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Lame Sub for Termination Process

By Ben Velderman
Duluth Weekly, NJ
November 21, 2011

TRENTON, NJ (November 21, 2011) – Firing a teacher who was caught on camera mocking and threatening physical violence toward a special needs student should be a slam dunk, right?

Think again.

The teacher at Bankbridge Regional School in Gloucester County, New Jersey who recently told a 15-year-old student that he was going to “kick his a**” may be on the district’s payroll for the next five years, even if the district decides to fire him.

The reason? New Jersey’s teacher tenure law requires school districts to follow a series of complicated, expensive and time-consuming steps before they are allowed to fire veteran teachers.

A chart illustrating this ridiculous process can be viewed more closely by clicking the image to the right.

It only takes three years in New Jersey to become a tenured teacher.

The Garden State’s teacher tenure laws are so deeply flawed that 77 percent of state residents support tenure reform. Gov. Chris Christie, as well as legislative Democrats and Republicans, have offered reform plans.

In addition, the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, recently unveiled its own plan to use arbitration instead of the courts when attempting to fire a tenured teacher. After years of opposing substantive reform, the teachers union is trying to re-brand itself as a reform organization, and taxpayers and lawmakers should be wary of the union’s motives.

Even under the union’s streamlined arbitration plan, firing an ineffective or dangerous teacher would still take up to nine months, and would remain cost prohibitive. That would leave schools with the same bad choices they have now.

Instead of spending dwindling budget resources on an uncertain arbitration process, school districts would likely allow ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom, and might only attempt to fire the most egregious offenders, such as the abusive Bankbridge Regional School teacher.

That teacher, by the way, has tenure status, and the school board has decided to take an “undetermined discliplinary action” against him, according to ABC News. We’re willing to bet it’s something short of termination, simply because that would cost too much.

The long and winding road

The state’s current process for firing ineffective tenured teachers gained national notoriety earlier this year when Education Action Group charted the 15 step process that takes two to five years to complete.

The process begins by formally bringing tenure charges against a teacher. Then the real work begins.

Jim Smith, the executive director of school security for New Jersey’s Paterson school district, told EAG that an investigator needs two or three months to gather evidence to support the accusations against the teacher.

After months of gathering evidence, the investigator shares his findings with the district superintendent and the state commissioner of education. If both officials certify the charges, the case is sent to the New Jersey Office of Administrative Law and a trial is scheduled.

The trial itself can last up to four years, Smith told EAG. The accused teacher doesn’t mind, because after 120 calendar days, he or she collects full pay for the remainder of the process. School districts not only have to pay that salary, but must hire substitutes to fill in for the suspended teacher and pay lawyers to pursue the termination case.

During the trial, witnesses are called to testify and a judge typically asks the attorneys to file legal briefs. All of that can take 30 to 90 days. Then the judge will make a decision in the case, which typically takes another three or four months.

The state commissioner of education then reviews the judge’s decision and issues a final decision. That often takes another two or three months.

But in many cases, those days, weeks and months can stretch into years. According to Smith, judges typically hear these cases on days they have available – perhaps one day one week, then two days a few weeks later.

When the entire process is finally complete and the teacher is found guilty, he or she has the option of appealing the decision, if another court will agree to hear it.

A major reason the current process is so difficult and expensive is because the Union provides members with top-flight attorneys who know how to manipulate the system to the teacher’s advantage. It’s difficult to believe that the NJEA would not use the same tactics in arbitration.

According to Smith, the decision to fire a tenured teacher can cost a school district $300,000 to $400,000.

Union offers a lame alternative

Even the union, which designed and defended the firing process, is finally acknowledging its ridiculous flaws and calling for a new termination system based on arbitration.

“The current system, which involves hearings in the courts, is too expensive and too time-consuming,” NJEA President Barbara Keshishian wrote in a recent Star-Ledger op-ed. “NJEA proposes putting tenure cases before arbitrators, whose judgment would be final. Cases would be heard quickly and at a much lower cost.”

Jeff Zaino, vice president of labor, employment and elections division for the American Arbitration Association, said that arbitration is designed for speed, economy and justice.

“It takes six to nine months to arbitrate a standard labor dispute from start to finish,” Zaino told EAG. “The parties have control of the process and how it works.”

In our view, that’s what should have education reformers worried. The NJEA has a long history of fighting to keep incompetent and ineffective educators in the classroom. The teachers union would still be able to assign attorneys to represent the targeted teachers, and drag the process out with various motions, requests for research and discovery findings.

Michael Vrancik, director of governmental relations for the New Jersey School Boards Association, is not convinced arbitration will solve the state’s tenure problem.

It might shorten the process, but it would still drain dollars out of shrinking school budgets, making administrators reluctant to dismiss all the but most egregious offenders. And given the NJEA’s history of selfishness and bare-knuckle tactics, any system that relies on union cooperation seems destined for failure.

“It substitutes one unwieldy process, in my opinion, for one that is slightly less unwieldy,” Vrancik told EAG.

“If it cuts the process in half, is that still acceptable? We need to find out the amount of time tenure review should take, and build a system to meet that.”