By Charles Loiacono     

The Cost of Buying Time

      The embroilment that has occupied a good deal of time and expense these last few years has been the failed ELI/LINCC program.

            The program designations have been changed from ESL to ELI to LINCC in an effort to pretend that the goal of teaching English as a second language changes if the pedagogical approach changes, therefore warranting a different designation. Of course, the subject matter and the goal have never changed. The legal maneuvers, however, have changed.

            After realizing that he could not win the ELI case, the administration’s attorney announced that the administration was “pulling the plug” on ELI. He had had a brain storm. The administration was going to create a new program. They would call it LINCC. It would be a program to teach English as a second language using the same approach used in ELI. His legal maneuver would be to file a Unit Placement Petition with PERB claiming that this was a new program under the academic sun.

            The issue before PERB is a rather simple one:

When the pedagogical approach to teaching a subject is revised, does the subject and its goal (in this case teaching English as a second language) make it an entirely new subject and as such outside the provisions of an existing collective bargaining agreement?

            That question has been answered every time the Board of Trustees passed a resolution approving an entirely new program requiring approval of the State Education Department. The BOT has sought such approval many times this past year. In none of these new programs was there a question of union jurisdiction—even though the programs were so different that they could not be offered without state approval. Teaching English as a second language is teaching English as a second language no matter what pedagogical approach is used. The obvious truth in that statement is borne out by the fact that the BOT never sought state approval for creating ELI or LINCC. Since ELI/LINCC was a continuation of ESL, no approval was necessary.

            Given the simplicity of the issue, why has it taken so long to get an answer to the underlining question in LINCC and why hasn’t the matter of the ELI, still pending in arbitration, been adjudicated? The answer to those questions is that is has been in the interest of the administration’s legal counsel to buy time. Of course, the more time it takes to resolve a case, the more money a lawyer makes. But that is not the only answer. The administration and their counsel believe that wasting a lot of time will serve them. Their logic escapes me.

            If the union prevails, the cost of buying time will boggle the imagination. We must begin with the cost in back pay from 2000-2001, the cost in back union dues, the cost in damages, and the cost in legal fees. These costs pertain to the ELI case currently in arbitration. Then there is the LINCC case pending at PERB, the Supreme Court, and arbitration. In that, the above costs will be duplicated.

            Perhaps the greatest cost of buying time will come regardless of the outcome of the above litigation. That, of course, is the

outcome of the official investigation now underway by federal, state, and county officials. Those investigations have nothing to do with the aforementioned jurisdictional issues.

            It has been estimated that this administration has misused approximately $10 million in state aid and property tax monies. When added to the settlement costs of the jurisdictional cases, millions could be added to the final figure.

            While it appears that buying time has been financially profitable for their lawyer, the administration may find that a lawyer is not the only piper that must be paid.