Dear
Education leaders:
Ah,
teaching in Oregon...
My
bosses at Westview HS--Gail Vangorder, Malcolm Dennis, and Mike
Chamberlain (one of whom was coming to work drunk, a circumstance
concealed by the BEA uniserve representative) also ran off some other
good teachers:
Christy
Ford, certified teacher; profoundly deaf; amazing individual released
without explanation 2003
Rosalind
Taylor, African-American literature teacher; guilty of teaching while
black 2002
Etc.
I
had asked to quit after being paid $20K less than both my
successor and predecessor as Activities Director at Westview HS, then
Oregon's largest. I voiced concerns about my building administration
to a new superintendent and, within weeks, Ms. VanGorder (a veteran
asst. principal) solicited a sexual harassment complaint from our
school librarian, a complaint consisting of three absurd charges that
I was never told about until I was fired--and then I was forced to
wait six months to answer them.
Teacher
justice.
In
the meantime, my OEA lawyer, Tom Doyle, appeared in my life and soon
filed a million-dollar freedom of speech suit against the most
popular superintendent in the state--without my consent--that he used
to manipulate me, to expose unrelated medical and financial records,
and to prolong my ordeal.
My
mother, a classroom teacher for 35 years whom we had recently moved
to hospice care in Oregon, died a year and a half into the protracted
process.
The
Oregonian's David Anderson wrote about me several times without
contacting me. My union lawyer assured Mr. Anderson that he was
working to get my job back while he delayed appealing undocumented
findings for over two years.
My
complaints to the OEA leadership, beginning within weeks of my
illegal termination, were ignored and ridiculed by Tom Husted,
longtime BEA uniserve, Trish Parks, former BEA president, Larry Wolf
(former OEA president), Mark Toledo (OEA legal director),
Richard Sanders (current OEA executive director) and Gail Rasmussen
(current OEA president).
Hanna
Vaandering, OEA vice president from Beaverton and OEIB
member--ostensibly leading our school reform, brought me an illegal
settlement document in an effort to shelter dishonest lawyers
previously employed by the BSD.
The
TSPC director, Vickie Chamberlain, hired in 2002 by the very
superintendent I was "suing," presented me for several
years with an array of confessions to sign to preserve my license to
teach. When I consistently refused, Ms. Chamberlain persuaded a
state ALJ, Andrea Sloan, to use an unprecedented preclusion finding
to suspend my license, almost four years after I had been illegally
fired.
That's
the business plan for an education industry where teachers are
chattel...Bullies running schools. Ironically, that's what my initial
complaint to Jerry Colonna was about--unaccountable school
administrators exploiting vulnerable teachers...and by extension,
their students.
So,
Ms. Chamberlain of the Oregon Teacher (Double) Standards and
(Deviant) Practices Commission, you
are damn right I'm still angry after
many years--my mom was dying while I was fighting a union I had paid
for ten years...while you were helping the union representatives and
the lawyers cheat the teachers.
Until
people like you are held accountable, reform is a mirage.
