BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) -
Leaders of the Louisiana Association of Educators congratulated the Louisiana Federation of Teachers on State District Judge R. Michael Caldwell's decision to throw out the new teacher tenure law.
In
the statement from LAE, they're calling the ruling a win for Louisiana educators.
The LAE statement reads:
Leaders
of the Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE) congratulate the
Louisiana Federation of Teachers (LFT) on State District Judge R.
Michael Caldwell's decision to throw out the new teacher tenure law,
also known as Act 1 of the 2012 Legislative Session. On Monday, Judge
Caldwell announced that he reversed his December 2012 ruling which
originally agreed with key parts of the law. After a second review of
the title of the bill, Judge Caldwell ruled that Act 1 did, in fact,
violate the Louisiana Constitution. LAE President Joyce Haynes said the
ruling is a significant win for educators across the state.
"This
is the second of Governor Jindal's education overhaul laws struck down
by the court," she said. "We told Governor Jindal, Superintendent of
Education John White, and legislators that these proposed laws were
unconstitutional, but our pleas fell upon deaf ears. We applaud Judge
Caldwell for upholding the law and hope that this sets a precedent as we
head into the 2013 Legislative Session."
After
Governor Jindal rammed his questionable, education overhaul laws
through the Louisiana Legislature in 2012, the LAE Board of Directors
authorized legal challenges to Act 2 and Senate Concurrent Resolution
99; they reserved taking action against Act 1. Due to the large number
of potential local legal scenarios, a decision was made to use
association resources to pursue individual legal challenges on a parish
by parish basis.
"In our minds it's not
just teacher tenure – due process rights – which we have to pursue for
public education employees. LAE staff and legal team members from across
the state have been proactively working on a number of ongoing
challenges in several school districts respective to Act 1's new
requirements surrounding individual contracts, employee salary
schedules, building fair and transparent reduction in force policies,
helping improve teacher evaluation processes, and challenging those
procedures designed to punish teachers rather than foster improvement,"
said Haynes.
During the 2012 Legislative
Session, Representative Sam Jones proposed a reasonable change to the
state's due process procedure through House Bill 879; LAE supported and
fought hard for its passage.
"The
governor didn't allow HB 879 to have a fair hearing or up or down vote
by the House," said LAE Executive Director Dr. Michael Walker-Jones. "We
hope that a more reasonable, rational compromise will prevail this
time. LAE actively supported streamlining the tenure review process and
modification of the teacher evaluation law. Our goal is to have an
evaluation process designed to help improve instruction. We will revisit
this legislation in the 2013 Legislative Session," he said.
Haynes
went on to note that educators' working conditions are students'
learning conditions, and said the state should provide quality
conditions for teaching and lifelong learning.
"It's
imperative that we agree on the scope of salary, benefits, and working
conditions, so that we can focus on the importance of improving student
learning," she said.
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