Approves year-long subs because teachers “don’t want to teach in Richmond”
Judge Terry Mockler dismissed all 45 Williams complaints against the West Contra Costa Unified regarding both unsafe conditions and lack of credentialed teachers at Stege Elementary, Helms Middle School and Kennedy High School . Created to settle Williams vs California, these complaints allow parents, educators and community members to identify deficiencies in buildings, instructional materials and staffing; the district is required to give a written reply and to fix the conditions. When WCCUSD did not reply to or remediate the complaints in the required time frame Public Advocates went to court to demand enforcement.
The majority of the complaints were about physical conditions at Stege Elementary— rotting drywall, no ventilation or air conditioning, windows that won’t open, broken floor tiles, sewage coming up out of toilets and more. The school was built in 1946 and has never been substantially renovated. Eighty percent of students qualify for free lunch; 39% of students are Black and 34% are Latino. (Why is it no surprise that this is the school with overflowing toilets?) The district’s Facility Inspection Tool that year gave the building a ‘good’ rating and certified that “the school is maintained in good repair with a number of non-critical deficiencies noted. These deficiencies are isolated, and/or resulting from minor wear and tear, and/or in the process of being mitigated.” For more than a year, the district ignored the complaints, not even replying (required by law within 45 days) for six months. But four days after the lawsuit was filed the district announced that Stege would be closed for renovation and that students and teachers would be moved to classrooms in a nearby middle school. The judge ruled that since the conditions are now being “ameliorated”, no further action by the district is required. They weren’t even scolded for the years of neglect. When renovations were started in the summer, both asbestos and lead paint were found. Teachers have been unable to get their teaching materials from Stege to use at the new site.
Staffing complaints at all three schools were about using substitutes to staff classrooms, sometimes for the entire school year. Stege had four classes (one each of K, a 2-3 split, 3, and 4) that had only substitutes for an entire year. Three classes at Helms did not have permanent teachers and were staffed by substitutes in math, science and English; 82% of Helms students were below grade level in math. At Kennedy, an ELD class, a reading class, a PE class and two music classes went all year without permanent teachers. A teacher at Stege said “”When some students would reach me in the third grade, I was their first credentialed teacher.”
“Filling classrooms with one or more long-term substitutes is flat out illegal under the Williams settlement legislation,” said Public Advocates attorney John Affeld. Nevertheless, Judge Mockler ruled that the district had a shortage of teachers and therefore couldn’t be required to find permanent teachers. “It’s not something that all of a sudden became an issue,” she said. “And then when you throw in public schools in the west (Contra Costa) county, the district has even more problems. The few teachers that are coming out of credential programs, most of them unfortunately want to teach in places like Lafayette and Moraga. They don’t want to teach in Richmond.” The fact that WCCUSD has the lowest salaries in the Bay Area and the appalling conditions at the three schools apparently have nothing to do with difficulties in hiring teachers.
West Contra Costa was the first district ever sued over non-compliance with the 2004 Williams settlement, which requires that districts provide textbooks, safe schools and qualified teachers. (Twenty years with no lawsuits about not having these? Something is wrong here….) The judge rejected all the complaints, putting into question whether Williams will ever be enforced. Do districts just have to say “We can’t” and they’re excused? Certainly this is what other districts will now argue when they’re taken to court.
Students at schools like Stege have “rights” but no rights that their district is required to respect (to paraphrase a famous Supreme Court decision). When districts spend more than they get from the state, county offices and CDE are quick to intervene. When students are deprived of educational basics no one intervenes, and now the court says they don’t have to.
David de Leeuw, OEA retired.
Research by Mary Flanagan, UTR retired.
Richmondside https://richmondside.org/2024/10/15/judge-rules-in-favor-wccusd-stege-lawsuit/
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