Author Description

Public ignorance is the school administration's best friend With education on the firing line today and the intensity growing, this is a must read for people who want to see teaching improvements in their school districts. Over a period of five years, I was subjected to an alarming series of injustices at the hands of the school administration, the board of education, and the Superior Court of Alameda County. The story graphically describes an entrenched school administration's senseless attempts to destroy a teacher who refused on principle to knuckle under at the expense of his students. Briefly stated, I was conspired against, lied about, and made the subject of intolerant actions. My repeated pleas and demands for help, counsel, and redress of grievances were evaded, ignored, and openly refused. In rapid succession I was illegally transferred to a position I was unprepared for, illegally fired, and then in superior court treated to a devastating travesty of the judicial process by a judge who clearly should have been removed from the bench. During the two-year appeal process I was unable to get another job -the school district saw to it that I was blackballed in education. In short my reputation was ruined, as in all likelihood was my teaching career. The board also tried to suppress the town's uprising to reinstate me to my former teaching position. All this happened when I began an individualized teaching process, which was met with resistance by the principal. The more successful I became, the more the district fought it. When I spoke out for educational improvements and wrote a newspaper column espousing the importance of upgrading teaching, the ship hit the sand. But changing teaching methods was only a part of what was to come. Soon the town was in the middle of gross mismanagement, embezzling, the misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars of school district funds, and a school board trying to cover it up. There is more than ample documentation, including