Teachers in California won a major victory Monday when the state’s supreme court refused to hear a lawsuit that challenged various traditional protections for educators, such as tenure.
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“It’s the first day of school for many students throughout the state and it makes me wonder how many more children will return to low-performing schools that prioritize bad teachers over their own students”, said Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes (R-42, Yucca Valley) in a news release Monday afternoon.
Justice Mariano-Forentino Cuellar also dissented from the decision to not take up Vergara.
“The teacher shortage facing California has been stoked by the Vergara case, the expensive publicity machine surrounding it, and the constant attacks by so-called reformers on teachers and public education”, Pechthalt said in a prepared statement.
In a news release, the Partnership for Educational Justice said two similar cases the nonprofit education reform group was supporting in NY and Minnesota would continue despite the California ruling.
Students Matter was victorious back in 2014 – a judge declared the state’s tenure practices deprived students of the right to an education.
The California Supreme Court was divided 4-3 in its decision to let the state’s teacher tenure law stand. He wrote that the challenged statutes “cause the potential and/or unreasonable exposure of grossly ineffective teachers to all California students” and “to minority and/or low income students in particular, in violation of the equal protection clause of the California constitution”.
Ending the lawsuit this way, without high court involvement, short-circuits one of the state’s most needed conversations.
“The students’ fundamental right to a quality education is being violated”, Boutrous said, urging the panel to affirm Treu’s ruling.
“It is time for California lawmakers to focus on the inequities that rob our most vulnerable students from access to highly-effective teachers”, said Mike Stryer, Teach Plus California Senior Executive Director. “The trial court found, and the Court of Appeal did not dispute, that the evidence in this case demonstrates serious harms”. Jerry Brown, sharply questioned the appeals court’s conclusion, and argued the court ducked important questions of fairness. They expect the court to set a date for oral arguments soon. “Hard as it is to embrace the logic of the appellate court on this issue, it is even more hard to allow that court’s decision to stay on the books without review in a case of enormous statewide importance”.
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According to the AP, the California legislature passed a law in 2015 that would allow officials to issue permits allowing for suction dredging, so long as certain conditions – including the guarantee that fish and wildlife would not be significantly affected – are met. Buchal said the state has failed to show suction dredge mining has “ever killed so much as a single fish or frog”.
