Union won't help Gompers

Gompers not alone

In my experience, even if Gompers Prep teachers unionize (“Two years of turmoil at Gompers Prep,” August 13), their voices may be ignored. Many school boards do not raise questions about school administrators and charter school executives, union or no union.

No one supervises the supervisors, who wield the enormous power of the subjective performance evaluation.

In the example you gave, a supervisor at Gompers walks into a classroom where students are presumably feeling nurtured and safe and are engaged in learning. The supervisor purposely ignores the teacher’s success. He or she interrupts to point out that the teacher is not wearing his badge. This will get written up as the teacher “not being concerned for student safety.” What kind of board wants to employ a teacher who is not concerned with student safety? Unions can delay the process, but ultimately cannot protect such a “bad teacher."

The teacher who forgot his badge—who just happens to be someone who has irritated admin—will experience more write-ups. His supervisors’ claims may be absurd, unfair, and/or easily refuted with data. It doesn’t matter. The teacher can write responses; the union can pay for legal representation. In the end, it won’t help. I know of one administrator who even bragged on her website that she was a fiction writer in her spare time and had completed two (unpublished) novels. Yet the school board accepted without discussion the evaluations she wrote. Based on her “findings,” it went ahead and fired a gifted teacher, someone close to me, causing pain and distress for a wide circle of people, including the students. I have also seen this happen at a non-union charter school with an (apparently useless but well-financed) human resources department.

• Susanna Heckman
• Vista

Stay union

Congrats on eye-opening article on continuing anti-union movement festering in our K thru 12 public schools (i.e. Gompers) by staff writer Joe Deegan.

Retaliation, back-stabbing, and harassment for failure to wear badge...all symptoms of “the right to work” virus infecting school classrooms.

Stay strong! Stay union!

• Robert C. (Bob) Thomas
• Mission Valley

An uglier story

There’s an even uglier story in the details behind the Coastal Commission’s thoughtless decision last month to let the La Costa 48 project move forward ("La Costa 48 survives appeal," July 28)

At the hearing, the developer dumped traffic liabilities on the city, claimed the toxic waste problem couldn’t be solved without using hundreds of trucks for removal, continued to site the wastes under only the low income homes, hinted at the Mayor’s endorsement when her ex parte meeting was disclosed, and insulted the widely respected Batiquitos Lagoon Foundation.

Opponents pointed out that Commission staff and the developer planned to use nothing more than some paint to “create” a required traffic lane where there is none, on a road where there are no shoulders and minimum easements. The developer also claimed City staff had unreported but planned traffic improvements on its own, so he was presumably off the hook for anything but the cost of a few cans of marker spray paint.

The impacts of unsafe and undue traffic impacts, compounded by public vehicle or pedestrian access to site trails, have also been ignored – especially for a stretch of road that has no sidewalks and missing bike lanes. Personal injury lawyers will have a field day when the inevitable traffic or pedestrian accidents occur, and it is learned that the city and the state decided to ignore project hazards. Hopefully the developer can be added when they name defendants in pursuit of six- and seven -figure settlements.

The Commission reported an ex parte meeting with Mayor Blakespear, presumably to discuss the City’s approval despite the Commission’s concern about waste and toxins (including DDT), so the developer stressed how hard he had worked - to help City staff help him.

The developer then boasted that he outclassed the Batiquitos Lagoon Foundation (BLF), saying they had refused to meet despite a call with the group just days before. He described the group as unsophisticated and lacking expertise — a small group of disgruntled activists. For decades, the non-profit has managed the Batiquitos Lagoon with quiet diligence, directing tens of millions of dollars in improvements to restore the lagoon from a wasteland dotted by shopping carts to the healthy tidal lagoon it is today. Commission members did not allow Foundation representatives to rebut his statements.

The Sierra Club of San Diego delivered a stern warning about the importance of protecting the lagoon, but technical issues prevented it from being read.

There was time, however, for the developer to regale the Commission as they spoke fondly together of his efforts to keep Grandma Weston happy in her little house on the prairie, and to protect her from any hardships as the $70 million dollar project is built.

I can still smell the apple pie on the window sill.

• Steve Locko
• Leucadia