Should teacher tenure be abolished? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    The Asheville Citizen-Times is reporting that Republican leaders in the General Assembly are planning a move to eliminate, or significantly change the system of employment of educators in North Carolina. You could say it is a "move to eliminate tenure."

    I've written about this before but it looks like the foolishness never stops. So I'll not beat around the bush about it. Tenure, or whatever you want to call it, is necessary and essential until we reform the way school boards operate in this state.

    The argument that under the current law "you can't get rid of a bad teacher" is pure malarkey. I know. I spent fifteen years teaching principals and superintendents how to do it. I usually started the lecture by saying: "If you'll learn what I'm about to teach you, and apply it the way I'm going to tell you, you can fire any bad teacher and you never lose a case. If you do, I'll pay your legal bill." As far as I know not one student ever lost a teacher dismissal case. At least I've never paid a legal bill. So the point is, you can dismiss a teacher and make it stick IF you do it correctly. The problem comes when poor administrators and bad school boards do it incorrectly. And that explains why tenure is important.

    Tenure is designed to insure that disciplinary action taken against a teacher is done fairly. So when you hear someone (usually a school board member who has been burned) say that it is nearly impossible to fire a teacher just know that what that really means is that they don't know what they are talking about.

    What is required is really just fundamental due process. The teacher must be told what they are doing wrong, and unless it is a cardinal offense, given an opportunity to correct it and then have any subsequent action based on documented facts in a fair hearing process in which the judgment is rendered in by an impartial panel based on the evidence presented. It is not only simple due process, it is also good management.

    No better example of the abuses that some superintendents and school boards dump on teachers can be found than right here in Beaufort County under the former superintendent (Jeff Moss) and previous school boards, unfortunately with some of the culprits still with us. And one of them is even chairman at present.

    If you want the dirty details just search our archives for "Eastern Elementary." You will find several stories about how five teachers at Eastern were abused so badly by the current chairman and former chairman that they won a healthy settlement from the board. And why? Because the teachers objected to a reading program that was later proven to be bogus and a political scam. A petty principal, superintendent, school board member who was trying to do a favor for his wife and a chairman who simple did not know what he was doing all provoked a disaster for these teachers and the school system. Protection from such abuse is exactly why either tenure must be retained or the school board personnel system reformed.

    I would favor the latter. And to make it simple I would make a simple change in the law. It would be that school board members who are found to have violated an educator's rights have to personally pay the legal bills out of their own pocket. Until then, keep the tenure law as it is.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.