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human capital
November 26, 2008
Mass. charter school unionizes under AFT, in a first for the state
Teachers at a small charter school in Brighton, Massachusetts, have decided to unionize under the American Federation of Teachers union, the Boston Globe reports. The teachers reportedly had complaints about management — which is interesting also because the school leader, Diana Lam, appears to be the same Diana Lam who was ousted as Joel Klein’s first deputy chancellor in a nepotism scandal.
This is a clear victory for the AFT, which has been campaigning to bring charter school teachers under its fold in New York and nationally. But is it a loss for the charter school world and, more importantly, for children?
Charter leaders in Massachusetts are reacting with vocal concern, much more than I saw raised here when a few charter schools unionized. Here, charter leaders have quietly sought to counteract union efforts to organize teachers, offering information on the downsides as well as the up-sides of unionization, but supporters have also welcomed warmly a unionized charter school, Green Dot, to the Bronx.
The Globe quotes the school’s board chairwoman, Stephanie Perrin:
“They have every right to unionize and . . . support their best interests,” Perrin said. But “we have a responsibility to not only support their interests but those of the school’s families and students.”
Perrin said she worries the teachers will seek a contract with so many work rule restrictions that it would not allow for enough freedom for the school to run as a charter.
And a charter school association leader:
The state’s charter school association yesterday downplayed the latest development, characterizing it as an isolated incident at a school plagued with high turnover among its administrators and faculty.
Nevertheless, the association acknowledged the development could represent a major setback for its movement if teachers at other charter schools unionize too. The association contends that popular union contract work rules - governing everything from length of school day to employee termination procedures - strangles educational creativity, leaving administrators with less flexibility, especially when they want to quickly execute new programs or institute new policies.
“The big question on the table is, what is the motive of the [federation of teachers] . . . is this an attempt to kill charter schools?” asked Marc Kenen, executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association.
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November 26th, 2008 9:35 pm
I would never send my kids to a school where the teachers are too dim to understand the benefits of working under a collective bargaining agreement.
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November 27th, 2008 11:31 am
This is a troubling trend. First Diana Lam gets ousted from small districts every 3 years, then NYC, and now she is at the helm of a mediocre school with teachers so dissatisfied that they feel the need to unionize. The most successful public and private schools for kids in Mass, NYC, and around the country are NOT unionized, and there is a direct correlation with unionization and low teacher performance. At non-unionized schools good teachers are rewarded, bad teachers are fired. The union’s goal is to protect bad teachers and the membership dues they pay. Good teachers beware of unionization; The best job protection is good performance and ensuring that you teach your students to read, write, and do math well.
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November 27th, 2008 3:45 pm
I teach in one of the best high schools in NYC, and it is unionized. True, it’s woefully overcrowded, poorly maintained, and I teach in a trailer, but we get great test scores, consistently pleasing those who couldn’t care less about the conditions in which city kids study. It’s certainly true charters are given better facilities by Tweed, but they can’t do much better than we do. Nearby suburbs are full of unionized schools that do as well or better than city charters.
I know a woman who was fired from a charter school for the offense of telling her colleagues how much UFT teachers made. Despite the fact that she’d received uniformly excellent observations, her supervisors didn’t hesitate to vilify her to the press. I know another who was fired along with the whole staff, freaking out parents who liked the teachers better than administration. Some charters are better than unionized schools and some are not.
Green Dot, of course, is welcomed by union opponents because its teachers have neither tenure nor seniority. They have a “just cause” clause that’s supposed to be utilized before dismissal, but no one, not working news reporters, not education analysts, not even the UFT (its new partner), has been able to provide me with a single example of its being utilized, let alone saving the job of a working teacher.
Working people in America still have a right to unionize, and anyone who thinks it’s bad for children is clearly not counting on them to grow up, when they’ll need unions as much as the rest of us. The trend toward privatization has been a disaster for the United States, as anyone who’s opened a newspaper over the last few months is painfully aware.
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