Note to boards of education: listen to your students, you're there for them. Or maybe you're not?
A collection of angry students at one California high school organized a recall election that might well be the first ever in the state to unseat an entire school board. The kids and their adult supporters collected enough signatures to authorize a recall vote on all five members of the board of education at the Big Oak Flat-Groveland Unified School District.
What made the kids this angry? The board fired a popular math teacher. Yes, a math teacher, not a football coach (although he is a former professional football player) or a gym teacher. A guy who teaches one of the core subjects. To be fair, he was also coaching baseball - but that wasn't at the heart of the kids' arguments.
The board released Ryan Dutton from his job teaching math at Tioga High in September over an allegation of plagiarism. Working toward his teaching credentials at Cal State Fresno, Dutton was accused in March 2008 of copying another student's homework. He denied the charge, and the university eventually found it was unfounded. Still, members of the school board say they're standing behind THEIR source, and they've refused to rehire Dutton. Nor have they revealed their sources.
Students have appealed to the board to no avail. So civics teacher Tim King helped them organize a civics project instead: collecting the necessary nine hundred ten signatures per school board member necessary to put the recall on the ballot. They got them. . . and more.
There's scuttlebutt, according to the Los Angeles Times, that these kids are being used to settle old scores in a fractious community. And while I'm often cautious about putting kids on the front lines of these kinds of arguments, I've seen what they can do. As a community reporter, I followed the case of a school librarian cut because of budget constraints, and the students who worked to have her reinstated. The kids were brushed aside by a school board that did not realize the gem they had in their midst - kids who cared enough about a librarian, with no ties to the sports community. They held lengthy executive sessions while the teenagers sat in the high school library, waiting patiently to have someone simply listen to their pleas. Never was there an explanation issued of the way budgeting works, of the intricacies of tenure. Nor was a thank you issued to the kids for their hard work.
Teachers can't always be reinstated simply because the kids care about them. But without the children, there is no school community, no school board. Not listening to them, at least providing some feedback and a "hey, you tried, but. . ." is tantamount to telling them you're not there FOR them.
Image: Los Angeles Times
Related Posts:
