Keeping retirement weird. The viagra trial.

It must be a sign of old age. I see a news item about the Vegara Trial in California?

I read it as the Viagra Trial.

The Vegara Trial, The California law suit that challenges teacher seniority and tenure rights, is being funded by the usual corporate union haters.

Yesterday Linda Darling Hammond, the Stanford professor and noted scholar of teacher effectiveness,  took the stand to testify in favor of current California teacher assessment practices, including tenure and seniority rights.

Meanwhile here in Chicago the storm still rages about CPS sending investigators into schools who boycotted the useless ISAT test. They pulled children out of classrooms, placed them in rooms alone and interrogated them as to who put them up to opting out.

Third grade kids.

Even the Chicago Sun-Times was forced to admit that this was – as we politely say in schools – inappropriate.

There was no bomb threat at Drummond, not even a fight that risked escalating without quick action. Those emergencies would have justified CPS’ decision to interview students on a sensitive matter without bothering to notify parents.

There was nothing like that on Thursday. Nearly two weeks after a handful of teachers at the Bucktown school boycotted the ISAT and about two-thirds of the students refused to take it (with a parent’s written consent), CPS interviewed students with no warning, according to the local school council president. On Friday, CPS said investigators also interviewed staff at Saucedo Scholastic Academy, a second boycott site, and students could be next. A Saucedo teacher said a few students already were questioned.

The student interrogation idea has become an orphan.  Call CPS to ask questions about it and you get nothing.

I was interested in who was carrying out the student interrogations. The Inspector General’s office or the Law Department?

The Inspector General’s office was created by the General Assembly to investigate corruption. There’s a lot for them to do, but none of it involves third graders, unless that covers a kid stealing another kid’s lunch money. That’s wrong. But not worthy of the Inspector General’s office.

I called James G. Ciesil, CPS Deputy General Counsel – (773) 553-1643 jciesil@cps.edu – and Ray Poloko, CPS Law Department – (773) 553-1411 – to ask ask them about the interrogation of 3rd graders without parent permission.

I left voice mail messages with both.

Ray never returned my call.

Jim said he had nothing to say and that I should talk to Communications.

Did Communications mean CPS Spokeswoman Becky Carroll?

No. Because she had just quit.

Her replacement is Joel Hood, who claimed the interrogation techniques used at Drummond Montessori earlier this week were simply a case of in loco parentis.

In loco parentis doesn’t mean crazy parents. It means that children while in the protection of school teachers and administrators are kept safe.

Believe me when I say in loco parentis doesn’t give the school the right to be the parent.  Parents have the legal right to be parents and not have their children subjected to interrogation techniques from either the Inspector General’s office or the Law Department.

At least they have the right to be asked for permission.

Barbara Byrd-Bennett and her boss have banned award winning books, closed schools, challenged the teachers to strike and lost, threatened the certifications of ISAT boycotting teachers, left pension obligations unpaid and are now planning to turn-around two more African-American schools. But having lawyers pull young children out of class into rooms by themselves without parent knowledge and interrogating them about their parents opting them out of ISAT testing?

BBB must go.

And her boss needs to go too.