Congratulations to Fred Kamper!

California Teachers Association members are proud of local affiliate president Fred Kamper, who won a seat last month on the school board of Mountain Empire Unified School District in San Diego County, California.

We do not take kindly to false allegations against our presidents. We will spend all the teacher dues necessary to protect union leaders from the consequences of their actions. In Mr. Kamper's case, he was persecuted because his lips accidentally touched the arm of a student whose perfume he was smelling. He was demoted from principal to teacher.

Then, the district was sued for allowing Kamper to repeatedly sit a student on his lap and rub her thighs. The district apparently thought it had done enough for Kamper when it vehemently denied his guilt, and paid off the family of the girl for dropping the lawsuit.

We don't think that was enough.

They forced him to resign, and that made us mad.

We wanted Kamper back, and we got him. He is now on the school board. He is still being persecuted by parents, but the huge majority of teachers support him. The leaders in Burlingame can be counted on to back us up. Barbara Kerr, David Sanchez and Dean Vogel care about union leaders. They know we have to stick together and support our leaders when parents start moaning about their children. Can you believe that some parents in Mountain Empire Unified School District actually had tears of rage in their eyes when Kamper was seated at his first board meeting?

Parents seem to think that school politics and students are closely connected, but they are not. School government is on a completely separate level from the students. It actually has very little to do with the children and their classrooms. This separation makes it much easier for board members to make decisions that might impact negatively on the classroom.