Orleans Parish Judge rules teacher firings after Katrina wrongful

This story is not copyrighted and may be shared. Just include a link.

http://www.laborradio.org/Channels/Story.aspx?ID=1733650

7/12/2012

This story was made possible in part by a grant from the Berger-Marks Foundation.

LEDE:

Just two weeks after broken levees flooded New Orleans, the city's public school teachers and staff were put on a leave of absence without pay only to be fired months later. On June 20th, an Orleans Parish Civil District Court judge ruled that this termination was wrongful. Zoe Sullivan has more from New Orleans.

MAIN:

Approximately 7,500 teachers and school staff lost their incomes just weeks after the city was inundated with floodwaters in August 2005. The loss of income prevented many from rebuilding and returning home. In late March, 2006, these employees were terminated. Seven former Orleans Parish School Board workers brought in attorney Willie Zanders to file a wrongful termination case. On June 20th, a New Orleans court awarded roughly $1 million in damages to the seven and opened the door for claims by the thousands of others who lost their jobs at the same time.

Zanders explained one reason the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

5:30 all of the employees were put on a status called “disaster leave and without pay.” So disaster leave without pay. There's no such policy in board policy, according to the court. There's no such status in state law.

Two of the plaintiffs told Workers Independent News that they had filed the case in the hopes of obtaining “justice.”

Cynthia Jordan, a single parent, had taught in the school system for 16 years when she lost her job. She says that the terminations had repercussions beyond education.

the school board hired and employed, shall I say,

8:00 your middle-class citizens. When you start looking at your middle class citizens, you're looking now at your chronic voters. When you look at your chronic voters, you're looking at the political arena. When this school system was annihilated, we also took away the African-American political arena for the city of New Orleans.

According to the U.S. Census, New Orleans has lost roughly one-third of the population it had prior to Katrina. The schools have also become a national laboratory for education reform. Roughly 80% of public school children in New Orleans now attend charter schools, which are subject to less oversight by the local school district.

Zanders told WIN that the case should resonate beyond Louisiana.

WZ: We think that there are major implications in, uh, nationally because this is, this battle, the firing of employees in Louisiana was the first of its kind nationwide where

9:00 an entire labor force was terminated en masse,

While no announcements have been made yet, it is expected that the defendants, the Board of Education and the State Department of Education, will appeal the decision.

For Workers Independent News, I'm Zoe Sullivan in New Orleans