Attention California Teachers and Residents:

One of Groperzenegger's initiatives for the November Special Election is getting strong public support according to the latest Field Poll:

The Field Poll #2159 Wednesday, June 22, 2005 Page 2 Public School Teachers Tenure Another controversial initiative backed by the Governor is called the "Public School Teachers; Waiting Period for Permanent Status" initiative. This measure would increase the time required before a teacher can become a permanent employee and authorizes school boards to dismiss teaching employees who have received two consecutive unsatisfactory performance evaluations. Fifty-nine percent of registered voters and 64% of likely voters report having seen or heard something about this initiative. When all voters regardless of any prior awareness are read a summary of the measure, supporters outnumber opponents by a 59% to 35% margin among all registered voters and by a 61% to 32% margin among likely voters.

The California Teachers Association explains why the proposed law won't work:

This initiative is simply a smokescreen to divert attention from the fact that the governor broke his promise to students and schools about fully funding education and that he wants to gut Proposition 98, the law approved by California voters to guarantee minimum funding to our schools. His budget proposals cut school funding by $25,000 per classroom. This initiative is unnecessary. Existing law already gives every local school district an evaluation process to use to fire teachers for unsatisfactory performance, unprofessional conduct, dishonesty, criminal acts or other inappropriate conduct. Therefore, this initiative is unnecessary. At a time when an estimated 100,000 new teachers will be needed in the next 10 years in California, this initiative will make it harder to recruit young people into the teaching profession. It will also make it harder to attract and keep quality teachers at our most challenging schools.

The CTA is a powerful state political action group, but they are already expending much time, effort and resources trying to stop Groperzenegger's Administration from breaking labor unions and trying to get back the $2B that he stole from state school districts. The teachers of California need your support and especially need you to vote "no" on this bad measure in November.