August, 2005

Rabbi Nachum Shifren

Venice, Ca

To the Editor of the
Los Angeles Times:

I have been a
language teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District since 1991. Today I will sign a final
agreement after an exhaustive grievance process, in which I will never be allowed to teach in the District
again. For its part, the District will remove my negative teacher performance
evaluation.

During my last two
years at Dorsey High, I’ve had my classroom burnt to the ground, had a death threat, physical
assaults, and constant accusations of racism. Community “activists” in our area have written
woeful letters to the Superintendent, imploring her to remove me from my position as a Spanish teacher.
Their accusation: Students are failing my class because they’re forced to learn Greek and Hebrew
instead of Spanish.

I’ve endured
countless demeaning “parent conferences” where lack of student comportment and
academic achievement was inevitably spun into my “lack of classroom management and
INSENSITIVITY TO THE NEEDS OF A DIVERSE STUDENT
POPULATION.”

Students who did
little or no homework, refusing to turn in term papers and not having passed a single exam, were able to
manipulate conferences with allegations of racism or personal
animosity.

When students
were sent from my room to the Dean’s office for outrageous behavior, such as stabbing another
student with a pencil, obnoxious epithets or racial slurs, and open defiance directed against the teacher,
they would never arrive; instead, they were picked up by security (found walking around the campus) while
our ever-resourceful administration documented a “clear lack of student-teacher rapport and
managerial skills.”

The picture
I’ve painted becomes clearer when one considers that the student who threatened to kill me was
allowed to run for student body office! If I had any doubts about my stature on our campus, they were
dispelled by such overt attitudes such as this.

Despite numerous excellent references and observations on the part of counselors,
mentor teachers, and coaches about my dedication to upholding high academic standards and maintaining a
high level of student responsibility and values, I spent two years in a hostile environment without respite
from community or administration. Only two individuals came to my assistance during this nightmare:
Rev. Jesse Lee
Peterson, community activist and director
of BOND
International, and Congressman Dana
Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach. Congressman
Rohrabacher was sufficiently convinced of egregious nature of campus relations that he contacted
Superintendent Roy Romer for clarification. He was stonewalled again and again, with each inquiry going
unanswered (the Superintendent was either on vacation or too busy to get back to the Congressman- this
over a period of several months and many messages left by staff). Rev. Peterson was present at one of my
grievance hearings and was moved to make the comment that I could never get a fair hearing from my
administrator since in his words, “She is a blatant
racist.”

Yet there is a deep
sadness in me, a feeling of disconnectedness from the many students with whom I was fortunate enough to
befriend, impacting their lives with a sense of a world built on achievement, maximum effort, and tireless
academic rigor.

As I told the District
Superintendent during my last stage of the grievance process, I forgive the death threats, the physical
assaults, the demeaning and racial slurs hurled at me by my charges. If they didn’t have the support
of “activists” and malevolent do-gooders intent on re-addressing perceived wrongs and
power trips by “outsiders” toward their community, this despicable behavior and attitude
never would have occurred. In several cases, stacks of letters of complaints were waved at me by my
principal ( I was never allowed to see the letters or respond to them) as proof that I was not getting along
with my students. She offered this as the justification for burning down my
classroom.

It will be hard for me
to reconcile with an administration bent on political correctness that serves to ramrod a concerned and
caring teacher right out of the District.

My union rep told
me frankly that I was “the wrong man in the wrong community.” This is what hurts me most of
all. I gave it my best, taking students with severe emotional and family problems, tempering them with a
sense of achievement for a job well done: “You missed the deadline for the term paper? It’s
OK, your grade won’t be as high as it should, but just get it in to me as soon as you can-with spelling
and grammar checked….”

Around campus, the
many students who didn’t manage to pass my class would greet me each morning, ask how things
are going-each of them knowing that ultimately, I was on their side. I will miss my students, and I know that
they won’t forget me.

Rabbi Nachum
Shifren