Alabama Law to Mandate Respect

Teacher Bill of Rights

• The right to be free from frivolous lawsuits and immunity where appropriate,
• The right to use discipline, including corporal punishment, in accordance with board policy,
• The right to remove “persistently disruptive students” from the classroom, including when a student is “impudent” or “defiant”,
• The right to have their professional judgment respected by administrators when in accordance with board policy,
• The right to teach in a “safe, secure, and orderly environment that is conducive to learning,”
• The right to “be treated with civility and respect,”
• The right to communicate with parents and ask them to participate in “appropriate student disciplinary decisions,”
• The right to be free from excessive and burdensome paperwork,
• The right to have a mentor assigned to them when they first start teaching, and
• The right to have time to collaborate with other teachers during the school day or week.

LINK

 

I'm not a teacher but I know a few and they don't have a lot of complaints like those indicated in the article. They complaint about parents a lot. Parents who seem not to give a damn but expect the school to solve all problems, etc. The list is interesting in a sense and I'd want to be clear about what it means to "have the right..." Rights are relatively absolute and non-negotiable so if I have the right to be free from excessive and burdensome paperwork, for example, it's not clear exactly what that means. Who decides what is excessive and what is my recourse if I feel my rights are being stepped on? More lawsuits? I'm going to sue the school because I don't want to fill out these forms? What a mess. I'd also want to point out that there are teachers unions everywhere, right? Isn't this all stuff that winds up in a collective bargaining agreement? So we can pass this law and then get rid of the teachers union? I don't think that's happening.

 

This is just one of those things that has good "feels" at first glance... but will likely be ineffective, inadequate, unrealistic, and down right scary at what it could lead to.

Yes, a lot of the "good" aspects of this would be normal contract verbiage in a collective bargaining agreement. Unfortunately, this is from the south where teachers unions, collective bargaining agreements, and labor rights are considered signs of the debil.

 

"To be free from frivolous lawsuits." How, exactly, does one determine that a lawsuit is frivolous before it's filed? As to immunity...that would be based on the teacher being an agent of the state. Sovereign immunity certainly exists but it doesn't completely cover all civil rights claims. One price we all pay for living in America is that we each can be sued for anything at any time by anyone.