Oliver had confronted Lopez for helping Beckley administrators correct technical errors they were making on forms that otherwise would have invalidated their efforts to end Oliver’s CCSD career. Lopez had responded he was just doing his job, and that Oliver should resign, which would look better to future employers when they would call CCSD. Otherwise, he said, CCSD would report that it had not renewed Oliver’s contract because of his “not being an effective worker.” But if he were to resign, argued Lopez at length, Oliver could explain the severance any way he wanted.
Oliver’s repeated answer to that suggestion, he says, was only, “No way — Treem admin and CCSD are cheating the parents and kids of genuine education” and then, “It seems to me, Mr. Lopez you are working for them, not for us teachers.” To which Lopez’s answer, reportedly, was: “I am only trying to help you.” To which Oliver then repeated, “I will never resign, and I will also sue them to get the information out.”
Then, within a couple of days, says Oliver, the Beckley administrators were making the same argument as Lopez, almost word-for-word, while handing him a CCSD resignation form.
“So then I knew,” says Oliver, “that Lopez and the teachers union were in bed with CCSD. But by then it was too late. I’d already been reporting to him what Beckley was doing, day by day. But what he was really doing,” asserts Oliver, “was just making sure Beckley was doing their part to get me out of CCSD.”