NORTH COUNTY —— It takes piles of money, mounds of paperwork, and years of filing complaints to fire an unsatisfactory teacher, according to area school administrators.

The topic of employee performance and job security for school teachers will play a big role in Tuesday's special election, when voters will be asked to decide on Proposition 74. If approved, the law would make it easier to fire an unfit teacher and more difficult for new educators to get tenure, the permanent status that by law protects teachers' jobs.

Specifically, Prop. 74 would simplify the process of firing a tenured teacher by mandating that a principal would only need to file two poor-performance reviews. It would also lengthen the time it takes for a teacher to gain tenure, from the current two years to five.

A teacher without tenure can easily lose his or her job without the legal proceedings required to fire a tenured one.

Opponents say that Prop. 74 would punish teachers by allowing administrators to fire them for any reason, and that the state education code already has in place a fair method to fire a bad teacher.

Several school officials said Wednesday that the current system for firing teachers is somewhat flawed and costly, although most of them declined to say whether they favored the proposition.

"The current law says that a teacher can be released for unsatisfactory performance, but it doesn't (define) unsatisfactory performance," said James Whitlock, assistant superintendent for employer-employee relations at the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District.

Whitlock said other parts of the education code —— a complex set of statutes detailed over roughly three dozen pages —— are vague when it comes to firing a teacher.

"Prop. 74 defines (the reason for dismissal) as two unsatisfactory evaluations back to back," said Whitlock, who has been involved in school personnel issues since 1976, working for the California Teachers Association as a labor relations consultant for six years.

Whitlock said that when a principal seeks to fire a teacher, for such reasons as inadequate lesson plans, frequent absences, and unprofessionalism, the principal has to document specific instances of a teacher's alleged offenses.

The law then gives teachers 90 days to correct their problems, he said.

At times, the errors beget new errors, which must then be documented and result in another 90 day "shape-up notice," he added.

"It is very difficult to pin down what the teacher is doing to be an unsatisfactory teacher," he said. "It can take years."

Kimo Marquardt, the principal at Oceanside High School, agreed that terminating an employee with tenure is anything but easy.

Given the example of a teacher who uses profanity in classes, refuses to use state-mandated textbooks, and often shows up late, Kimo said it "could take years" to fire that instructor.

"Administrators are doing their job and documenting poor performance, but it takes several years of documentation," he said. "(Teachers) have due process, so we have to honor all the procedural safeguards. It would take some time to fill out the documentation for the (firing) process."

Under the law, a teacher in danger of being fired is given a hearing before the school board.

But that's not as simple as a standard court hearing, officials have said. And it often costs tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to get rid of a bad teacher, they said.

At times, dismissed teachers —— even those who deserved to be fired —— may hire attorneys and get their jobs back because administrators may have not accurately followed the complicated procedures, according to Dayle Mazzerella, a longtime educator.

Mazzerella, who spent more than 30 years as a high school teacher in the Oceanside Unified School District and who now works as a consultant at Oceanside High, said principals at times fail to do their homework when it comes to dismissing a teacher.

He said the Oceanside district has been entangled in legal issues, for example, because it did not follow the procedures.

In one case several years ago, he said, a teacher refused to give his students the state-mandated standardized tests and was not fired because the administration did not follow the education code.

"If principals don't follow the process, then, yes, it is almost impossible to fire a teacher," he said. "But it can be done."

Mazzerella said some teachers too often take advantage of the laws guarding their tenure.

"Tenure allows teachers to get away with things," he said. "But it's not a black-and-white issue."

Tenure has saved his job on more than one occasion, he added.

Mazzerella helped institute several controversial, yet successful, changes at Oceanside's two high schools since the 1980s.

For example, at El Camino High 20 years ago, Mazzerella was part of a team of teachers that invited lower-performing minority students to take college-level courses. Such classes were often filled with white students. The initiative served as a way to challenge minority students and to close the achievement gap. He helped do the same thing at Oceanside High three years ago.

El Camino's results, higher performance by poor and minority students, were the topic of a U.S. Department of Education forum in Washington, D.C., last year.

But initially, not everybody was happy. Parents and teachers, worried that some students were unfit for the tougher courses, complained to administrators.

"I had pretty severe disagreements with teachers and principals over the years," he said, adding that tenure can protect educators from being unfairly fired for political reasons. "Tenure saved my job."

Contact staff writer Louise Esola at (760) 901-4151 or lesola@nctimes.com.