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agreement to agree

May 18, 2012

“Turnaround” hiring to resume, but decisions could be reversed

by Rachel Cromidas, at 6:41 pm

State Education Commissioner John King observes an English and Language Arts class at the Dual Language Middle School.

Hiring is set to resume at the 24 “turnaround” schools under an agreement city and union officials reached late Friday afternoon.

But the hiring decisions could be reversed if an arbitrator ultimately decides that the unions’ complaint — that the city is attempting to circumvent contractual hiring and firing policies at the schools — is valid.

The city teachers and principals unions sued to stop the hiring process, but on Wednesday, a State Supreme Court judge urged both sides to accept arbitration rather than pursue litigation. Today, the city and unions agreed “in principle” to seek arbitration, selected an arbitrator, and selected a first meeting date — June 5.

In the meantime, the city will continue the process of rehiring or replacing teachers at the schools — but will have to run the risk of having those decisions undone if the arbitrator rules in the unions’ favor.

The outcome of the contractual dispute could affect the state’s ability to approve those 24 schools for a pot of federal funds, Commissioner John King told reporters today.

King said he is still hoping to decide about the city’s applications for federal School Improvement Grant funding at the 24 schools in early June. But he also cautioned that the city might not be able to fulfill some of the promises made in the applications if the city-union dispute prohibits the city from carrying out its plans for the schools.

To be eligible for School Improvement Grants, “turnaround” schools are typically expected to meet a rigid set of expectations, including replacing veteran school leaders and replacing half their teaching staffs or more.

“In order to be able to do the turnarounds as they described it, they’ll need to get a resolution to the litigation,” King said. “One of the challenges is the level of discord between the city and the UFT. I think it is incumbent on both to figure that out.”

King said another area of the applications he is looking closely at is what programs the schools promise to offer students next year and beyond.

“Certainly in the School Improvement Grant program the idea is to match the spending to the needs of the students. As we look through the applications, we are looking for whether or not the city has good, clear plans for programs at the schools that will meet the needs of the student population,” he said.

But an agreement on new teacher evaluations would be a more straightforward path toward federal funding, King said.

“I think the best thing for the city will be if they can move forward on an evaluations deal with the UFT so they can access not only the School Improvement Grant funds but also some of the other Race to the Top funds,” he said.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott said yesterday that the city would prefer a teacher evaluation deal but would pursue other initiatives to improve teacher quality even without one.

Some critics of Walcott’s new proposals called them a distraction from the more pressing need for a teacher evaluation system. King’s response was more sympathetic.

“They’re in a difficult spot. The city wants to move forward on the teacher effectiveness initiatives and clearly they’ve had a hard time getting this resolution with the UFT,” he said. “They’re right to have a sense of urgency. I wouldn’t call this a distraction, but it is a small part of everything that needs to happen: an evaluation system that supports good professional development, and that teachers and principals buy into.”

King spent the morning touring the Upper West Side’s Dual Language Middle School with two top Department of Education officials, Shael Polakow-Suransky and Josh Thomases. The discussion focused on the rollout of new curriculum standards, known as the Common Core, and best practices for teaching English language learners. The middle school, which Walcott visited last month, has a high population of ELLs (35 percent) and special education students (25 percent), but consistently performs well on the city’s measures of student progress.

King and other city and state officials popped their heads into several English and math classes and watched a dance class with two dozen seventh-graders practice the mambo.

When King asked his guide, Principal Claudia Aguirre, the describe the biggest challenge the school faces, she did not hesitate before responding: “This is just hard work.”

She said teachers and administrators struggle with the added workload required to help high-needs students progress — work such as offering extra tutoring or grading multiple assignment revisions per student that other elementary schools may be able to forgo.

“How far can you push it? How many revisions can you do, and how much time can you spend in a day? My teachers are doing this work knowing that if they just go downstairs [to P.S. 84, which shares the building on 92nd street], they don’t have to do any of this.”

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  • R.I.P. Richmond Hill

    This Turnaround b.s. has already been an epic disaster.  

  • cj

    Way to go Mr. Mulgrew.  Make it tough for them.  We go back to what somebody said here a cuple of days ago.  The UFT (and CSA) are not serious about this.  They’re going through the motions so they can tell their members see we tried.  Why cooperate with them?

    Way to go Ernie and Michael.  Way to throw your members under the bus!

  • Sad Turnaround Teacher

    Let’s not forget those schools already had improvement models that made them eligible for the SIG grants. Those schools were already making improvements. How can this sham be going through. How can the union let this happen to good schools with dedicated teachers, engaged diverse students and no community support. SAVE OUR SCHOOLS. Small learning communities are nothing more than small schools with one principal.

  • TeachmyclassMrMayor

    So once again, the UFT plays nice with the Mayor. When will they learn this NEVER, EVER works? CJ, why is anyone surprised at this?

  • Speedyh

    This is awesome stuff.  Chaos every single day.  Check out the 100+ employees at Tweed with their Yale and Harvard degrees.  Each one has a special title – Chief of staff of student portfolio planning, Chief of staff of academics, Chief of staff of pupil personnel, etc.  This is such a disgrace.  I bet my mortgage for the entire 30 year fixed period that NOT ONE OF THESE MORONS WHO WORK AT TWEED, ACTUALLY WENT TO THE CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM OR ACTUALLY SEND THEIR OWN KIDS TO OUR SCHOOLS.  But they have these incredible titles.  Next mayor, please fire them all.

  • Invictus

    If the PERB found that the City had violated their terms of agreement twice, why does the City think that another arbitrator will find their position more favorable?  Is the UFT and the CSA betting on this nonsense?  I will honestly NEVER understand the collaborative nature of these procedures. 
     

  • Save our school

    Is all this nonsense necessary?
    Why not just improve and support the schools the way they are?

  • Save our school

    Many teachers of Bryant High School will not be able to re-apply because many of them got 3 unsatisfactory rating lessons since feb. All of the sudden after Bloomberg’s announcement they became unsatisfactory. 

  • Turnaround Observer

    Suppose a teacher at a turnaround school with twenty years of experience applies for her job, appears before the school’s hiring committee, and then is told that she is not qualified to work at the “new” school.  If the UFT and CSA are ultimately successful in getting that hiring decision reversed, how will she be able to work at the school knowing that the administration does not want here there?  THE DOE and UFT are looking at this process as a mechanism that doesn’t involve actual people.

    Why would a teacher go through the degrading process of interviewing for her current job until she knows that she actually has to (if the arbitrator decides in the DOE’s favor)?  If she worked at the “good” school down the block none of this would have happened to her. 

  • cj

    Congratulations…you’ve written exactly what the arbitrator is going to say and the UFT knows it i.e. by allowing them to go ahead with the procedure, the UFT has most assuredly thrown its members under the bus.  They are not interested in stopping this.  They are just going through the motions.to try to tell the members see we tried.  It’s ovewr….it’s over for the teachers.  To continue to put these unity people into power to continue appeasing Bloomberg and his lackeys is almost suicidal.

  • W6a3d
  • BSH

    Prob a little too late for this now, but I would have had admin work with me personally to correct whatever they deemed to be “unsatisfactory”. You can’t let a U rating just go like that. There needs to be follow-up and documentation on the part of admin to justify the rating. Not sure exactly the situation at Bryant, but seems as if what your saying is 100% correct, UFT let the ball drop.

  • BSH

    Because we are whores…thats why. Uncle Sam is handing out cash to improve schools and now we have to do as we promised for that SIG funding. (well maybe not the majority of us but the system)

  • BSH

    I feel bad for you guys in particular. My brother in law worked there as a sub recently and he told me that you guys were a very good school with staff members who were also EXTREMELY positive in their outlook of things. Compared to the environment at other turnaround schools it seems as if RHHS has, what I felt based off of his description of you all, the best environment to be successful. All I can say for those who stick around is continue to focus on those kids and keep stay positive. In the end they matter most

  • A Brooklyn Turnaround Victim

     That’s horrible…but I would imagine at Dewey it can’t be much better……

  • TeachmyclassMrMayor

     Save, that is the DOE goal, principals have been told give out ass many U’s as you can. We’ll worry about the grievances later. They do not care if they will easily turned over. The point will be to say at the time of hiring, you are ineligible to be re-hired because you have a “U” rating. So they can put as many people in the ATR pool as possible.

  • Save our school

    The same prescriptions they have used with the rating of some veteran teachers unsatisfactory  who do not deserve it, and replacing them by rockies will not work. By the way the graduaton rate is not a good indicator of how a school is doing, it is the college  readiness rate. The big shots of Tweet need to start using common sense,and stop using teachers as scapegoats, the problem is Tweet and their policies.

  • Anonymous

    I believe that the announcement said that two Unsatisfactory ratings in a row (for end-of-year ratings) is what would disqualify teachers, not lesson ratings.

  • Ltorres156

    This has been coming for some time. Senior teachers have been set up with U-ratings for the past two years.
    How are these teachers going to apply for their jobs again with these ratings? They are out and new teachers in. Two for the price of one.

  • Save our school

    Good luck to the teachers in Bryant High School who are unfairly targeted and started to get unsatisfactory observations reports on their lessons in february of this year, we need you are being sacrificied and you are suffering because of a principal who will not quit until she accomplishes her mission which is to flush you out of the system.

  • michael

    Jamaica High School was one of the first lambs to be sacrificed. At that time most staff at other schools looked the other way, as long as it did not affect them. Welcome to the club. Until there is unity among all teachers regarding this matter everyone is expendable.

  • cj

    Actually not quite true….they went about destroying most of the comprehensive high schools in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan before their filthy little hands began pulling this garbage on the Queens high schools.  A bunch of the “turnaround” schools are in Queens because well frankly they’ve already destroyed the large high schools in the other boroughs.

    And these Principals who are assisting in this.  Well I guess jobs paying $140,000 or whatever it is just don’t come around that often to the point they have no morals about sleeping with the devil and doing Bloomberg’s work for him.  And of couse the DOE has made it quite cdlear they will sacrifice 50 or 100 teachers to keep 1 Principal in place.  How many Principals have actually lost their jobs under Bloomberg’s reign of terror?

  • Bellstar8

    They are giving out U’s like crazy. They told my boss at LIC to give U’s so he could keep his job. Bryant, you are not alone!

  • Bellstar8

    I was at the PEP when they closed Jamaica. It was so shocking! That’s when I finally knew that they could close any one of our schools. That’s the whole thing. We have to stand together. Two weeks ago a principal told me his school was immune from closing. I told him no one is. No one wants to think it can happen to their school. You are right. We have to come together.

  • Ari

    Rachel, I can forgive those who don’t work for education publications, but it is unacceptable for someone who writes for Gotham Schools to refer to the Common Core Learning Standards as “new curriculum standards.” When you write something like that, people see curriculum. The CCLS are not curriculum. They are standards. Those are two separate things. Please be more careful in your wording in the future.

  • Save our schools

    It is a disgrace to the hard working professionals of W.C, Bryant High School, but those of you chased out, forced to retire, and the ones not returning or unfairky rated unsatisfactory you will never be forgotten. If anybody deserves to leave is this new principal for being responsable to destroy our school spirit.

  • Save our schools

    This is a new method designed to push experienced veteran teachers out. It is simply discrimination, and our UFT is part of the problem because is allowing it.

  • Save our schools

    They need to start somewhere, first they need to get one annual unsatisfactory rating.

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