner said.

Rate your professors.

According to Rafael Reuveny, a professor at the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington, the entire negotiation in Congress is “politics as usual” and meant to stall or defeat vital climate change legislation.

“We are trying to win this fight for our lives through consensus. Such compromise will never materialize — not in this country and not internationally,” said Reuveny, co-author of Complex Transformations: Democracy and Economic Openness in an Interconnected System (Cambridge University Press, 2009). “No matter how often President Obama pleads for it, bipartisanship has become a joke. So, while the two sides continue this ridiculous game, Rome — read: the planet — is burning.”

Reuveny said it’s imperative that President Obama bypass this unproductive haggling. “He must issue an Executive Order to the Environmental Protection Agency to immediately implement a system that will cut greenhouse emissions of the American economy by meeting the goals set by the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House in 2009,” he said. “He should also order the EPA to design an all-inclusive command and control system of greenhouse emission quotas and monitoring to be backed by severe and immediate penalties on units that would emit more than their allotted amount.

“During his State of the Union address, President Obama made a bold move calling out Supreme Court judges, declaring their decision could enable U.S. and foreign corporations to determine our elections,” Reuveny said. “Surely, the president realizes that his opportunity to affect this crisis is coming to an end as energy-consuming corporations gain even more political power. An executive order is the only solution.”

Reuveny’s research focuses on political conflict and how it interacts with international trade, democracy, migration, and the environment. He is the co-author of “Climatic Natural Disasters, Political Risk, and International Trade” (Global Environmental Change, forthcoming) and the author of “Exploring the Link between Climate Change and Migration” (Human Ecology, 2008) and “Climate Change Induced Migration and Violent Conflict” (Political Geography, 2007).

Rate my professors for bias at liberal-education.com