{"id":5953,"date":"2011-04-12T10:41:01","date_gmt":"2011-04-12T17:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=5953"},"modified":"2011-04-12T10:41:01","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T17:41:01","slug":"new-speak-same-screwjob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=5953","title":{"rendered":"New Speak, Same Screwjob"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend we bumped into a friend we hadn’t seen in a couple of years.\u00a0 She had news.\u00a0 R________, a guidance counselor at a local high school, was fired a couple of months ago … along with the rest of the school’s faculty and staff<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And get what the school district calls this mass firing: a “transformational model<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Depressed yet?\u00a0 Oh, just wait … you haven’t heard the best part.<\/p>\n

Last year the Arizona legislature passed a bill invalidating state teacher seniority, salary, and contract guarantees<\/a>.\u00a0 Governor Brewer (of course!) signed it.\u00a0 Under the new law, school districts can’t consider tenure or seniority as a factor in determining which teachers can be laid off, nor can they consider applicants’ tenure or seniority when they rehire.<\/p>\n

Translation: seniority can no longer protect you from being laid off, nor will seniority count when you apply for a new job.<\/p>\n

Our friend R________, who has 25 years’ seniority in TUSD and is just two years short of retirement eligibility … along with other teachers and counselors who have years of experience and seniority and who are similarly close to qualifying for retirement pensions … now has to compete for another teaching job on an equal level with inexperienced, lower-paid teachers.\u00a0 Her seniority counts for nothing.<\/p>\n

And what if she can’t get rehired?\u00a0 Does she then lose the pension she’s come so close to earning?<\/p>\n

Transformational model, indeed.\u00a0 Why, you might almost think the new state law is part of a backdoor plan to fire high-tenure teachers, then refuse to hire them again, thus saving the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement pensions.\u00a0 But that can’t possibly be so.\u00a0 Can it?<\/p>\n

Cops, firemen, and other Arizona state employees, you might want to pay attention to this.\u00a0 A transformational model might be coming your way soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend we bumped into a friend we hadn’t seen in a couple of years.\u00a0 She had news.\u00a0 R________, a guidance counselor at a local high school, was fired a couple of months ago … along with the rest of the school’s faculty and staff. And get what the school district calls this mass firing: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,8],"tags":[132,131,130,129],"class_list":["post-5953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-current-events","category-politics","tag-layoffs","tag-teachers","tag-transformational-model","tag-tusd"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5953"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5963,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953\/revisions\/5963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}