Among city’s contract demands: flexibility to lay off teachers

contract sport

February 23, 2010

Among city’s contract demands: flexibility to lay off teachers

by Anna Phillips, at 4:59 pm

A much smaller pool of jobless-but-salaried teachers and slimmed down rubber rooms are two of the requests on the city’s list of contract demands.

The list of demands, which had been kept secret for months as the city and United Federation of Teachers tried to reach an agreement, was included as part of a legal complaint filed against the city by the UFT. The complaint was sent to reporters yesterday by Department of Education spokesman David Cantor. The union distributed its own list of demands to chapter leaders back in September.

Many of the demands are recycled from years past, but there are several new ones tucked into the three-page document. For years, Chancellor Joel Klein has trumpeted Chicago’s method of laying off teachers, which gives out-of-work teachers a year to remain on salary and find a new job in the schools. Klein’s new list of demands would shrink that window to four months.

Another provision would force any teacher who’s been charged with misconduct or incompetence off of the city’s payroll while their case proceeds through termination hearings, effectively decreasing the rubber rooms’ ranks.

The city’s decision to release its contract demands is yet another sign that the city and teachers union have given up on negotiations and resigned themselves to state mediation. In a letter sent to the state Public Employment Relations Board, attorneys for the city agreed with the union’s determination that the two sides had reached an impasse.

The next step is for the state’s Public Employment Relations board to confirm that talks have indeed stalled and then bring in a mediator to re-launch negotiations. Failing mediation, a fact-finding panel would then be called in to make recommendations for a settlement.

I’ve summarized some of the city’s demands below:

Salaries

The city wants to pay teachers more for working in hard-to-staff schools, in specialties that are in demand, and for having a “proven ability” to raise student achievement.
Teachers would have higher raises in the early and middle steps of their careers.
The city would institute a career ladder, labeling teachers “apprentice,” “practicing,” “mentor,” and “master,” and would pay them according to their position on that ladder.

Work rules

Excessing teachers: the city is demanding an end to seniority-based excessing, which pick off the youngest and least experienced teachers first. Instead, it wants excessing to be based on performance and other factors. Once a teacher is excessed, he will have four months to remain on the city’s payroll while he finds a new job. Once those four months are up, he’ll lose this pay check and benefits. Today, there are about 1,200 salaried teachers who have been excessed, are looking for work in the system, and are working as substitutes.
As a result of last year’s months-long controversy-turned-legal-battle over how long new Teaching Fellows can remain on the city’s payroll without finding work, the city is asking for a line in the contract to cover these teachers. The city is demanding that it have the right to terminate Teaching Fellows who don’t find jobs with 10 days notice.
It’s not exactly an eight-page contract (which Klein offered the union back in 2003), but the city does want to create much slimmer contracts for schools that are considered “at risk” of being closed, or in the process of closing.
Any employee who is absent for five consecutive days without notice will be considered to have resigned. Currently, that number is 20 days.
Under the current contract, K-6 teachers working in K-8 schools have the same teaching schedule as teachers working in regular elementary schools, while those teaching seventh and eighth grades in these schools have to follow the junior high school schedule. The city wants to change the process so that principals can create an 8-period day for elementary grades as well as junior high ones.
Under the current contract, monthly faculty and grade conferences have to be held during school hours. The city’s list of demands includes an item that would allow the conferences to last beyond 3:45 p.m.
The city wants to eliminate the retention rights of per session teachers — teachers who lead before or after school activities — meaning that the yearbook club teacher would no longer have priority when applying to run that activity in future years.

Discipline and Grievances

Teachers who have charges brought against them will be suspended without pay unless they can prove that the DOE is unreasonably delaying the hearing. If they win their cases and are reinstated, the DOE incurs a heavy penalty: it has to pay the teacher time and one-half for the time they were suspended. This would not cause rubber rooms to disappear, but it could sharply reduce their ranks. Only teachers who are under investigation and have yet to be charged would remain on payroll and in the rubber rooms.
The current union contract calls for hearing officers to apply a “just cause” standard to all the cases of alleged incompetence that the city brings against tenured teachers. This standard means the DOE has to prove it has a reason for firing the teacher and that its reason is fair. The city wants to lower the standard to an “arbitrary and capricious” one, meaning the DOE’s decision to fire the teacher is assumed to be reasonable and just unless the teacher can prove otherwise.
Currently, if a teacher qualifies for tenure and her principal doesn’t submit anything recommending or denying her tenure, then she’s given tenure by default. The DOE wants to make it so that teachers can only receive tenure through an affirmative award. For young teachers who are in the Absent Teacher Reserve — a pool of teachers who’ve lost their jobs through budget cuts and school closings — and become eligible for tenure while they’re looking for permanent positions, this change would reduce their chances of earning tenure.

Miss Warner

As I am on my way home in my three person carpool I am reading these ridiculous terms aloud to my collegues and I honestly cannot believe that we are headed right back to the old days of which my union reps make me aware of constantly. Days when teachers ate lunch with their students, got no prep time, and worst of all were treated like scum. The UFT worked extremely hard to get to where we are right now, and being a semi-new teacher (4 years) I am aware and will never agree to contract terms such as these. Back then teachers were belittled, screamed at, and were not treated like professionals in front of students, collegues, and parents. It is everyone’s job to make these new “impressionable” teachers aware of what our lives will be like if we agree to terms such as these. I don’t know about you but I, too am looking forward to having children. How can I accumulate any days when only given 5 for the whole year. My students are “walking germs”! I take about 4 or 5 days a year from the constant stomach flus, pink eye, strep, or whatever else I catch from my children. As for those critics who contiunously compare us to corporations and other jobs I have a proposal. Listen to what my day is like and tell me if you think our job is anything similar to working for those huge evil corporations.

I teach a 2nd grade special education self-contained class of 12 students with mulitple types of disabilities and severe deficits in both ELA and mathematics. These children come to school on a bus that usually takes about 2 hours to complete it’s route. Some haven’t eaten dinner so they take two or three trays of free breakfast and eat all of the food. They come to my classroom with little or no support from their families, some craving just to be loved. I will tally up the amount of times my children say “I love you Miss Warner” tomorrow and get back to you all. They wait for me to say it back. So on top of teaching non-readers to read, dealing with multiple disabilities/behavior issues, fights (yes in second grade), and teaching basic math skills over and over again just for them to forget again, I HAVE TO BE THEIR PARENT. The emotional roller coaster that I go through every day to help these children and be everything they need is worth it. When a child comes to me in September as a non-reader and by January is a level H, AND loves books and loves school, and doesn’t want a snow day, I know I have done my job. I love my job.

Now you critics, do you think you could stand all that AND love your job? Well I can, I do, and I am going to do everything in my power to protect it.
I will not allow anyone to dump on me. It is so important that everyone understands where we were, where we are, and where we’re headed. I am not looking forward to where we’re headed and the only way we can stop it is by being UNITED.

I’ll see you all at the rallies…with the banners that my STUDENTS will help me make. They know how awesome I am!
Miss Warner

Oh and one more thing. At 7 and 8 these kids come into school with more issues and family problems than I have had in my entire life and after everything I do for them all day every day if they don’t make AYP Mr. Bloomberg/Mr. Klein want to hold ME responsible? All you Gen. Ed teachers out there with “typically performing” students remember teachers like me. I know many, many, many special ed teachers that face the same challenges every day…and who may not get tenure because of test scores if Mr. Bloomberg gets his way.
Mark

and whats more when the economy eventually turns around in a year or two which it always does as many teachers as possible will leave the system as soon as they can. Why put up with this nonsense ? 5 sick days a year ? Possible lay-offs for teachers with years of experience who consistently receive a satisfactory rating because they earn too much ? Closing down schools ? More Charter Schools ? 2 % raises for working more, longer hours, ever more pressure to get better grades for all students no matter what the circumstances ? More coverages ? No fair grievience system ? The list goes on and on. In 3 years, the DOE will desperately looking for experienced teachers BUT there will be very few left who will want the position. Oh by the way, Bloomberg and Klein will be gone too. I hope that the damge done by these two educational “leaders” will be kept to a minimum. By the way, how many classes have they ever taught ? How would they know the first thing about what at teacher needs or goes through ?
Smith

Miss Eyre, Malarkey, Hancock, We’re not negotiating against ourselves. If the DOE wants to offer something in exchange for us giving up that particular right, then we’ll consider it. In the meantime, let’s not offer any other unilateral givebacks. It really doesn’t help our cause. How about making demands, instead.

Peter, at my school I saw a similar case to the one you described. And I thought my principal was uniquely sleazy!
Smith

Incredulous, I apologize for errors in punctuation and grammar in the previous post. Sometimes we write these things quickly.
george

this thread is proof that the UFT, and many of its members, care only about themselves and not at all about educating.

happily sending my kids to private school
John Hancock

George,

I am so glad you reached that conclusion about my goals as an educator from this thread. It is great to know that my 18 years of service can be summed up by the likes of you. How do you do it? You must also be able to sum up the likes of Italian Americans from watching The Jersey Shore. You get a double fist pump. Now where is my ATM?
Roger S. Baldwin

The funniest thing about these posts is that good teachers have nothing to worry about from these changes. All the city’s requests will expose bad teachers and try to get them away from our kids. Only the bad teachers make up excuses for why their kids are not learning and then yell about vacation days.

Our city’s best teachers are in there rooms right now planning lessons, staying late, and refusing to let their kids leave without learning something. It is not the kids fault, it is our fault if they don’t learn. For every teacher who lists excuses and talks about how their kids are poor or special ed, there is another teacher with poorer, more challenged kids who refuses to say they can’t learn. Sadly too many of those teachers retreat to charter schools these days.
pogue

Here we go with the “bad teacher” rants again. Over and over and over. My gosh, with all the turmoil and financial destruction and unemployment and political corruption and media silence…it is teachers who face the strongest of the “accountability” BS. We certainly live in corrupt and cowardly times.
Roger S. Baldwin

Pogue, do any of those things somehow make our school less bad?
Smith

Ah, the “only bad workers need unions” argument. Very sophisticated, Roger.
Roger S. Baldwin

Smith: All workers need unions. All kids need good teachers. Only bad teachers needs impenetrable tenure rules.
http://edintheapple peter

Roger:

1. The attrition rate among charter school teachers is far greater then that of public schools.

2. 60% of public school teachers are under the age of 30

3. Half of all public school teachers leave within five years.

4. Great teachers are scattered among all schools, high achieving to low achieving, failing schools are not the fault of teachers, it’s always poor leadership at the school, district and city level

5. You have been sucked in! The Department choses not to hire sufficent competent staff to dismiss teachers, if they did the process would move smoothly and efficiently and tenure would not be an issue.

6. The greatest teachers have no confidence in the Klein administration or the Obama ideas. 7. Hire the best people, support them, listen to them, involve them in the process, make them true partners; turn them into data machines, threaten them, rule by edict and you drive them to and strengthen their unions.
Roger S. Baldwin

Peter,

Your description should read “comedian” rather than “citizen”

1. That’s easy. First, public schools are often staffed with tenured teachers whom principals cannot get rid. Second, charter teachers do work harder and longer, but if you are a kid that is hardly a bad thing and if you are a teacher then you know what you signed up for. We cannot expect the nations neediest student to catch up by just doing the bare minimum.

2. & 3. I assume these are to show that teachers do not stick around so there could not possibly be a problem with bad teachers sticking around? Fact is the teachers who leave because the schools are lousy and the schools are lousy because principals cannot staff them with good people. If these stats mean something else just let me know.

4. This one is shameful. How can you say with a straight face that the only people in the entire school system who bear absolutely no responsibility for a failing school are the people who are the majority of the school system itself: teachers. In order for this to work, everyone must admit that all share in the failure of these schools: pols, principals, supers and yes…teachers.

5. Everyone knows that dismissal process for teachers is intentionally created so that teachers will not be dismissed. It is easier for a principal to give a bad teacher tenure in exchange for transferring than to deny tenure. It is easier to pass the “lemon” to another school than to fire him. You need three years of constantly documenting how bad the teacher is to even get into a hearing. (by the way, the kids in those 3 years just lost three years from which they will never recover) And even if you get to the arbitration table, that teacher will not be fired because the arbitrators are in the pocket of the unions and hearing are kangaroo court. You do you think you are fooling with this nonesense.

6. Undocumented, unsupported, and unbelievable dishonest. Pony up some proof and I’ll listen.

7. The unions should be strong and the best people never have to run to them, but they should never be strong enough to get more at the student’s expense.
http://edintheapple peter

Roger

you’re just not the listening type … take a look at Peter Senge, Schools That Learn and The Dance of Change … the evidence that collaoration is the key to school success is overwhelming.

The NYS Ed Department, each year, distributes a summary of School Under Registration Review (SURR) Reports, at the top of the list is leadership failure.

Tenure for teachers does not exist in most states, in many states teacher work on individual contracts, you would expect that in states where teacher dismissal is easy achievement would be higher, not so.

Attacking unions is a canard, it easier than working with unions. What leadership texts call collaborative or distributive leadership creates highly effective schools, and, the rare schools that embed peer review, teachers hiring and evaluating other teachers are frequently the most highly effective, see the International Schools Network in NYC.
Roger S. Baldwin

First, no one is saying collaboration is not important. But that is different than saying all you need to do is say “collaboration” and all bumps get smoothed and all problems solved. Many things are at work and it is simplistic to think otherwise. It is akin to saying that all healthcare problems can be solved by shouting for tort reform, even though tort reform is needed. Collaboration is only one part of well managed schools and leader autonomy is another. (I will not quote the laundry list of management books which say this.) Oh, and what about the type of collaboration which doesn’t even let a principal talk to one of her teachers without a union rep present or other assorted nonsense. Is that the type of feel-good collaboration you’re talking about?

Second, the quick reference to the SURR lists is super-misleading and stone-cold wrong. What summaries are you looking at? Of the ten most commonly cited problems in SURR schools school leadership is one, but most of the other nine have to do with lousy teaching like poor classroom management and poor instructional planning. The number one most common problem with SURR schools? Wait for it…”ineffective instructional methods.” Oh, and don’t you find it hypocritical that you are willing to judge the leaders by the same tests, you refuse to assess the teachers with for tenure purposes.

Third, your claim that tenure does not exist in most states. Are you serious? Did you spill something on your keyboard and type this by mistake? Your credibility is shot. Every state except Wisconsin gives teachers tenure. And 48 of the 50 states do not require an assessment of teacher effectiveness, but instead rely on those garbage evaluations where anyone who is not asleep during class is given an S.

Your last paragraph is just a bunch of management-speak pablum probably cut and pasted form a UFT memo. If it doesn’t mean anything, then it cannot earn a meaningful response.

I admire your efforts but your facts are all wrong. Are you seeing yet how hard it is to defend the indefensible? Schools cannot work where adult desires are put before student needs.
http://edintheapple peter

Roger:

The UFT contract section dealing with summons,

A teacher summoned by the principal to a conference which may lead to disciplinary action for reasons of misconduct may be accompanied, at his/her option, by the chapter leader or his/her designated alternate.

Principals, hopefully engage teachers in discussions on a daily basis, individually, by grade, by subject, to assert that principals cannot meet with teacher w/o a union rep is simply wrong.

In my experience union girevances/activism is inversely proportionate to the spirit of collaboration.

In the hundred or so small new Klein created schools, in which the entire staffs were hired by the principal the number of grievances, student achievement, teacher terminations, etc., are not distinguishable from older schools.
Roger S. Baldwin

Peter: (1) We both know that statements starting with “in my experience” might as well start with “I am making this up but” (2) The provision you quoted is inherently adversarial which is the opposite of collaboration (3) Any response at all to all the garbage you put forth yesterday which I exposed in a few sentences???
http://edintheapple peter

Roger

For years I worried about the future of the union, younger teachers were not involved, union meetings were sparsely attended.

In the last few years you, and Joel and your ilk have had a profound impact. Delegate meetings overflow, among the most militant members are new teachers and new chapter leaders. What once was an older and “whiter” cohort now is widely representative of the union membership.

Keep writing, keep advocating, you’re a great argument for a strong, aggressive union.
Roger S. Baldwin

Peter the biggest problem with your agenda is that kids get hurt while the adults in the system get rewarded for failing them. Until you have a good argument for why the needs of children should be put behind those of adults, your argument will ring hollow and you will just be a shill.

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February 23, 2010

Among city’s contract demands: flexibility to lay off teachers

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