I think Obama has slowly been playing chess 8 steps ahead. Checkmate is very close.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

115. Good point. I always correct people who say "teacher's can't get fired," because, yes, they can.

Neither tenure nor the union guarantee that one won't be fired, but they can help protect teachers from indiscriminate firings.

As for the janitor I referred to: Yes, it was a public school In addition to much circumstantial evidence in a number in incidents, the principal saw the janitor stealing money from a teacher's desk. It never went to court. He was suspended for a few weeks and then returned to work in the same school.

It was not just the stealing--he harassed many of the young female teachers with unrelenting, unwanted "attention." Nothing clearly actionable, but it was distracting and very annoying, to say the least.

He also behaved in a way that made many of us question the wisdom of having him work around the children. One thing, for example, he used to get down on the ground and bark and chase the other janitors, like he was a dog. Very, very odd.

As we all understood it, his union (a far stronger one than our teachers' union, who was constantly allowing the admin to get away with things our contract prohibited) protected him from more appropriate consequences of his behavior. It was said that the district was intimidated by the union, which supposedly kept them from pressing charges on the theft and from any action regarding the other behaviors. If any of the parents had been insistent that something be done, I expect that would have made a difference in the district's willingness to go press the matter.

Those of use who were the focus of his "affection didn't know how to handle it. No one wanted him fired over that sort of thing--(which we at that time did think was possible, even if we later came to question that)--nor did we want to deal with his pouting and needling, which was the result when we expressed, even in the most tactful way, that his behavior was inappropriate.

This guy was way more trouble than he was worth, in so many ways, that it made sense that his powerful union has something to do with the seeming inability to reign him in. Many factors involved, however, obviously.