By KHALIL J. SPENCER
Los Alamos

Dear LA Schools leadership and Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard regarding Thursday’s front page story in the Los Alamos Daily Post (here).

It has to be demoralizing enough to be a teacher working under PED, but today’s story about teachers being penalized retroactively for a rule that never existed (and which should never have been implemented anyway) has to take the cake.

I was on the Board of Directors of the faculty union at the U of Hawaii back when I was a geology professor and such a move by a state agency would have resulted in an immediate
call to our law firm. We more than once demonstrated the value of collective bargaining and a contract to prevent arbitrary and capricious moving of the goalposts. I hope our teachers can likewise push back.

I hope the local school board can figure out a way to protect our excellent LA Schools faculty from these emotional and professional assaults, and that Rep. Garcia Richard can work at the legislative level to put some distance between us and the nonsense of the PED.

Thanks … as steam is still coming out of my ears.