Challenging our public school district’s obedience of county ‘health’ ‘orders’: Teachers’ union President meets with district on my behalf and escalates to CTA after district makes more unsubstantiated accusations of my unprofessionalism (19 of ?)

Perhaps the most helpful communication is a summary of events to now, an update, and preview of coming events (articles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19).

Summary to date: The California “lockdown” to “flatten the curve and keep hospitals running” has lasted since March 3, 2020, despite statutory limit for emergency powers due to “beyond control” hospitals lasting only 60 days (§ 8627.5 California Emergency Services Act). Thankfully, our local hospitals have been in full control of patient numbers at all times.

As a NorCal public school teacher, I inquired to our district’s leadership and teachers’ union how their negotiated policy to “obey” county “health” “orders” is legal given the above reasonable limits to dictatorial authority.

Three emails were met with silence, then a fourth promising legal action was met with silence. I filed three legal complaints: federal, state, and a grievance for district violation of worker safety to support apparent dictatorial and illegal policy under direct threat of $1,000 fines and one year imprisonment.

Our union responded with support to ask the district, and to communicate indirectly that they wouldn’t pursue the grievance to arbitration because the working conditions were negotiated in good faith. The grievance process finished with district and union agreement the complaint didn’t qualify as a grievance.

I appealed the district’s answer to our community school board for what the district defined as a “written complaint.” From October 2 to December 18 2020 the district was silent, despite policy promising a response within 30 days of the board’s receipt. After this December 13 reminder they were out of compliance for a response, the superintendent answered that the school board upheld the district response without comment.

I also received a “non-response” after nearly 5 months from my complaint to the US Department of Justice regarding unlimited government. My complaint to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing complaint was fielded with a phone call response in December, with their promise to follow-up, and silence since then.

In March 2021, our NorCal public school superintendent sent all staff an email citing county deaths from COVID nearing 1,300 with 80,000 “cases.” He also asked for our professional responses to an upcoming survey. I responded with three basic questions: how many of our staff and students have died of (not with) Covid, what is the data for overall county deaths given controversy over causes of deaths, and how many staff and students have been injured by vaccines. He ignored my questions twice, which I then shared with our school’s ~100 teachers with zero support and Social Science Department cognitive dissonance when directly asked.

I followed up with 14 CA government agencies, with all ignoring the 60-day limit of “emergency” authority I provided them from § 8627.5 of the California Emergency Services Act (ESA) except finally in April with CA Senator Glazer’s office stating the 60-day limit applied only to “non-safety” related orders. I hadn’t considered an American legislature would surrender forever dictatorial powers to a governor or elected officials without a time limit, as public recourse would be limited to recall (as is happening with Governor Newsom) or electing other legislators. In follow-up to the more complicated question requiring “beyond control” hospitals, Senator Glazer’s office refused to answer.

School district and CA government “answers” are therefore intentional lies of omission to claim they answered a question about ESA to “justify” dictatorial government while leaving out any consideration of crystal-clear letter and intent to prevent dictatorial government past 60 days unless hospitals are “beyond control.” The 14 CA government agencies claim dictatorial power to close businesses, stop social gatherings, force masking, force humans to forever remain no closer than six feet from each other, and with forever power until legislators or governor say otherwise, and while ignoring the requirement for “emergency powers” by sharing transparent and independently-verifiable hospital data.

I communicated these findings to district leadership, school board members, teachers’ union leadership, our Professional Learning Community (PLC) members and school teachers. On April 26th, the district’s Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources immediately responded with threats of disciplinary action for unspecified violations of district policies, as did my school principal. The district has yet to respond to my questions regarding their undocumented complaints as the “foundation” to their threats.

I appealed to our teachers’ union for relief. After 4 emails and 15 days of silence from our union President and VP, I sent this email to 14 of the Board of Directors of our teachers’ union. Our President and VP responded immediately that our next step was “to gain clarification regarding matters within our scope and discuss next steps, if any.” We Zoom-met, and our union President met with district Assistant Superintendent of HR on May 25.

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Update 1: HR Assistant Superintendent’s response from meeting with teachers’ union President
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Thu, May 27, 8:01 AM

Mr. Herman,

I apologize for a delayed response to your email. My original email was directing you to cease the communication with political views in professional communication with colleagues to avoid violation of AR 4040 (attached), which states:

3. Employees shall not access, post, submit, publish, or display harmful or inappropriate matter that is threatening, obscene, disruptive, or sexually explicit, or that could be construed as harassment or disparagement of others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, or political beliefs.

Furthermore, email communication shall be appropriately used at all times for work-related purposes. The District does not perceive your communications to be work related with other staff members, and contains your communications shared with governmental officials.

Your personal opinion regarding the health order, and communication with HR and the Superintendent express your views. However, forwarding this communication to other staff and faculty was not perceived as professional and appropriate use, thus the direction to cease forwarding messages to your Instructional Leadership Team was given to you.

Kind regards,

(name omitted)
Assistant Superintendent, Human Resources

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Update 2: Teachers’ union President emails me her response of the meeting, offer to escalate to CTA (California Teachers Association)

Jun 1, 2021, 5:48 PM (2 days ago)

Hello Carl

After reading the District’s “directive”, my experience with such letters from the district is that they are within their rights to direct you not to use district emails for purposes other than those directly and explicitly related to your teaching. I understand that your argument that the issues brought forward are related to your work. That said, I can share the communication with our CTA representative to see if he sees it differently or if I missed anything. Please let me know if you would like me to take it forward to CTA staff person.

Take care

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Update 3: My response to our teachers’ union President, VP

Jun 2, 2021, 5:59 AM

Thank you, (name omitted), for your consideration. Yes, please forward to CTA; I’d very much like their perspective on the following points.

(name omitted), you agreed to ask HR Assistant Superintendent (name omitted) what happens if employees refuse to wear a mask given HUSD’s failure to document how “whatever” face coverings meet or exceed OSHA safety standards. What was HUSD’s reply? Again, HUSD has ignored my multiple requests for documentation of this claim that appears to be ridiculous, a lie, and must be challenged.

These are the contract and/or legal violations I see:
HUSD has made all these accusations against my professional behaviors with zero citation of anything I wrote, despite my request. A workers’ union is at least empowered to join my demand that an employer document what they allege. So far, the employer wants to accuse without evidence, and declare dictatorial power to censor. This seems to be the very definition of per se defamation.
HUSD violates ARTICLE 3 for “regulations and practices” that are not reasonably “in conformance with law” because what everyone so far agrees is the applicable law of the Emergency Services Act (ESA) requires “beyond control” hospitals that HUSD (and all 14 CA government agencies) REFUSES to address. HUSD and those agencies claim “just following orders” without discussion of limited government applied to ESA is sufficient justification for dictatorial policies under threat of firing employees, $1,000 fines, and a year imprisonment. This is tragic-comic failure to perform what all CA middle school students are expected (page 81 of Common Core Standards): “Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.” HUSD’s obedience and empowerment to CA government to “just follow orders” is a prima facie-illegal “defense” that we teach all CA high school students was universally rejected to prosecute WW2 War Crimes and Vietnam War Crimes. “Just follow orders” is clearly NOT reasonable to be in “conformance with law” when the law’s citation requires “beyond control” hospitals. As we all recall from March 2020, we were told these emergency orders are necessary to “flatten the curve” to keep hospitals operational. CA and HUSD lie in omission to refuse to report hospital data, and lie in commission that problematic “cases” are the same as “beyond control” hospitals. Again, ~20 health professionals have all reported to me that all local hospitals are well within planned control. Nobody should accept HUSD’s position as reasonable to “conform to law.”
HUSD violates ARTICLE 7A because HUSD threatens discipline without “just cause” because, again, HUSD refuses to cite anything I wrote to connect to their claims.
HUSD violates ARTICLE 9B4 because HUSD refuses to document their Level II Grievance claim that “whatever” face coverings meets or exceeds Cal-OSHA workplace safety standards despite my repeated requests.
HUSD violates ARTICLE 25 for academic freedom because they refuse to cite anything I wrote in violation, even though the PLC they now censor has been in good standing for years exploring similar topics of broad educational issues and policies with direct effects on our school and district’s teaching and learning. This topic of “ordering” students, staff, families, and everyone else to obey “health orders” under threats of permanent removal, fines, and being locked in a cage for a year when HUSD concurrently refuses to address ESA limits is among the most important topics to address, and especially because HUSD’s acceptance and enforcement of “just follow orders” is directly connected to the worst decline in probable district history of student performance in GPA and doubled student failure rates. Moreover, ARTICLE 25 supports our PLC’s work that academic freedom “must be exercised within the law and the basic ethical responsibilities of the teaching profession. Those responsibilities include: 1. An understanding of our democratic tradition and its method; 2. A concern for the welfare, growth, maturity and development of our students; 3. The method of scholarship; 4. Application of good taste and judgment in selecting and employing materials and methods of instruction.” Our PLC exercises the very first “democratic tradition” to challenge with citation apparent government violation of clear and explicit limits to authority.
HUSD ignores my request to inform me how to report a violation of our mutual Oath to the US and CA Constitutions. This is on its face both criminal and evil. This is also likely in violation of ARTICLE 3, as HUSD is responsible to administer this Oath as a legal requirement for hire. It’s not reasonable to require an Oath while refusing remedy for violations. CTA supports our Oath, right?

Please ask CTA for their responses to the above points. I can talk by phone or Zoom if that’s helpful.

If CTA is positioned as you say, I’d like an explanation because ARTICLE 25F is in clear support of our PLC’s work for “school and district goals” to address broad policies connected to the worst decline of academic performance in likely district history. And again, HUSD is silent when asked how our work is not in support of school and district goals to decrease student failure rates when their chosen policies have doubled student fails.

Again, I’m a National Board Certified Teacher and Coach who has taught AP US Government, and with 18 years’ experience with both political parties’ leaderships that led to two UN Summits for heads of state. I’ve briefed Members of Congress and other leaders on ~300 occasions on policies to end domestic and global poverty. I’m pointing to ESA as definitive law, citing its required limits of conditions that are “beyond control” of local hospitals. I spent 6 weeks in communication with 14 CA government agencies with discovery that all 14 refused to explain how this limit is being honored, and all claiming “just follow orders” is sufficient grounds for dictatorial authority over schools under threats to fire and permanently remove teachers and students who refuse to obey, fine $1,000 per violation, and by the points of guns to remove violators from family and work to be jailed for a year.

I’ve discovered HUSD and those agencies all responding illegally, unprofessionally, and in opposition of what we teach all CA students to stand for in limited government, and clear laws that can be reasonably explained to all. HUSD and CA should be able to explain their “health” “orders” as simply and clearly as a classroom teacher explains the rule to turn work in on time, a PE teacher explains what is and is not “out of bounds” in basketball, and law enforcement explains how to perform a legal “stop” at a stop sign.

We all know this is true for ethical and moral rules.

I stand for truth and justice, (name omitted), with all my passion and resources. I invite CTA and HEA to stand with me.

If CTA and HEA are unwilling to support me on this, I will file Grievances on my own for the above apparent contractual violations. If so, I would appreciate any advice

Thank you,
Carl

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Up next! How will the California Teachers Association respond? Will they respond consistent with their history to refuse meeting with me for over 12 years to fully fund education? CTA claims they exist with a goal to fully fund education, yet when I’ve directly asked to meet with them to fulfill that goal with published research, CTA claimed they didn’t have anyone for me to talk to. Yes, they really said that, despite ongoing funding emergencies for public education.

After this round of engagement with district and union, I will have exhausted those avenues for remedies, and have all the data reasonably possible to share with attorneys for what they see possible as remedies.

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