Watching Gilbert Public Schools for so long, we have seen some nasty little tricks the administration plays on the Governing Board, which the public usually misses. We saw such a trick played at the board meeting on April 22, 2014.
Now that the manufactured frenzy about “an exodus” from GPS of “the best and brightest” employees at all levels has died down, the Good Old Boys needed some new red meat for the masses. GOBs gotta keep the bread and circuses going! Sure enough, right on cue, the squawky malcontents, led by previous board members who failed spectacularly, became a Greek chorus lamenting about how awful it is that surrounding school districts have paid more than GPS for the past five years or more. They mistakenly believe it’s all the fault of the recently-elected board members rather than the folks who actually WERE on the board all those many years ago when salaries were frozen.
All this lamenting, though, has brought to the fore that salaries in Gilbert Public Schools are lower than in adjacent school districts. The folks who got themselves unelected want Sheeple to believe that’s all the fault of the conservative board members who now form a majority of the GPS Governing Board. Never mind that during the five years that the salary grid has been frozen, GPS had not one, but TWO overrides in place, and the GOBs still refused to pay employees a living wage because doing so might have impacted their ability to party on the taxpayers’ dime, but we digress.
Today’s topic is the shenanigan that Assistant Superintendent Jeff Filloon and his minions pulled on the Governing Board by putting a new RIF policy on the agenda. Since only administrators have contracts so far this year, many GPS employees are VERY apprehensive about the state of their employment for next year. That was a separate little shenanigan Jeff Filloon pulled: he got the board to approve teacher contracts WITHOUT a salary schedule, which makes for shaky legal grounds in the very important legal implications of “contracts” that cannot be complete without consideration paid to the person accepting the terms and conditions of the one-sided contracts that school districts offer to their employees. [Shoot, we digressed again!]
The Reduction in Force policy inflamed fears that were already stoked by the uncertainty of the GPS budget while the Arizona Legislature fooled around with the state budget. Somehow, Good Old Jeff Filloon got Interim Superintendent Rice to place the RIF policy on the agenda. The Superintendent is responsible for calling to the Board’s attention policies that are out of date or in need of revision, and for some reason, it was imperative RIGHT NOW for the Governing Board to determine how to fire the loyal GPS employees who stayed with the district through the rough times of the past five years or more.
The new RIF policy creates a cobbled-together, ill-informed procedure by which the GOBs will determine which employees are pink-slipped and which GPS employees are called back for employment. It puts the cart before the horse, stating the superintendent will recommend positions to be eliminated BEFORE the procedure acknowledges that the board will need to determine the necessity of a RIF. (Again, a feature, not a bug.) Then the deficient proposals crafted by a group of amateurs rather than genuine Human Resource professionals set out how the RIF will be done.
It’s obvious that the overall objective is to let the remaining GOBs do what they want to do without conforming to things like state and federal laws or essential employment law precedents. You know, the kind of guidelines that could inoculate GPS against being sued for failing to follow the law. When questioned about some of the more obvious holes within the policy, which was sprung on the board for a ‘first read’ while their plates were more than full with all the budget minutiae, Good Old Jeff said that what the policy says is not what will happen.
GPS absolutely will not use seniority as a basis for firing teachers in the RIF. “Employment retention priority for professional staff shall not be based upon tenure or seniority.” Then they say that firing support staff will be guided by “Consecutive years of service to the District.” With three teeny little amorphous guidelines for how to RIF an administrator, it’s crystal clear that GOBs won’t RIF those folks.
According to the new policy, GOBs plan to reduce entire programs, not positions. To all you loyal librarians, nurses, and specials teachers: there you have it! But then, by some sleight of hand, a “reduced program” might find itself in need of employees, but only employees from OTHER reduced programs will be considered, and only until about three weeks into the new school year. On August 31st, HR dumps the whole RIF list. Of course, no one will explain why it was so important to dump the list so quickly.
It gets worse (it always does): the biggest factor in reinstatement is job performance as measured by “the employee’s highest teaching performance rubric from either the previous or current school year.” In other words, the superintendency can determine there will be a RIF and let their favorite admins in on the secret (like they always do before letting board members know what’s up) so that rogue administrators can purposely craft teacher evaluations to achieve whatever it is the superintendency intends.
We have to credit board member Jill Humpherys, who noticed this hole that’s big enough to drive a Mack truck through. She asked if there would be provisions so administrators could not abuse the system and target selected employees for firing. Good Old Jeff Filloon said the board should trust that GPS HR will do the right thing for those loyal employees. Seeing as how HR is the headquarters of the Loose Zipper Brigade, trusting them with sanctioned firings without any cause or oversight would simply repopulate the GOB empire within the GPS superintendency once again. In other words, Good Old Jeff assured everyone that GPS would NEVER do such a dastardly deed, even though his intent was so obvious that even Jill caught it.
The bottom line is that GPS Policy GCQA absolutely must be approved by the board immediately, because it’s Jeff Filloon’s last hurrah. It’s his big fat F-U to the district and the folks who cost him his lifetime appointment as one of the top GOBs.
Okay, birdies, let’s crowd-source the problems in the new GPS RIF policy, since the incompetent amateurs in GPS Human Resources have let the board down once again.