Some of the facts for this article, but none of the legal conclusions, come from an article in the Los Angeles Times on 24 February. The story reports that the ACLU has filed suit against the State of California and the Los Angeles Unified School District on behalf of failing students at failing inner-city schools. The suit demands that teachers being laid off because of budget cuts be reinstated. The suit fails to mention where the money to rehire them will come from.
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The suit alleges that "teachers are laid off in order of seniority," and that teachers in poor, inner city schools are mostly "young and new hires who have volunteered for this duty," and therefore, the brunt of the layoffs is in schools that already are the bottom of the barrel among L.A. schools.
The article does not mention recent studies that found the vast majority of the students in this District are being cheated out of a decent education. [# More #] According to the tests for the states' requirements for graduation, two thirds of all the students in all the City's schools should not be promoted to the next grade.
The City School Board's response was to lower the standards for promotion, rather than let such a massive proof of its educational failure become public.
The ACLU has, however, neglected to sue the union for the L.A. school teachers - the ones who insisted on layoffs according to seniority, which is obviously right at the heart of their complaint. It has also not sued the statewide unions in all categories, for having driven personnel and pension costs through the roof, and taken the whole state over the brink of bankruptcy, which is why these layoffs are taking place. Lastly, the ACLU has not sued the Democrat Party of California, which has acted as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the unions in bringing the state (and all its subdivisions) to this point of fiscal insanity.
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Why hasn't the ACLU sued those people who are most responsible for the educational disaster they claim to be concerned about? Could it be because those responsible are all ACLU political allies? Hmmmm.
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