Five McClatchy Teachers’ Complaint Against Administration And District Settled

 

Five McClatchy teachers have settled a complaint filed with the Public Employment Relations Board against the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) regarding the administration and District’s unfair practices in falsely accusing them of misconduct during last year’s sexual assault walkout. These teachers were Lori Jablonski, Tim Griffin, Tammy Abdo, Bridget Martinez, and Tim Douglas.

The Prospector was able to sit down with four of these teachers, and asked them to recount what Mr. Griffin recalls as being “one of the worst days I’ve had as an educator,” and what happened in the days following.

The day after the student-organized walkout that protested the mishandling of a former student’s sexual assault case, the five teachers received an email which stated that there was to be a validation meeting regarding their involvement in the walkout.

“What we’re eventually told is that the district had information that it wanted to validate about our involvement with the student walkout and that with that information and through this validation process they would determine whether they were going to take disciplinary action,” said Jablonski.

“First of all they send you a letter, they’re gonna say ‘look, you’re going to get a formal reprimand, and it goes into your personnel file. That means it follows you throughout your career,” said Griffin.

“And if you get enough of those you can be fired,” added Douglas.

The five teachers were reportedly followed and monitored without their consent or knowledge as the walkout occurred. Both written reports of their movements and security footage were used to supposedly prove their involvement.

“They said they have a video tape of me that had been filmed throughout various places in the school that day, and so they wanted to show it to me and then they wanted to ask me questions about where I was and what I was doing,” said Jablonski.

“The video of me contradicted what the report said,” said Martinez. “It has me walking out of the main office by myself and just kind of standing in the hallway and just in the doorway watching from the back. So that totally contradicted the report that I walked out with students,” added Martinez.

The teachers who were followed said they were specifically targeted that day. “People were told to follow us around, so it was obviously planned,” said Jablonski.

“I think [administration] just went to [campus monitors] and said they needed them to write a statement saying they saw these teachers,” said Martinez. “I don’t remember seeing any [campus] monitors.”

“All of the [campus] monitors were told to film us,” said Douglas. “Mind you, the [campus] monitors can easily be fired; they don’t have protection.”

After the walkout, the teachers were gathered up based on minor infractions they had supposedly made during the walkout. Jablonski and Martinez were accused of participating in the walkout and leaving students unattended because they had been seen outside at some point during the walkout. Both teachers said at the validation meeting that they went outside to watch during their prep periods, and Martinez also stayed outside during a period that she had a student teacher, so no students were left unattended.

At the validation meeting, the administration confronted Douglas about Prince videos he put on in one of his classes during the walkout. “I was written up for playing Prince for the two or three students that remained in the classroom,” said Douglas. “Almost the entire class was at the walkout, so I wasn’t going to go through with my lesson.”

They were surprised to find themselves being questioned by Roxanna Findlay, a director of the District’s Human Resources department, Area Superintendent Mary Hardin Young, and a lawyer from the school district, all of whom accused them of having organized and instigated the students’ walkout.

“It was an hour and a half of union council and district council going back and forth kind of arguing about what I had to tell them and what they had on me,” said Martinez. “It really was a waste of time.”

“It really underestimates the ability of students to one: make their own decisions, and two: come together, and organize their own form of student protest,” said Griffin, referencing the apparent lack of faith Administration had in student ability to organize a walkout without help from teachers.

Douglas felt especially frustrated that “instead of listening to the student voices, our administration chose to use the opportunity as a way to punish certain teachers. They were trying to trap teachers and try and find a way to reprimand us. In the process, they have violated labor law.”

“It felt like this was the school and the district’s Me Too moment, and boy did they blow it,” said Jablonski. “One of the important things in the Me Too movement has revealed the problems that our institutions, places of power, have. And this was really revealing about this school and this district. It was also so insulting. It was so belittling.”

After this interrogation, the teachers decided to seek legal action, and turned to the Public Employment Relations Board. Ultimately, the teachers won the case against the district.

Apart from the administration, other overseeing members of the school district were found to have a form of involvement in the case. “The Superintendent [Jorge Aguilar] was also involved, as he approved getting HR here,” said Douglas.

At a later meeting at the end of the school year between McClatchy teachers and Superintendent Jorge Aguilar to discuss a variety of issues, Jablonski brought up the dispute. Aguilar responded that he authorized McClatchy’s administration to follow them that day.

“[Aguilar] felt that there were concerns about students walking out themselves, and were teachers the ones who were actually telling them to do it?” said Jablonski, who responded to Aguilar in that meeting saying that “it’s really also a poor sense of what your students are capable of doing.”

Aguilar did not apologize to the teachers at that meeting.

“Evidently the Superintendent gave permission for the five of us to be removed from our classrooms and go through this validation process, with not a shred of evidence against us in an attempt to retaliate, and to intimidate us, and ultimately to get rid of us,” said Douglas. “That’s their endgame: to get rid of teachers who have the guts to stand up to administrators.”

“I just don’t have a lot of faith that things are gonna change,” said Martinez. “I mean it’s not gonna stop me from doing what I do, saying things I’m gonna say, and asking questions that I’m gonna ask…but it is a stress that unfortunately makes this job not as enjoyable as it usually is.”

This case has had a similar effect on the other teachers as well.

“On a personal note, I mean, I lost sleep over this,” said Griffin. “It was really personally distressing. There were days that I didn’t want to come in to school. And I never thought I would say that, I mean, I moved like 1500 miles to take this job, specifically, and it’s always been great, and… it wasn’t until after this where I kind of went ‘eeh, maybe I made the wrong decision,’ which is awful. Because I do like working with the kids, I do like being here,” said Griffin.

To the teachers, this event represented a larger issue of mistrust between teachers and administration, both at McClatchy and at the district level.

“The trust factor, especially when you’re new into a district and you’re running a place like this, you can lose people’s trust really quickly,” said Jablonski. “The lingering trust issues, I mean, I really have problems trusting the administration of this school and at the highest levels of this district.”

“I have very little confidence that our administrative team is gonna be supportive, in any way.” said Griffin. “I don’t trust them. And that’s ultimately… that is not the way it’s supposed to be,” he added.

“There’s two administrators that we’d like gone, to be honest with you,” said Martinez. “And if that could come of this that would be awesome just because of the gross misconduct that they engaged in.”

“In a performance evaluation last year, the teaching staff’s confidence vote resulted in 80% of the teachers having no confidence in Lambert’s ability to lead,” said Douglas. “Over the years, leadership at McClatchy has deteriorated.”

However, despite these frustrations, some of the teachers are hopeful about McClatchy’s future. “I must say though, that Ms. Graham and Ms. Martin are the two best things that have happened around here in the last few years,” said Douglas.

Now that the teachers have won the complaint and had administration’s actions legally acknowledged, they are waiting to see if there will be any legal repercussions for administration or the district.

“Now the case is going to an administrative law judge, who will determine if there’s any more action that needs to be taken,” said Jablonski.