Tag Archives: Teachers

Cultural Proficiency Takes Precedence For Teachers

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Grading practices? In the 1970s it was pass ’em all regardless of the child’s ability to prove they were educated.

PGhs Speling

Oh, and having the DEI people on board can’t be a good sign.

Included in the ongoing cultural proficiency training for PGUSD staff, he said, are “instructional materials that represent diverse and “culturally proficient instructional strategies and grading practices.”

The district invited members of the city’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force to attend the board meeting to listen in on the topic.

PGUSD’s invitation to members of the DEI Task Force this week comes after the task force’s vice chair, Nadja Mark, was accused of comparing a seemingly noncontroversial online comment by a citizen and member of the city’s economic development commission to the work of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
That comment and other remarks Mark made on social media violated the city’s code of conduct, which prohibits members of city commissions and committees from making negative comments, including on social media, that could offend members of the public, and compels them to “show tolerance and respect other party’s opinions.”

Cultural Proficiency Takes Precedence For Teachers

The Safety Dog Is Not Looking For Unsafe Lithium Batteries

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Does the dog check the teacher’s belongings too?

A drug-sniffing golden retriever discovered a marijuana vape pen, while district officials found one package of marijuana edibles, two marijuana vape pens and three nicotine vape pens.

When the school administrator, along with the dog and handler and their support staff, enter a classroom the administrator announces to the class, ‘the safety dog is here today, please leave your backpacks and belongings in the classroom and exit the room with your teacher,

The Safety Dog Is Not Looking For Unsafe Lithium Batteries

Short Term Rental Owners’ Crocodile Tears

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Retired teachers from north unable to pay for their vacation home in P.G. without renting it out to different tourists every weekend, oh the agony.

“I’m devastated – we have one house that was considered a duplex and we lost both of those,” said Beverlee Taylor, who along with her husband Richard is a retired teacher who lives in Pleasanton but comes down to Pacific Grove often. The two discovered their love for P.G. 49 years ago when they honeymooned here.

“We don’t make much on it but we like to come down here with our family,” said Taylor, noting the $2,665 mortgage and close to $9,000 in taxes they paid. The proceeds they made on it as a short-term rental “met expenses … it paid expenses,” Taylor said.

Short Term Rental Owners’ Crocodile Tears

P.G. School Found To Have Cameras In Kids’ Bathrooms

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Creepy. Monterey Bay Charter School. Same one that had a teacher accused of child molesting in 2010.

School principal Cassandra Bridge told the Pine Cone last week that the school installed the cameras in the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms in 2013 to prevent vandalism.

While there’s a law on the books stating it’s a crime to place a camera inside a bathroom or other area where occupants have a reasonable expectation of privacy, police did not find that the charter school’s installation of the cameras rose to the level of a crime.

P.G. School Found To Have Cameras In Kids’ Bathrooms

Monterey High Teacher Caught Having Sex With Minor

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30 year old Austin Love was arrested on Monday, September 19, after an investigation by Monterey Police Detectives. He’s being charged with several violations including sex with a minor.

Monterey High and the district were notified by a student about a serious and sensitive situation pertaining to an MPUSD employee. The district took swift action and notified Monterey Police Department. Additionally, the District released the probationary employee.

Monterey High Teacher Caught Having Sex With Minor

PG High Teacher Ken Ottmar Given 45 Day Notice

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Jocks. Sheeshe.

Ottmar, who worked as a sports reporter for the Monterey Herald until 2008, began working for the high school that same year.

In the nine-page letter, district administrators describe misconduct that dates back to his early years at the school. The allegations say that he described his private life and sexual fantasies to students, that he left students unsupervised, that he allowed students to drive his children using his car, that he came to classes smelling of alcohol, that he allowed students to consume alcohol at his home, that he held inappropriate meetings with female students, that he displayed favoritism toward certain female students, and that he made inappropriate and sexually suggestive comments to female students.

Teacher Ken Ottmar Given 45 Day Notice

Teacher Ken Ottmar Said WHAT?

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High school teacher in hiding accused of kinky behavior.

School officials say he made sexually suggestive comments to students, allowed teens to drink alcohol in his house, told kids about his sexual fantasies, and favored the pretty girls in class, but the P.G. High School teacher alleged to have done those things and more maintains none of it ever happened.

The district contends Ottmar told students that he’d had sex with his wife in his class room; that it was his fantasy for his wife and her best friend to have a lesbian relationship; that he visited strip clubs while in Las Vegas; and that he and others liked watching his “wife run track because she is sexy.”

Ottmar — who began working in PGUSD in 2008 after leaving his writing job at the Monterey County Herald — told one girl she had “nice wide thighs” and would “make a
good wife one day and have lots of babies,” and told another student she was a “BBW (big butt woman),” according to the district.“Sexually suggestive and flirtatious comments are highly inappropriate and have no place in the classroom,” the reprimand notice says.

Teacher Ken Ottmar Said WHAT?

Where’s Ottmar?

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What is he hiding from?

A Pacific Grove High School girls’ basketball coach has been on paid leave since last September — and has collected more than $60,000 in paychecks — but officials won’t say why he’s off the job and whether or not he’ll return.

Ken Ottmar, who is also an English teacher and the activities director at the school, has been paid $63,020.02 since Sept. 27, 2015, the date he was placed on leave.

Ottmar has coached several sports in the district, including boys’and girls’ basketball, football and golf, PGUSD human resources director Billie Mankey said.

Where’s Ottmar?

Looking At $100,000 Teacher Pensions

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Even the bad teachers get the payout. Their union protects them all.

On average, the retired teachers and administrators worked for 37 years in the education system and only one worked for less than 30. The districts from which they retired include Salinas Union High, Monterey Peninsula Unified, Greenfield Union, Monterey County Office of Education, Pacific Grove Unified, Santa Rita Elementary, Carmel Unified, North Monterey County, Gonzales Unified and Soledad Unified.

Pacific Grove Unified, with an average yearly pension of $81,887 per retired educator, and MPUSD with $58,588 are among the 10 districts on the Central Coast with highest pensions for their teachers, according to the California Policy Center.

Mark Bucher, president of the California Policy Center, a conservative-leaning, self-described free-market think tank which published the data, said the release of the figures was done to “challenge the popular conception of the poor retired teacher struggling to get by on a fixed pension.”

Looking At $100,000 Teacher Pensions