The seemingly secure positions of educators in California has been jeopardized with the recent court case Vergara v. California. 

The case began in 2012 when nine public school students challenged the state of California’s education system.

The plaintiffs believed every child deserved the opportunity to succeed, but with mediocre educators, some students faced a disadvantaged source.

In the U.S., teacher tenure is a policy that solidified the jobs of teachers, by restricting teachers from being fired without a “just cause,” according to education.com.

But in California, this protection has been deemed “unconstitutional,” as the tenure violated the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution, which does not deny any person “the equal protection of the laws,” reported by cacs.org. Essentially, everyone must be treated fairly.

“There is also no dispute that there are significant numbers of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms,” Superior Court of Los Angeles judge Rolf M. Treu said in his ruling reported by Yahoo! News.

Opponents of tenure rejoiced at the case’s outcome.

California Secretary of Education Bonnie Reiss and Center for Education Reform (CER) President Kara Kerwin saw the ruling as favorable, with the CER specifically calling it “a tremendous victory,” as reported by freenewspost.com.

“There are many problems facing our education system, and there is no silver bullet that can fix them all at once,” plaintiffs’ lead co-counsel Theodore J. Boutrous wrote in his article in The Wall Street Journal. “But there is no better place to begin than by removing senseless laws that devalue effective, inspiring teachers and hurt students.”

San Ramon Valley Education Association union President Ann Katzburg is strongly opposed to the court ruling.

“Teachers that do not have a permanent status, will have far less security,” said Katzburg. “Teachers cannot stand up for what they believe in, in fear that they might say something out of line, and end up being fired. A great teacher students love may be fired to due to expressing his or her own beliefs.”

Katzburg saw that the problem was the environment that the students live in and not that of the teachers.

“There are many factors that should be taken into account,” said Katzburg. “Students may not perform well because of an impoverished setting or parents not being there for the child. We need to look at where the problems are and fix them.”

But some teachers, such as Regina Turner and Doug DeVries, agreed with the court’s ruling.

“Modifications to tenure need to be made, as tenure makes it hard to fire bad teachers,” said Turner, a second year English teacher at Cal.

DeVries saw tenure as old-fashioned.

“Good teachers do not need union support,” said DeVries, who teaches economics.

Junior Rahul Sekar agreed.

“Tenure should only be in colleges, as there is no need for it in high schools,” said Sekar. “It doesn’t seem right to allow ineffective teachers to be teaching kids in such an important time of their lives.”

Supporters of tenure bashed the decision. Dennis Van Roekel, President of the National Education Association union, said in an article published on neatoday.org believed the ruling was an “attempt by millionaires and corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession and push their own ideological agenda on public schools and students while working to privatize public education.”

Van Rockel told neatoday.org that the case was never about helping students.

American Federation of Teachers union President Randi Weingarten saw the decision as having a lack of thorough, reasoned opinion. Weingarten also felt that Judge Treu “[stripped] the hundreds of thousands of teachers who are doing a good job of any right to a voice,” according to aft.org.

Senior Terry Hu has a more neutral stance on the issue.

“I’m not exactly for the notion or against it,” said Hu. “I think good teachers deserve to be protected because that is what helps a school become better as a whole. I don’t like the fact that bad teachers are protected because they have been working at their schools for a long time.”

To assistant principal Bob Spain, tenure has little impact.

“The only way to improve student education is to take the correct action by addressing the teaching of potentially ineffective educators,” Spain said.