Unsent Letters: Take It to the Top

Superintendent Garcia:

Given the size of the public relations office and its well-compensated staff, it's unfortunate that you don't run your comments past them before speaking to the media.

Because when you tell schools slated to lose almost 50% of their teachers that the skip order you want "won't tilt the Earth on its orbit", those schools are disgusted with you, your lack of concern for their students, and your blatant disregard for the actual, on-the-ground implications of protecting intern credentialed teachers over fully-credentialed teachers with experience.


Which is, by the way, a key point.  The "special skills and competencies" of some fifty-eight protected teachers do not include a real, renewable California teaching credential.   I'd say that puts kind of a low bar on whatever it is that sets "zone" schools apart from equally-challenged schools in other neighborhoods.

Let's face it.  Union-busting is all the rage with soon-to-retire and retired Superintendents looking for lucrative speaking gigs in the future.  And if you can union-bust in the name of the children, even better!

The problem is that you're going to knock the Earth off its orbit entirely at some schools that have bigger challenges than some of the arbitrary zone sites.  And that it's hard to argue you have an elite and highly-trained, heavily-recruited teaching force at these arbitrary sites when some of them have credentials that are only controversially designated acceptable under NCLB.

Actually, maybe it's better that the PR office didn't catch you before you called the Chronicle.  It's always good to know how little we schools matter for the top brass in our District.