Here'a a chart of salaries of top California Teachers Association officials

Click to enlarge.

Why did San Francisco teachers choose CFT in 1989 instead of CTA?

It turns out that CTA's executive director has had her finger on the pulse of California teachers for quite a while. This lady can see the truth beneath the surface. Here's how she explains CTA's loss: "When you're dissatisfied, you look at someone else."

Norman K. Holsinger of CFT said: "Teachers want a greater voice in what is going on."

Education Week said, "After an eight-year battle, the San Francisco-American Federation of Teachers union succeeded May 26 in wresting the right to represent the city's teachers from the San Francisco Classroom Teachers Association..."

In an earlier article, Education Week reported:

"Kate Dennis, a resource specialist for the district's elementary schools who has belonged to each of the unions at different times, says, "I'm unaffiliated, because I got so disgusted with them both. The organizations, rather than represent the teachers versus the district, have fought each other.""

The article spoke of "site-based decision making""

In a survey of 150 teachers, only 2 percent mentioned educational reform as being an important issue, he notes. In another, longer telephone survey of 300 teachers, the number who responded favorably to questions about site-based management and shared decisionmaking was "so small we didn't finish the analysis," according to Mr. Threatt.

"We found that teachers didn't know what that meant," Ms. Dellamonica says of the reform buzzwords...

The rival sf-aft has attempted to make teacher empowerment a central plank of its platform, calling for democratically elected faculty councils in each school to give teachers a voice in the development of curriculum, programs, and instructional policies...

The sf-aft's pre-election polling found that "the overwhelming majority of teachers in the district are in support of the kind of restructuring and teacher empowerment that gives them a voice at the school-site level," maintains Norman K. Holsinger, an aft national representative and campaign coordinator for the local...

Under the current contract, each school has an Association Liaison Committee with which the principal must meet. In some schools, Ms. Dellamonica says, the committees have been a vehicle for discussion of reform issues, while in others, they have not been active.

Under the contract, only sfcta members can serve on the committees, which serve primarily to enforce the contract. Ms. Shelley says the idea of the committees serving as vehicles for shared decisionmaking is ''preposterous," since the councils have "frozen out" faculty members who do not belong to the union...

Meanwhile, a small group of teachers calling itself citrus, for Committee for Teacher-Run Schools, has begun holding meetings and gathering ideas to push for restructuring schools, according to Jonathan Frank, a member of the group and science teacher at Mission High School.

The citrus members are backing the a.f.t. in the election, Mr. Frank says, since it is perceived as more progressive on school-reform issues.

"I was hopeful that restructuring would become the apple pie and motherhood issue, and that the two unions would try to outdo each other on teacher empowerment," he explains. "What I saw was lip service to the idea. You wonder what they're more interested in--power to the teachers or the unions."

CTA CHIEF COUNSEL BEVERLY TUCKER SPENT UNION DUES IN AN EFFORT TO KEEP CHILD MOLESTERS IN THE CLASSROOM

Those pesky school districts! Once again they are trying to get child molesters out of the classroom.

But California Teachers Association, true to form, has stepped in to protect overly-friendly teachers. In the Albert G. Truitt, Jr. case, the California Teachers Association proved once again that its executive director Carolyn Doggett, its chief counsel Beverly Tucker, and their stable of lawyers have deep-seated feelings of outrage for any violation of human rights--other than children's rights, that is.

Usually, teachers cannot be dismissed or have their credentials taken away for any act occurring more than 4 years before charges are brought against them. But for CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE, exceptions have been made to this 4-year statute of limitations in every venue in California EXCEPT WHEN A DISTRICT TRIES TO DISMISS A TEACHER.

Atwater School District wanted to dismiss Mr. Truitt in 2002 for molestations that occurred from 1992 to 1998.

CTA said no way!

QUESTION:

Why do Beverly Tucker and Carolyn Doggett want to keep the following anomaly in California law?

"A teacher could be prosecuted criminally, the CTC could institute credential revocation proceedings, and a school district could be sued for negligent hiring, retention, and supervision all based on the same set of facts that exist here. Yet, the Court of Appeal’s literal interpretation of section 44944(a) would deprive a school district of the ability to dismiss an employee on the same set of facts."

ANSWER:

Beverly Tucker and Carolyn Doggett care about political power and loyalty to friends who commit crimes more than they care about the abuse of children.

Sadly, our friends at CTA lost the Albert Truitt case. In June 2007, the California Supreme Court ruled that equity requires that school districts get the same extension on the statute of limitations that the Teacher Credentialling Commission gets.

CTA must have thought it had a good chance to win, since in 1993 it apparently was able to kill a California bill that would have specifically extended the child sexual abuse statute of limitations for school districts. Can you believe that legislators would fail to vote for a bill that would get child molesters out of classrooms? This goes to show the enormous power that CTA has in California. No Democrat can get elected without CTA's support. CTA holds the purse strings to a huge amount of campaign funds, and every local affiliate in California is rigidly controlled by Beverly Tucker and Carolyn Doggett.

Isn't it sad to see Beverly Tucker and her pal Michael Hersh lose a case? Let's hope they don't get depressed. They would be so much more successful if they didn't defend criminals. I for one am crossing my fingers and hoping that in the next case they fight, Bev and Mike won't be using teacher union dues to protect criminals. Maybe they got over confident when they got my case thrown out of court. They succeeded in protecting union leaders who had started with
misdemeanors,but went on to commit felonies to cover up their misdemeanors.