Thread: CA Court: Teacher Refusing Language Training Can be Fired

I read that an effort began under the Clinton Adminstration to merge one's "language" with one's "country of national orign" so that the former also would fall under the protection of (and ability to litigate under) the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Remember the Clintons met at Yale Law School.

CA Court: Teacher refusing training can be fired

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Veteran schoolteachers who refuse training that qualifies them to instruct students who speak only limited English can be fired, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.

A San Joaquin County school district that ordered all its teachers to take language training was within its authority to begin dismissal proceedings against a tenured high school music teacher who defied the requirement, said the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

The teacher, Theresa Messick of Ripon High School, is considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court, her lawyer said.

The ruling is the first to address districts' authority under a recent state law that requires teachers to get special training to work in classes that include students not fluent in English - about one-fifth of California's total enrollment. The law also requires schools to make all their programs available to those students.

Such training is now included in education for all new teachers, but many who were credentialed before 2003 aren't certified to teach English learners, said Diana Halpenny, lawyer for the California School Boards Association. She said those are mostly longtime instructors with tenure, who can be fired only for serious misconduct or demonstrated unfitness for service.

Messick's lawyer, Thomas Driscoll, said the certification requirement was pointless in her case because "no English learner had ever attempted to sign up for her classes." He said fewer than 3 percent of Ripon High's students are limited-English speakers.

The Ripon Unified School District required language training for all instructors starting in 2005. Messick, who Driscoll said has been at the high school since about 1980, was the only teacher who refused.

In court, Driscoll argued that Messick was protected from firing by a law that bars schools from cutting the pay of tenured teachers who fail to comply with new requirements. But the appeals court said the law "applies only to salaries, not to termination."

Even if no limited-English-speaking student has yet tried to sign up for Messick's class, "the Legislature has recognized that the number of (English learner) students in the state is increasing," and has authorized districts to require teacher training, Justice George Nicholson said in the 3-0 ruling.

The ruling can be read at links.sfgate.com/ZIGF.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 19UG02.DTL

Where isn the union to stick up for an employee?

Good for her! What if most of her training was in Spanish and most of her students were speaking only Chinese?
The best way to teach language is submersion in a language. Done that plenty around the world with the proper Berlitz book in my purse.