School Board Members Want Faster Termination of Accused Teachers

Three Los Angeles Unified board members will ask their colleagues today to support changes they say would make it faster and cheaper for the school district to fire teachers and notify parents sooner when an educator has been charged with a crime.

The proposals by board members Tamar Galatzan and Nury Martinez -- and backed by board President Monica Garcia -- come in response to a series of sexual abuse allegations against 11 LAUSD employees, including Mark Berndt, a Miramonte Elementary School teacher accused of molesting students in his classroom over a period of more than a decade. Another teacher at Telfair Elementary School in Pacoima, Paul Chapel III, was arrested last fall and charged with 16 counts of sexual abuse of four children.

Galatzan called the cases "disgusting and tragic" and faulted state legislators for ignoring the district's previous pleas to change the state Education Code in order to reduce appeal times and allow the LAUSD to cease paying teachers accused of wrongdoing.

"It's very hard when the state Education Code dictates so much of what goes on in a school district, and we really are hampered by a lot of state codes that don't support kids," she said.

It can take between two and seven years to fire a teacher, depending on the number of appeals, Galatzan said.

"In many cases, the district has to rehire an individual who we don't feel comfortable returning to the classroom," she said.

Under the state code, the district is required to send a teacher written notice that he or she has been charged with an act that could warrant termination, and the board has to wait at least 45 or 90 days, depending on the allegations, before acting.

"The cost and the time involved to dismiss an immoral or criminal employee can be a deterrent to doing what's right for a school and doing what's right for our children," Galatzan said.

Tenured educators have a right to a full administrative hearing within 60 days of being dismissed. That process usually takes more than a year, during which the accused teacher is entitled to be paid.

The vast majority of appeals by dismissed teachers end up being settled by the district, according to LAUSD Chief Labor and Employment Counsel Alexander Molina.

Galatzan, Martinez and Garcia also criticized as too restrictive a state- mandated adjudication process that bars the district from presenting incriminating evidence that occurred more than four years before a dismissal filing. It makes it "challenging for the district to submit the historical perspective of the teacher's performance, which can create a perception that performance issues are not deeply rooted," according to the proposal.

The resolution asks state education officials to make a broad range of changes to the code, including:

-- allowing the district to remove a teacher from the classroom immediately after beginning dismissal proceedings;

-- allowing the district to move to fire teachers over the summer;

-- requiring accused teachers to agree to hearings within a certain number of days or risk losing salary and benefits during the adjudication process;

-- allowing evidence to be presented that is more than four years old;

-- allowing the district to stop paying fired teachers during the adjudication process, with the agreement that it will award back pay and benefits if the teacher appeals and wins; and

-- prohibiting any employee convicted of sexual abuse of a minor from receiving his or her pension and retirement benefits even if the person retires before being fired.

A second resolution would require LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy to strengthen the process for notifying parents and an independent state credentialing commission when teachers are under criminal or administrative investigation. Martinez said parents should at least be notified when criminal charges have been filed.

"That is absolutely a trigger for us to notify parents," she said.

United Teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher said the union supports the measures to increase student safety but does not absolve the district of blame for the recent spate of sex abuse cases.

"It is important to remember that we are in the current situation because LAUSD has not met basic standards of vigilance on a daily basis," Fletcher said. "LAUSD's failure of supervision led to a situation at Miramonte Elementary where a single principal supervised staff and more than 1,400 students, with no assistant principal."