A Culture of Fear

For twenty-seven years Ukiah High School’s popular shop teacher Charles Roberts has taught woodworking, advanced cabinetry and construction techniques to hundreds, if not thousands of inland Mendocino County students, inspiring many to go on to become skilled carpenters, cabinet makers and contractors. 

Roberts enjoys an unblemished record of enthusiastic evaluations from nearly three generations of Ukiah school administrators. His most recent evaluation by Assistant Principal Jerry Garcia was Roberts twenty-seventh to be checked, "retain."

So why has Charlie Roberts been fired? And why did he learn that he was out of a job from students before he got the bad news from the people who wanted him gone?

Last May, several of his students awkwardly asked their shop teacher how they could help him keep his job. Roberts was stunned. "What are you talking about?" he asked the boys.

They said they'd overheard another teacher telling a friend that he would be replacing Roberts in the fall.

Ukiah High School principal Phil Gary soon informed Roberts that what he'd heard from his students was true — he was out. Roberts wouldn't have his job in the fall. 

Gary said he was hiring a new shop teacher to to replace him in the basic woodshop classes Roberts had taught all these years at the sprawling campus on Low Gap Road, and that the two classes sponsored by the Mendocino County Office of Education — Roberts’ advanced cabinetry and construction classes — had been cancelled by the County Office of Education's Regional Occupational Program, or ROP.

In other words, Roberts had been offed twice; once by Ukiah High School, and once by the County Office of Education. 

And without a handshake or so much as a "Been nice workin' with you" from either of his employers. 

Charlie Roberts had been given the Kafka Shuffle. 

The Kafka Shuffle occurs when powerful but imprecise bureaucratic forces conspire to harm an innocent person. To do harm, these forces refer to vague demands on them that compel them to victimize their bewildered target. There are opaque references to funding difficulties and even fuzzier invocations of funding and educational categories. 

One plump bureaucrat points to the other and says, "Gosh, there's just not a darn thing we can do here, Charlie; our hands are tied."

Charlie Roberts, who'd just completed another successful year as a teacher in June was out of a job in July. He was 54, not an age at which one wants to be looking for work.

Ukiah High School, via its designated hatchet man, Phil Gary, said it could no longer contract with the County Office of Education for Roberts’ popular cabinetry class because Ukiah Unified needed space for an expanded woodshop class in the building where Roberts had been teaching his advanced cabinetry class.

Comprende?

Two different educational entities fund Roberts classes. Ukiah High School employs him to teach four classes, the County Office of Education pays him to teach two more. Ukiah High School suddenly decides it needs the space Roberts' two County Office-paid classes occupy for more elementary woodshop instruction and the County Office conveniently says, "We're not paying for those two classes anyway."

But Ukiah High School, instead of hiring the experienced, much admired Roberts to teach the new woodshop classes in the "new" space, hires a new guy with no teaching experience.

The Kafka Shuffle had shuffled Roberts right out of a job for no rational reason.

Clearly, Ukiah High and the County Office of Education wanted Roberts out for reasons having nothing to do with space or teaching ability or student welfare.

Ukiah High School, again through the ineffable Gary, said Roberts “didn't have the right tools for it,” the "it" apparently being the Ukiah High-sponsored shop classes. 

Huh?

The right tools? You mean hammers and screw drivers? Teaching skills? Noooooo.

For more than six years, in an arrangement that could only be devised by a public bureaucracy, Ukiah High School has purchased four hours a day of Roberts’ instruction from MCOE to pay for the shop classes Roberts teaches at the high school. But one fateful day last May, MCOE administrator Dennis Ivey suddenly appeared in Roberts’ cabinetry shop and, according to witnesses, belligerently declared Roberts’ long-standing cabinetry area inadequate to the task. 

Roberts thought Ivey's sudden objections were odd, but had no idea they would be lethal.

Ukiah High School’s decision to drop Roberts has a lot of people who know Roberts, including his present and former students, very upset.

And Roberts thought he had achieved a protective tenure from his last ten years of teaching the classes at Ukiah High. 

Nope, he was unprotected. No tenure for Charlie Roberts.

Because of Ukiah High’s “contract” with the County Office, Roberts is technically not an employee of Ukiah Unified; he hasn’t accrued the necessary three years of instruction to get tenure. 

“I thought I had tenure rights to those classes because I had been teaching for 10 years,” said Roberts. “I don't see any real difference between being a county employee or a district employee, because all my classes are regular ed classes, just like math or science or PE.” 

Ukiah High School's principal, Phil Gary, apparently disagreed. 

“He said I wasn't a Ukiah Unified employee,” said Roberts.

Ukiah Unified won’t discuss Roberts’ dismissal, retreating behind “personnel matter.” 

There are three possible explanations for Roberts’ having been consigned to the Kafka Shuffle.

One, Principal Gary doesn’t care much for the trades since the trades don’t do anything for the high school’s academic ranking based on the standardized tests now dominating the educational effort in California. 

As Matt Hamburg, one of Roberts many shocked supporters bluntly assessed Roberts' situation for reason number one, “I think the high school is really concerned about getting these standardized testing scores up and the message they're sending to the working class kids, many of them Hispanic, is that if you're not part of the college prep group, then you’re not really important,” Hamburg said.

Two, principal Gary is looking to cut costs by replacing an experienced teacher who earns over $50k a year with a junior teacher at just over $30k a year. 

“In my opinion the only rational explanation is that Phil Gary and Ukiah Unified wanted to save $20,000 and go with a cheaper teacher,” Hamburg says.

According to Roberts, a beginning teacher makes somewhere between $32,000 and $34,000 a year. Last year the 53-year old Roberts earned $52,000.

And possible reason three, in twenty-seven years, there have been three injuries in Roberts’ classes which the district has had to settle for unknown amounts of money. 

But none of these explanations holds up. 

One, many of Ukiah High students are not academically oriented and woodworking is an important career alternative for them. 

Two, ignoring for a moment the district’s bogus tenure argument, the popular and Roberts is known as a real motivator who keeps kids in school and state attendance money with them, which more than makes up for his salary.

And three, the injury incidents were all minor, a cut finger, a fall off a ladder and a third no one seems able to remember, and none of the three having anything to do with teacher negligence. 

Three minor injuries in a shop class over a 27 year period is actually quite low for trades classes. And since the shop classes will continue with an inexperienced teacher, the injury risk will actually be higher. Besides, other shop classes and physical education (including full contact football) have a higher risk of injury than Mr. Roberts’ shop class. Nevertheless, Roberts thinks that the liability issue may be a primary reason for his dismissal because the district is currently dealing with a cut-thumb lawsuit.

The decision not to renew Roberts’ contract is “incredible,” continued Matt Hamburg, a substitute teacher for Roberts during the last school year. “I had a chance to go in and check out the class before I subbed for him. The whole class was totally on task — they were all enthusiastic and proud of what they were doing.”

This, Hamburg said, was not his experience when he taught for other instructors. After filling in for Roberts' class, Hamburg said, “Charley was the only one I would sub for. Those kids absolutely admired and respected him.”

“Ukiah Unified School District claims I lost tenure at the high school when Mendocino County Schools stopped funding my advanced classes,” says Roberts. “Ukiah Unified School District then took over hiring for the woodshop program. I reapplied for my job. I brought 27 years of experience with consistently high performance evaluations and a fully prepared resumé into the interview process. I was interviewed by four district staff members including high school principal Phil Gary. After the interview, when I found out through the district office that I would lose my job, I went to talk with Mr. Gary. He told me the decision to ‘terminate’ me and instead hire a teacher with no experience to teach only basic woodshop came from a ‘committee meeting,’ and not from the formal process. I still don't know what the name of this committee is or who is on it. I question whether the process used to ‘terminate’ me was a legal process. Why are they taking my job away? I want answers.”

There aren't any, Charlie. It's the Kafka Shuffle. They wanted you out, but when a deluge of complaints ensued when the community learned that the two school entities had teamed up to get you out for no reason they dared reveal, i.e., no reason at all beyond their own bureaucratic convenience, they started coming up with their lame-brain pretexts for shafting you.

In the wake of Principal Gary’s mysterious “committee” decision to dump Roberts, letters to the editor have been pouring in to the Ukiah Daily Journal decrying Gary’s misplaced priorities, praising Roberts’ technical and motivational skills and his 27-year record, and demanding that Roberts be given a fair hearing.

David Lucas, a former student who is now a construction foreman at Crane of Ukiah, told James Harrison of the Ukiah Daily Journal, “He taught me a lot. I would have never got into this trade if it wasn't for his class,” adding that safety was a major focus of Roberts’ instruction. Two other Crane employees, he adds, were also taught by Roberts.

“He'd go that extra mile for you,” said Jason Bush, another former student. Bush recalled Roberts as a popular teacher who could be strict about being on time, but was otherwise “a kind and helpful person.”

“This was a guy who was not only a great teacher, but a great friend, the kind who was always willing to talk to students and they were always willing to talk to him,” said Justin Bowers, another former student and a 1993 graduate of Ukiah High. 

According to a source at Ukiah High School, one of the reasons most of Roberts’ fellow teachers haven’t come forward in defense of their colleague is, “They want people to watch their back, take their paycheck, keep their mouths shut and just be glad they’re there. Phil Gary didn’t even try to conceal the fact that the interview process was an irrelevant formality and had little to do with whether they’d hire him back. It was Phil Gary’s personal decision.”

Nona Olsen is the head of County ROP for MCOE. “Phil Gary went to Nona Olsen and asked that the County Office stop involving itself in Ukiah High School woodshop classes,” the high school source said. “She will say it was a personnel decision. She added that Phil Gary simply instructed her to make the decision. The criteria for evaluation is exclusively Phil Gary’s and it’s his Ukiah Unified that does the evaluations.”

And MCOE underboss Dennis Ivey, who goes way back with Roberts but seems unconcerned at Roberts' present dilemma, fully supports Gary and Olsen. “They make decisions based on the best interest of the school site,” said Ivey. “It’s between the ROP director [Olsen] and high school principal [Gary].”

The school site or the young persons that site allegedly exists to serve?

Another contributing factor may be the ubiquitous Slavin study, a Mendocino County-hired group of consultants who decided on, shall we say, highly debatable premises, that senior County employees should all get more money. Roberts, given his years of service as a teacher, was one of several unattended Slavin beneficiaries. Slavin's true desire was to accommodate the people who'd hired them to do the study, the County Board of Supervisors who wanted to justify their own pay raises and the pay raises they'd showered on County department heads for no reason that could be linked to job performance. 

Roberts got a nice $4,000 more a year.

“Now they’re looking around at the bigger salaries and seeing who they can get rid of,” said a County employee. “This could also be a way to cut the County Office’s budget — and Nona Olsen is covering herself.”

In early May several of Roberts’ students had asked him what they could do about his being fired. Roberts himself hadn't heard that he'd been terminated. He asked the boys what was up. The students replied that they had heard Ed Davis, Roberts’ replacement, telling another teacher that he, Davis, had a lock on Roberts' job for next year. 

Davis had previously told Roberts that he had no intention of applying for Roberts’  job. At that point, in early May, the job hadn’t even been advertised, but Davis somehow already knew he had a job. 

And even County Superintendent of Schools Paul Tichinin was surprised to learn that Davis was talking about getting the job before the “committee” decision was made. “Ed Davis actually told people in our office that he was going to get the job,” said Tichinin. “When I heard that I was surprised. We had problems with the integrity of our hiring practices ten years ago, and those are the types of statements that I wouldn’t anyone who works for me to make. I wouldn’t want anyone promising jobs to anyone.”

Besides the obvious implications for Roberts of extra-legal hiring, if school administrations feel free to play games with staff by claiming that certain long-time teachers technically work for other districts, then the protection of tenure itself is undermined. After all, the idea of tenure is to protect teachers from arbitrary dismissal.

Although many of Roberts’ associates, as well as present and former students, have come forward to try to undo Principal Gary’s decision — only one of them — Steve Johnson — is a fellow (tenured) teacher. 

Roberts’ supporters have asked other teachers to come to his defense, but so far only Johnson has, for fear of retribution from Principal Gary and Gary's captive school board. “They all know what’s going on and are disgusted, but none of them will come forward,” said the source at Ukiah High. “The board has publicly stated that they don’t want to "micro-manage" the high school, so the message to teachers is obviously that Ukiah High School is Phil Gary High School. The County-contracted classes are simply gone — advanced cabinetry and construction tech. The message from Phil Gary is that Charley’s highly motivated working class students are unimportant. And they’re pissed off.”

“I honestly believe I was set up,” said Roberts. “The decision was made before they even had the committee meeting.” 

“The more people look into this, the more people wonder, ‘What’s going on here?’” added Roberts. 

The beleaguered shop teacher has provided the Ukiah Unified school board with all his records and bonafides, which, he says, they hadn’t looked at before. “They’re trying to figure out what happened.”

The shabby collusion of MCOE and Ukiah Unified may disturb the Ukiah School Board enough to ask for a re-evaluation of Roberts' shabby treatment. The school board has that option. 

The board next meets on August 14th. 

Present and former students of the universally admired Roberts are circulating a petition on his behalf. They hope to present the Ukiah School Board with a minimum of 4,000 signatures at the board's August 14th meeting, and that's a lot of support from a small town for a single wronged person. 

The teachers union is also looking into the situation and is gathering information for a possible legal challenge but, Roberts sighs, “This is probably going to end up in court,” I don’t want it to; it would be a big waste of time and money. But as long as they refuse to reconsider I won’t have much choice.” 

Charley Roberts is doing what he's always done — working with young people. He's supervising processing operations at “the pear shed” at the Thomas family’s plant at the south end of town.