The EdVocate West

A Curious Definition of Equal Protection

July 2, 2010 at 9:19 pm arunramanathan Leave a comment

SB 1285 – the Steinberg bill that seeks to extend “equal protection” to students being subjected to the disproportionate impact of layoffs has a curious definition of equal protection. Since when did equal protection only get extended to students of low performing schools – the bottom 30% in fact. We thought equal protection applied to students who were suffering from an unequal system because of their race or class. Clearly, that is not the thought in this bill. Only in California could we have reached this point where even our civil rights lawyers have reserved a protection from a ridiculous process such as seniority based bumping only for students in our lowest performing vs. our highest need schools. Granted they are often sadly the same. But more importantly, they are often not (there wouldn’t be any hope if we couldn’t show otherwise).  What was the line in Animal Farm – we are all equal; but some of us are more equal than others.

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