LOS ANGELES – “Pervy” teachers can breathe easier now that the California Teachers Association has killed a proposed law that would have made it easier and less expensive for schools to fire employees charged with sexual misconduct.
The bill, which was written by Democratic state Sen. Alex Padilla, “would have truncated the (firing) process, allowing a school board to make the final dismissal decision after a recommendation by an administrative law judge and permitting evidence more than four years old to be used,” reports KFI News.
Padilla’s bill, which sailed through the state Senate, was in response to the recent arrest of an elementary school teacher who was charged with inflicting lewd and despicable acts upon his students. The case has “highlighted how difficult it is to remove (such teachers), typically taking years and incurring hefty legal fees through a labyrinthine process,” writes KFI News.
Most Californians would probably agree that schools should be allowed to swiftly remove depraved and dangerous teachers from the payroll, without having to spend a small fortune in legal fees.
But the state’s largest teachers union, the CTA, convinced enough lawmakers in the General Assembly that such a law would violate a teacher’s right to due process. Padilla’s bill died in committee earlier this week.
That’s a bogus charge. Padilla’s bill would have allowed accused teachers “to retain counsel and present a defense and witnesses, request a hearing by an independent arbiter and to appeal the board’s decision to a court,” KFI News reports.
All of the above represents due process.
EAGnews has the full article
