PELSB teachers

As the statute governing procedure for administrative policy hearings says above, "each agency shall make reasonable efforts to notify persons...who may be significantly affected."

PELSB is an official record-keeper of the addresses of all licensed teachers that they are obligated to keep in regular order for just such an instance of being able to notice any or all licensed teachers.

The statute, above, is concerned about agencies having to go out and try to find unidentified people or classes of such persons, without going to unreasonable efforts to notify people who merely may possibly be significantly impacted. Again, changing the terms and conditions of employment, professional evaluation in one's employment, and potential drastic measures being available to replace one in that position are obviously cause to be noticed, without question.

Here (below), is subd. 5 from Minnesota Statue § 14.15, which sets out terms for the ALJ to report conclusions about an agencies' proposal to change administration procedure. The ALJ is only to validly approve if errors or (1) deficiencies in did not deprive anyone of the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the process:

The actions of PELSB (the MN Professional Educators Licensing & Standards Board) are discussed, substantively, at this page--click here, which includes, at the bottom of the page, many subpages on particular matters within the set of issues. There are serious concerns about the quality of the work and how experimental hypothesis of teaching that led PELSB to make claims such as that all students learn more from non-white teachers, et cetera--which are clearly untrue and coming from a place where ideology was decided prior to information being examined or tested.

Click, HERE, or on the adjacent image, if you are a MN licensed teacher and were not adequately notified to enable you to meaning participate throughout the PELSB process of attempting R-4615, which has just recently about come to a close.

Share this page about the petition to let teachers know to sign-up if they were not adequately notified of the changes to the statutory terms of their employment that PELSB is seeking to impose without disclosure:

Copy and share the direct petition URL here: https://chng.it/J8N9mhGtHb

A major procedural issue, and one that generally controls PELSB, at a minimum, needs to start back at the beginning of the process, should it wish to attempt something like this that could meet the procedural requirements, is that PELSB proposed changes that would very significantly change the terms of how licensed teachers would be evaluated (annually or more frequently) and how teachers could be replaced by even unqualified teachers.

The PELSB attempt to change state Administrative Rules (a project identified by the number: R-4615) seek to change the "Standards of Effective Practice (SEP)" for teachers, but PELSB is absolutely prohibited from doing that without seeking specfic authorization from the Legislature, which it did not do, which is another reason the project must go to into the garbage bin or, at least, try again from the beginning.

PELSB told the Executive Branch officer charged with reviewing their proposal, ALJ Mortenson, that the changes to the SEP only impact candidates who would be starting teacher training, hence, not already trained or employed teachers. This is transparently false, given Minnesota Statutes require continuing contract teachers to be evaluated no less than annually on the basis of their compliance with the SEP and probationary contract teachers even more frequently. Addtionally, the SEP would be change to increase by over 500% the number of ways to fail cultural compentency, with impacts "out-of-field" replacement, which is a way districts would have to remove any teacher who fails to embrace CRT antiracism to their satisfaction--any teacher could be deemed to be "unwilling to abide by culturally responsive teaching principles."

Many teachers may object to not being given notice even if they are gung-ho for antiracism. It is a very important principle. PELSB is appointed by the Governor and fans of antiracism should be able to imagine a Governor not gung-ho about antiracism, maybe what they would call an extremist opposite position, who they would not want changing the terms of their evaluations without giving them adequate notice to participate in the rule proposal process.

The vast majority of people who did act in time to enter comments entered them long after PELSB stopped responding to comments, that deadline was at the beginning of June 2022--PELSB has made no acknowledgment or response to comments at the August 24th Hearing or since, in the written comment records.

Administrative hearings are not "judicial" and have no judicial authority. They can development facts concerning disputes which courts can use towards conclusions, based on the process that occured to develop such facts.

Chapter 14 of the Minnesota Statutes set out rules that govern the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) and the procedure required of executive branch agencies (such as PELSB) when they want to propose adminstrative policy.

Those include that interested parties should be notified so they may participate. When the ALJ is to review the process, the ALJ is to look to see if interest parties were enabled to participate by being informed by the agency, taking out newpaper ads if necessary, et cetera, to give the necessary persons adequate opportunity to be part of the process.

As noted above, PELSB defrauded ALJ Mortenson, telling ALJ Mortenson that the changes did not impact current teachers, only new candidates, they say these lies in black and white in their public statements to ALJ Mortenson.

The statutory rules for a valid administrative procedure hearing is that the agency needs to be concerned to notice persons who may have an interest. "Interest," in this case, is not "hobbies," but as approximately conforms to the legal meaning, which is a judiciable interest--which, essentially, would mean a right to stand in court. People inherently have rights (interest) in their employment--anyone impacting the terms or conditions of another's employment or the terms of effective termination of that employment--is obviously and necessarily taking an action that implicates interests of the employees.

All licensed teachers, inherently, have an interest in the modification of the terms of their employment and thus have an interest in these matters. Licensed teachers do not possibly have an interest--they inherently have an interest in these PELSB activities in R-4615, which would drastically change the SEP, which are a measure of teacher evaluation and which control cultural compentency, which controls possible replacement without any of the normal minimum of due process protocol for regular termination.

Notification Requirement for an Agency Proposing to Change Administrative Procedure

Standard for acceptable notice failure: no deprivation of meaningful participation (MN Stat. § 14.15 subd. 5):

All licensed teachers, other than the couple hundred that were given notice (PELSB states it notified "A random sample of 100 actively licensed teachers" and a few small sets of specialized teachers) and otherwise were enabled with notice to be able to participate, should feel they and everyone else should have been given the opportunity to participate and should sign the petition.

Again, even if teachers are gung-ho about all the CRT-antiracism, the mandate for "cultural"-group adjustments of grading, et cetera, teachers should be disatisfied on the principle. As each Governor may have the opportunity to appoint a new PELSB, it could fall to a very different Governor, in terms of ideas of education policy, to change the SEP.

How would today's gung-ho-for-CRT-teacher feel if an extreme opposite position were taken, in their opinion, in the future?

It is important to vindicate the procedural rules about procedure. You honestly report who is to be impact and when all teachers are to be evaluated on different metrics, in terms of being hired, being promoted, or keeping their jobs, obviously all teachers need to be fully apprised of the situation. As PELSB told the teachers who were involved that the changes to the SEP did not apply to them, even those teachers could well have grounds to sign this petition witnessing that they did not have adequate notice.