LAUSD’s Latest Overpayment Scam—with UTLA’s Help

due to LAUSD's changing teachers' salary payments- without proper government approval- from an annual tenthly to a twelfthly payment under the supposed justification that teachers are not capable of budgeting themselves over what had been an unpaid summer, when they were not working, one must wonder if LAUSD's purpose all along has not been to go after hundreds of teachers for alleged overpayment after the District fired them on completely fabricated charges. 

It doesn't take a genius to see that whether it was alleged overpayment or firing of teachers before they vested in lifetime health benefits or higher retirement benefits, that the one thing in common that everything LAUSD has done against its teachers and other employees is clearly related to and motivated by LAUSD trying to lessen its contractually obliged financial burdens towards these employees in the hope of avoiding bankruptcy, which is looking more and more likely.

And are state courts really a "neutral forum" to decide these cases, when it is the State of California which will be left holding the bankruptcy bag for LAUSD, if they don't decide these overpayment cases- regardless the facts- in favor of LAUSD?

Did LAUSD ever get approval from any government tax authority to make this change? No. Did LAUSD amend allegedly overpaid teachers W-2 forms. No. Did LAUSD make their claims of overpayment within the statute of limitations? No. Was this the first time LAUSD alleged that teachers were overpaid? No. And if LAUSD fires a teacher, precluding them from finishing their new unapproved fiscal year contract, can LAUSD then claim that these hundreds of teachers were overpaid, when it was LAUSD that made it impossible for these teachers to finish their contracts.

I feel like I'm living in at least two mutually exclusive realities. One posited by the union- United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) leadership that sees itself gallantly fighting in supposedly adversarial negotiations with the LAUSD to make the best and fairest contract with LAUSD on behalf of its members and the other stark opposing reality that I and thousands of mostly top of the salary scale senior teachers have been dealing with, where we find ourselves targeted, hit with false charges, and then fired. And to add insult to injury, then to be hit with clearly false claims of having been overpaid, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Meanwhile, our union UTLA not only has done nothing, but rather has taken the position that once LAUSD fires you, you are no longer a member of the union, even though you were an active dues-paying member of UTLA during the time in question, when the false charges against you were made by LAUSD.

The fact that LAUSD saves approximately $55,000 in saved salary and benefits, when it replaces a high seniority teacher with a fresh-out-of-college 20-something working on an emergency credential is never raise by UTLA in defense of these targeted teachers, even though they have the power under the LAUSD-UTLA Collective Bargaining Agreement to have brought such a single action on behalf of these thousands of targeted teachers. But UTLA avoids addressing this issue like the plague. 

But now in new contract negotiations with LAUSD , UTLA Declares Impasse in Talks with LAUSD," and says, "We cannot, in good conscience, allow it to happen without fighting back." But, as described above, UTLA has done nothing up until now to stop LAUSD's longstanding war on senior more expensive teachers "without fighting back," but this is not mentioned in UTLA's "declaring contract negotiations are at a deadlock" and seeking a state-appointed mediator.

So why doesn't any media- commercial or public- report any of this? Because the same corporate interests that control the media and seek to privatize public education for profit and the further dumbing of America are the ones who have packed the LAUSD Board and chosen its new superintendent Austin Beutner to further their goal of privatizing public education for profit and the further dumbing of America.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].)

-cw