MIDDLE ISLAND - Few people know better than school superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer that disciplining a tenured teacher can be long and expensive.
An English teacher in his Long Island district remains on the payroll and earns an annual salary of $113,559, even after pleading guilty earlier this month to drunken driving charges - her fifth DWI arrest in seven years.
She will remain on paid leave at least until a disciplinary hearing in August, and it will be up to an impartial arbitrator to decide whether she needs to be fired, despite a likely prison sentence because of her drunken driving problems.
“It is very frustrating that the process takes so long,” Gerstenlauer conceded.
The case illustrates a nagging problem in school districts around the country: firing bad teachers. It is also part of the ongoing debate over education reform and the role tenure plays in the process.
Advocates for reform cite a list of egregious examples they say demonstrate why teacher tenure rules need to be overhauled.
In New York City, it often costs taxpayers $250,000 just to fire one incompetent teacher. Some teachers are convicted of serious felonies and still remain on the payroll, forcing districts to hold disciplinary hearings behind prison walls.
“Protecting jobs of adults without regard to how well their students perform almost certainly will lead to greater costs, stagnant academic achievement, and greater dysfunction of our public education system,” says tenure foe B. Jason Brooks of the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability.
Union leader Richard Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers, counters: “Tenure provides the right to due process. It is consistent with the American way; a person is innocent until proven guilty.”
The issue has been gaining attention in New York.
Legislative leaders and Gov. David Paterson agreed this month to a bill that will automatically revoke the certification of teachers convicted of sex crimes against students. The law will end what is now often a yearlong administrative process.
And earlier this year, the Center for Union Facts launched a $1 million ad campaign featuring a billboard in Times Square, offering 10 teachers it said were the country's worst $10,000 to quit their careers.
Teachers should be paid based on how well they do their job, not how long they've had their job, Brooks said.
Because tenure laws are different in every state, comparing the time and expense of firing bad teachers can be difficult. In New York state, the process can take six to 18 months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of which is the cost of keeping a bad teacher on the payroll during the disciplinary proceeding. Lawyers, stenographers and arbitrators also take their cut.
In New York City, the cost to fire one incompetent tenured teacher is about $250,000 and the process takes longer than a year, said Education Department spokeswoman Melody Meyer. She said of 55,000 teachers on staff, 10 were fired last year.
“The chancellor would prefer that teachers be taken off the payroll while going through arbitration,” Meyer said. “If the decision is in favor of the teacher, that money would be paid back with interest.”
Dave Albert, a spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association, said between 1995 and 2005, there were 633 disciplinary hearings statewide, 60 percent of which were in New York City. Of the 633 cases, 184 resulted in termination and 234 teachers were placed in unpaid suspension.
The Washington-based Center for Union Facts contends that between 1995 and 2005, 112 Los Angeles tenured teachers faced termination - 11 per year - out of 43,000. It also said that 47 New Jersey teachers out of 100,000 were fired in a 10-year period.
New York teachers are granted tenure after three years and a series of reviews.
“When a teacher receives tenure it is a real milestone. It is recognition that the person is qualified to be there,” said Iannuzzi.
He said teachers accused of wrongdoing deserve due process.
“Often the time and cost is the result of an excessive charge, or that the charges are baseless,” he said. “It still takes a long time to weed through the case to learn this.”
Gerstenlauer, the Longwood school superintendent, declined to discuss specific aspects of the teacher with the drunken driving arrest, citing personnel confidentiality issues.
He said part of the reason for the drawn-out process can be blamed on staff cuts in the state education department. Calls for comment from the education department were not returned.
“I'm not looking to shortchange anybody's due process, I'm looking at a system that would allow us to move through at a reasonable pace, that would allow the district to move forward and the employee to move forward,” the superintendent said.
AP-ES-06-28-08 1135EDT
She will remain on paid leave at least until a disciplinary hearing in August, and it will be up to an impartial arbitrator to decide whether she needs to be fired, despite a likely prison sentence because of her drunken driving problems.
“It is very frustrating that the process takes so long,” Gerstenlauer conceded.
The case illustrates a nagging problem in school districts around the country: firing bad teachers. It is also part of the ongoing debate over education reform and the role tenure plays in the process.
Advocates for reform cite a list of egregious examples they say demonstrate why teacher tenure rules need to be overhauled.
In New York City, it often costs taxpayers $250,000 just to fire one incompetent teacher. Some teachers are convicted of serious felonies and still remain on the payroll, forcing districts to hold disciplinary hearings behind prison walls.
“Protecting jobs of adults without regard to how well their students perform almost certainly will lead to greater costs, stagnant academic achievement, and greater dysfunction of our public education system,” says tenure foe B. Jason Brooks of the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability.
Union leader Richard Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers, counters: “Tenure provides the right to due process. It is consistent with the American way; a person is innocent until proven guilty.”
The issue has been gaining attention in New York.
Legislative leaders and Gov. David Paterson agreed this month to a bill that will automatically revoke the certification of teachers convicted of sex crimes against students. The law will end what is now often a yearlong administrative process.
And earlier this year, the Center for Union Facts launched a $1 million ad campaign featuring a billboard in Times Square, offering 10 teachers it said were the country's worst $10,000 to quit their careers.
Teachers should be paid based on how well they do their job, not how long they've had their job, Brooks said.
Because tenure laws are different in every state, comparing the time and expense of firing bad teachers can be difficult. In New York state, the process can take six to 18 months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of which is the cost of keeping a bad teacher on the payroll during the disciplinary proceeding. Lawyers, stenographers and arbitrators also take their cut.
In New York City, the cost to fire one incompetent tenured teacher is about $250,000 and the process takes longer than a year, said Education Department spokeswoman Melody Meyer. She said of 55,000 teachers on staff, 10 were fired last year.
“The chancellor would prefer that teachers be taken off the payroll while going through arbitration,” Meyer said. “If the decision is in favor of the teacher, that money would be paid back with interest.”
Dave Albert, a spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association, said between 1995 and 2005, there were 633 disciplinary hearings statewide, 60 percent of which were in New York City. Of the 633 cases, 184 resulted in termination and 234 teachers were placed in unpaid suspension.
The Washington-based Center for Union Facts contends that between 1995 and 2005, 112 Los Angeles tenured teachers faced termination - 11 per year - out of 43,000. It also said that 47 New Jersey teachers out of 100,000 were fired in a 10-year period.
New York teachers are granted tenure after three years and a series of reviews.
“When a teacher receives tenure it is a real milestone. It is recognition that the person is qualified to be there,” said Iannuzzi.
He said teachers accused of wrongdoing deserve due process.
“Often the time and cost is the result of an excessive charge, or that the charges are baseless,” he said. “It still takes a long time to weed through the case to learn this.”
Gerstenlauer, the Longwood school superintendent, declined to discuss specific aspects of the teacher with the drunken driving arrest, citing personnel confidentiality issues.
He said part of the reason for the drawn-out process can be blamed on staff cuts in the state education department. Calls for comment from the education department were not returned.
“I'm not looking to shortchange anybody's due process, I'm looking at a system that would allow us to move through at a reasonable pace, that would allow the district to move forward and the employee to move forward,” the superintendent said.
AP-ES-06-28-08 1135EDT
