Sunnyvale school asks all teachers to reapply to keep job
SUNNYVALE, Calif. (KGO) -- One of the South Bay's high-performing schools is being rocked by internal strife that no one is willing to talk about publicly. The teachers at West Valley Elementary have been told they need to re-apply and pass an interview to keep their jobs.
Sunnyvale school asks all teachers to reapply to keep job
The meeting got underway early Monday evening, the Cupertino Union School District superintendent says the dissent and morale issues are restricted to just West Valley Elementary out of all 25 schools in the district. If everything goes as planned, the superintendent expects everyone in place and working in unison by fall.
Teachers at West Valley Elementary, many of them who have been there for 10 years or longer, may find themselves at other schools in the fall as the Cupertino Union District tries to root out dissent and low morale.
"We felt that people were not being dealt with fairly or given a fair shake, and we all wore white shirts one day as a result of feeling that this was one way for us to just say we didn't agree with this kind of a decision," Kathy White, a West Valley kindergarten teacher, said.
All 25 teachers were handed letters, telling them to re-apply for their jobs at West Valley. If they aren't invited back, they'll be assigned to fill vacancies at other schools. Some call it radical and others say it is unprecedented.
"In this case, there were a lot of complex issues surrounding this and us feeling that we really needed to have a different kind of commitment in order to get through this," Cupertino Union District Superintendent
Wendy Gudalewicz said.
Nobody is saying what the conflict is because it's a personnel issue. The criteria for returning will be a commitment to re-imagining and innovation. The district tried mediation, but it failed.
Students say they're confused. West Valley fourth grader Collin Kinghorn told ABC7 News, "The teachers that they knew for the entire time that they've been there probably might not be there."
"This has basically tainted everybody at that school who works there with a brush of, 'Oh... so you're of them?' So it's going to take a lot of work to gain that trust back," Katie Burnette, a 17-year veteran teacher, said.
The school district will try to explain its actions to parents at a public meeting tonight.
