On Thursday, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a bill that would streamline the firing process for California teachers. The bill, presented by a fully Democrat state assembly and senate, came in the wake of several teacher scandals including one at Miramonte Elementary, in which a teacher fed students spoonfuls of his own semen, and yet could not be immediately fired. The bill would have added murder and attempted murder to charges that would allow an indefinite leave of absence, and allowed districts to use evidence of sexual harassment older than four years.
Even the California Teachers Association supported the bill. But that wasn’t good enough for Brown, who said that the bill could “make the process too rigid and could create new problems.” More specifically, the bill would have allowed districts to fire teachers during the summer, and limited case time after dismissal charges. “I share the authors’ desire to streamline the teacher discipline process,” Brown wrote in rejecting the measure, “but this bill is an imperfect solution.”
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).