What a crummy and expensive experience for all taxpayers. The teacher is giving back to the community he grew up in, which has changed over the years. Typical expensive, slow and ham-handed work of the Woodside school board, still wiping it's brow after escaping penalty in the Hanratty debacle; and a community committed to a rich, insular and being overly-protective of themselves. Time to breed some common sense back into Woodside and get back on the trail.

Without commenting on the merits of this particular case, it is very telling that with 300,000 public school teachers in our state, that only 22 termination hearings were held during 2104. That statistic alone tells you everything you need to know about the corruption and control by public employee unions in our state.

Can you imagine the termination statistics for 300,000 employees in the private sector?

I also am a teacher who grew up in Woodside and attended Woodside Elementary. My dream job after 7 1/2 years of college happened to be at an elementary district very close to here. I was "corralled" into my principal's office and asked to resign behind closed doors, threatened with her reccomendation to advise the board not to rehire me for the following year. My work performance had suffered due to being put on a toxic medication which I had discovered and stopped taking. My work evaluations went from "________ has tackled this monumentous challenge with infectious enthusiasm...to correctly warning me for being late, and somewhat disorganized (side effects of this medication!) and was asked to resign. Well, I mistakenly thought is was the correct career choice to resign because I was not tenured yet. The parents of my students wrote letters to the district office objecting to how my situation was handled to no avail. Since then my disability company was exposed on 20/20 for being fraudulent and therefore have not paid me the 75% of my salary that they owe me since I lost my job. Presently, I am living on $630.00 from SSI and begging my parents (who don't have much money,) and going to food banks to survive.
I don't have the money to hire a lawyer for the representation that would be necessary in such "high profile" case(s).
Absolutely the most difficult aspect of this entire situation is simply that teaching was so much more than a profession to me, it was my passion. I dedicated my heart, soul and mastery of the art of teaching to every student I had the privilege to instruct. Honestly, I still cry often. I lost my job in 2002 and have not recovered to this day.
Where is the justice in this wonderful country of ours?
Just think... teacher's spend more wakeful hours with children than parents do-- are they (we) being treated with the love, respect and dignity that is given to each and every one of them?
How I long to look deeply into one of my student's eyes when the miracle of learning something difficult to grasp occurs. There is nothing that comes close to that feeling for me. I and my prospective students have been robbed of thousands of those moments for 13 years. What a cost for mistakenly resigning.

As I read this article a few things stuck out to me that concern me. The school says they acted on behalf of student safety. I agree that schools should always do what is in best interest for students and safety. However, the article mentions, “The superintendent said she had twice observed P.E. classes from an adjacent classroom and not seen the teacher with his students.” My question for the Superintendent is if you were so concerned about student safety and you think a teacher is not with his class, why did you not go out and look for him immediately or at least call another person to look for him. So if you suspect students are unsupervised, wouldn’t you respond by getting someone to supervise them immediately? Makes me suspicious about those allegations or if they are true then it makes me feel that Dr Pullido is not safe for kids because she does not respond appropriately to situations she claims are unsafe

Another thing that jumps out is the article states there are no passing periods. I have worked at many schools and never have I seen a school with no passing periods in between classes. How does Woodside Elementary get away with counting the time kids walk between classes as educational minutes? No break in between classes is not fair for both teachers and students. Students deserve a full day of teaching (that is what I want for my own child) and thus, it is not fair to students to count walking to classes as educational minutes. Also, teachers need time to go to the bathroom (a legal right at any job) and set up for their next class. I can see the panel’s point in this is hard for a PE teacher, especially since I assume they have to get out equipment for each class as they would be doing different lessons if they teach multiple grades.

The article also highlights the cost of this process but it was the District’s choice to go through this court process, which seems like a waste of both taxpayer’s money and donations to the Foundation. Personally, if that is how they are spending my money, I would not donate anymore. The article mentions they could pay him out. My question here is why did they not do that in the first place in order to avoid high lawyer costs. They could have probably spent less on just paying him out originally.

"The article mentions they could pay him out. My question here is why did they not do that in the first place in order to avoid high lawyer costs."

The principle? Why pay off someone that is incompetent to leave thus inviting further lawsuits?