The Not So Secret (But Still Widely Unknown Lives of TK-12 Public School Teachers

This Week: Jon Clifton

By Brian Lees

Jon Clifton is a 16 year veteran middle school social studies teacher currently at one of the newer schools in our district.  He has primarily taught 8th grade US history and government, although he has recently switched to 7th grade world civilizations.  Because of his background and what he teaches, Jon has been very outspoken about some of the things that have been happening in our district recently, especially with its leadership and administration, and often cites parallels to history in his arguments. 

Jon was a frequent volunteer who worked with me to direct traffic at the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council North County Food Distributions my union (Poway Federation of Teachers) organized with the help of Palomar College and their unions during the height of the pandemic.  Jon comes from a long family line of blue collar workers and labor union enthusiasts, dating back over 150 years ago in his home state of Michigan and surrounding areas, and teaches their importance in his classes.  He was a one of the few teachers in our district who very passionately supported AB800, the California State Bill that set aside a Workplace Readiness Week including April 28th every year to educate high school students about labor unions and vehemently argues that bill should extend to middle and even elementary school students.

Jon has also been a very outspoken opponent of Marian Kim Phelps, our recently fired superintendent, and the school board who took far too long (in his opinion) to decide to remove her for cause after she was displeased over how her own daughter was treated on her softball team and made inappropriate contact with one of her daughter’s teammates, launching an investigation into her that led to bullying of the student and preventing her from participating from extra-curricular activities, such as graduation.  This incident has been a black eye for our district, as it has been well-covered in the news, ranging from NBC 7 and the San Diego Union-Tribune locally to People magazine online and even international publications in Great Britain and India, and John has repeated many times the following quote from the attorney of the student bullied in this case:  “I think that the district is going to need to dismantle itself at the administrative level and rebuild.”  Phelps is the third Poway Unified School District superintendent to be dismissed for cause since my teaching career began in 1996; Phelps’ predecessor, John Collins, was fired for misappropriating $345,000 district funds in 2016, and Bob Reeves was forced to resign after numerous allegations of sexual harassment surfaced in 2001.

Below is Jon’s perspective on the recent events in our district and the other questions I usually ask in this series.

What has been your biggest challenge in your teaching career?

I’m not sure where to start with this one.  There are always big challenges.  I know when we first met at the food distributions, we talked a lot about how the leadership model and the actual leaders in our district had evolved over time.  And not in a positive way.  At that time, the shutdown of school due to COVID had just happened, and our superintendent was not making decisions for the benefit of most of the stakeholders involved.  We were the last district to announce a shutdown, and we were the first to seek a waiver to come back before anyone else.  There was all the pivoting and indecision.  It seems like the leaders in our district were doing this, just like they do for everything else.  It’s all about show.  How it looks.  Keeping up appearances.  Hey everybody, look at us!  We’re like the band still playing on the Titanic as it’s going down.  We’re still open for school or opening before everybody else because that's how we do it here.  It’s the Pow-Way!  Never mind if we don’t have the proper safety equipment or anything else ready yet.  We’ve got to look good at all costs.

The problem is that the administrators at the site level have adopted a similar approach.  Any voices of dissension are quickly silenced.  Unfavorable teaching assignments and placement of students are common consequences for speaking out too much.  Anything that “doesn’t look good” is quickly dismissed or swept under the rug.  Parent complaints about teachers are almost always going to wind up being looked at favorably from the parent’s perspective.  Visitors, especially important ones, will only be shown certain parts of the campus.  Just last year, the district started publishing this full color magazine with all kinds of glowing stories about each school written by the principal of that school making every school site seem like paradise.  Never mind the expense of such an undertaking.  How much of what is in there is true?  My children attend [some of these schools], and I can tell you from a parent perspective, I’ve never seen half of the programs they are bragging about having.  Some of them might be yet to come or in the process of happening, but how deceiving is that to make the community think they are already in place?

But, not only does this impact the teachers who have to work under this leadership and create challenges for us as to how long we think we can tolerate this, it also impacts our students.  Do they think our students are blind and don’t see or hear about what’s going on?  Look what our superintendent [Marian Kim Phelps] did to those kids.  Abusing her power.  Closing off a part of the library that students used to use at her daughter’s high school so she can have an office there and watch what’s going on and control the school to favor her daughter.  And the school board knowing about this and being okay with it.  They are complicit.  They should be removed too, by the way.  And her calling that girl on her cell phone at 11:30 at night to harass her on how she didn’t clap loud enough for her own daughter, pressuring the school to fire the coach, and then threatening students that they wouldn’t be able to participate in functions or graduate.  What do they think this says to our students?

My biggest challenge right now might just be how I convince my students who have seen this that they can trust adults in positions of power.  That they are respected.  That they matter.  That they are safe.  But it’s an additional challenge I wouldn’t have to face if the leadership in our district was not so poor.

What role has our union (Poway Federation of Teachers) played in supporting you, and if a new teacher came to you and asked you if they should join the union and if it is worth it, what experiences would you share with them to help them decide?

Well, I have two feelings about this. First of all, unions are the essential life force of workers, whether they realize it or not.  My students leave my classes knowing this.  Commonwealth v. Hunt is one of the first legal precedents we study in depth in my class.  I’m sure your readers will know this, but before this landmark case, labor unions existed, but lacked the recognition needed to have the power they needed for things like collective bargaining.  So many people take this for granted.  They have no idea the struggles that took place to gain living wages, benefits, reasonable hours, improved conditions, safety guidelines.  They think unions are no longer necessary or just keep bad workers employed unjustly, especially teachers’ unions.  They are essential not only for the survival of workers in general, but in our profession to ensure that we have at least some protections against unwarranted attacks and what seems to be declining conditions.  At the very least, even if they believe in the value of organized labor in general or not, it is the insurance policy, as it is advertised by the union when they get you to join, and I would tell anyone coming into the profession they should most definitely make sure they have it.  You cannot afford to be without it.

On the other hand, our union and teachers’ unions overall seem to be walking on eggshells in these times.  We have given away far too much of our power for some of the same reasons that our leadership in our district is poor.  We care too much about what the public thinks.  We are trying to put on a show.  We think that by doing this, we will stop the attacks on public education and appease all of the complainers.  Teachers are working harder than they ever have, with fewer resources than they had just a decade ago, and without pay increases that keep up with the cost of living in the past few years.  Now, they are talking about no raises for us this year and us paying more out of pocket for medical benefits.  Many of our schools are falling apart.  RB High with its failed air conditioning system and several months, a few of them the hottest months of the year, without a working cooling system for the entire school.  Poway High with its sewage flooded locker rooms.  Too many others to mention.  Working conditions not good, standards always changing, more being put on the plate of teachers.  Then the union gets involved and gets us drops in a bucket in return.  Ten things get put on our plate by the district, and PFT gets one or two of the smallest items taken off our plate.  Or they get the district to agree to give us an hour or two of time to work on these new tasks (if you are lucky enough to have a site administrator who agrees to go along with the program, because they have their own agendas).  It seems like our union isn’t doing enough.

Then there’s all the student behaviors that are out of hand, lack of training, lack of supports.  Parenting has changed, especially since the pandemic.  Many kids were home alone at that time and left to their own devices.  Literally and figuratively.  Electronic devices used as babysitting.  Many unsupervised activities.  Trying to tear kids away from that and get them back into school again where there are rules and boundaries, even things like you just can’t get up and leave the classroom whenever you want to get a soda or snack or go to the bathroom without asking permission or pull out your phone whenever you want, has been a struggle.  Extreme behaviors in response are the result, further complicated by what they see our leadership doing.  And our union tells us that not enough people are complaining, so things must not be as bad as some of us are saying.  The district hires consultants and specialists (even in a budget crisis), but we need more actual qualified bodies and support to get us through this crisis.  There is so much more that our union could be doing to support us.  There is so much more pressure and persuasive techniques they could use to get the district to hold district leadership, especially site administrators, accountable, and the watered-down surveys they have us fill out that never seem to have any kind of effect just don’t get it done, and they seem to have less and less of an impact each year as time goes on.  They just seem at this point to be more worried about their relationship with the district than their relationship with us, even though we are the ones paying dues to them, and that’s not what a union should be.

What has been one of your greatest successes as a teacher?

Each year, I am confident that a majority of my students leave my classes having the proper tools to make qualified decisions for themselves in participating in a democratic society.  That, and a solid understanding of how organized labor has made the lives of their ancestors, and therefore their lives, that much better, gives me hope that they will see the value that unions bring to our communities as a whole or at large and makes our world a better place for the vast majority of people.  History is a learning experience, and unless you have a growth mindset and are willing to fail and learn from those mistakes, you are doomed to an endless cycle of ignorance and the same repeated mistakes, perhaps with ever-increasing consequences.  My job is to help our future workers and leaders to break that cycle, become enlightened, and continue to strive to make our future world a better place for all generations of humans to come.  And that is the greatest successful outcome I can hope for.

Brian Lees is a 28-year veteran public elementary school teacher currently teaching 5th grade at a school in the Sabre Springs neighborhood of the Poway Unified School District.  During his time as an educator, he has spent 25 of those years as a school site union representative, the last five years as a delegate from his union to the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, many months as a key organizer of frequent food distributions in conjunction with the Labor Council and Palomar College during the height of the COVID pandemic (June 2020 to November 2021), and most recently was appointed as the Secretary of the COPE Committee for his union, the Poway Federation of Teachers (AFT Local 2357).  The son of two retired teachers who also volunteered their time as union leaders, one as a site rep in San Bernardino City Schools and the other as an executive director in Associated Teachers of Metropolitan Riverside, he comes from a long line of educators and active pro-labor advocates.  He lives in northeast Escondido with his two dogs and 8-year-old daughter, and his hobbies include reading, writing, composing music, and photography, the last of which he hopes to share in future issues of The Jumping-Off Place, in a photo essay series called “My Esco.”