Several Rochester school teachers, parents and advocacy groups are protesting a lawsuit challenging New York’s teacher tenure system.
The lawsuit was filed this week in Albany Supreme Court and alleges teacher tenure in the state protects poor performing teachers by making it harder for them to get fired or to improve classroom instruction.
Rosemary Rivera is a Rochester City School District parent and grandparent. She’s also the Organizing Director of the advocacy group Citizen Action of New York. She says the lawsuit detracts from real solutions that could better ensure public school kids are getting a well-rounded education.
"If you find that a teacher is not doing [their] job well and really can't handle a classroom and is actually hurting rather than helping the student, there is a process of getting that teacher out,” Rivera says. “It's just a process that needs to be gone through and there are people, particularly administrators that really need to pay attention to what that process is in order to do that,” says Rivera.
Several parents of public school kids from Rochester and New York City are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed by the advocacy group Partnership for Educational Justice.