Life in "Progress" City - Los Angeles edition

From the city of Los Angeles, who hasn't had a conservative in city government since the city was founded.

Some of the most stunning articles I've read in a long while were in the Los Angeles Times' 2009 investigative series, "Failure gets a pass," which documents the near impossibility of firing unionized public school teachers in the massive Los Angeles Unified School District -- even those teachers credibly accused of sexually molesting or harassing their students.

The first article in the Times series, "Firing tenured teachers can be a costly and tortuous task," documented the case of teacher Carlos Polanco, who was accused by the school district of "immoral and unprofessional conduct" for making fun, in front of his class, of a student who had just returned after a suicide attempt.

This is from the school board: "He stated to the student, 'Look you can't even kill yourself.' Mr. Polanco then engaged other students in the discussion of the suicidal student's attempted suicide, which prompted another student to engage in a detailed explanation of how to hit a main artery."

That's horrifying and a good reason to fire this cruel man, who obviously has little concern for the safety of his students and lacks common decency. The school board voted to fire him, but that's just the first part in the firing process in a district that, according to the Times, fires far fewer than one teacher per 1,000 a year.

No wonder. The union-dominated Commission on Professional Competence overruled the Polanco firing.

The Times looked at every case (where records were still available) where the board fired a teacher and that firing was contested to the commission over the past 15 years, and concluded that "[b]uilding a case for dismissal is so time-consuming, costly and draining for principals and administrators that many say they don't make the effort except in the most egregious cases."

Paying dickheads to not teach! Now that's "progressive"!

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