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A few weeks ago, we reported that a KIPP charter school was threatening to fire most of its teachers in an effort to turn the school around. Today, I caught up with one of the teachers, who said that worries about a mass-firing have been calmed by a new principal’s arrival.

According to the teacher, who asked to be anonymous in order to protect her job, teacher morale has improved at the KIPP AMP (Knowledge is Power Program: Always Mentally Prepared) school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Several weeks ago, dispirited teachers said that the majority of their colleagues had been told that they would not have jobs next year.

But since then the school’s new principal, Debon Lewis, has told the staff that he’s looking to improve the staff rather than replace it entirely.

“Now that Debon is stepping up and playing a more active role as a leader people are feeling more comfortable,” the teacher said. “The impression that I get is that people who want to stay are hustling and doing what they have to do to improve.”

Two years ago, concerns about teacher turnover were the driving force behind KIPP AMP teachers’ decision to join the teachers union against the will of the school’s board. A year later teachers opted out of union membership, kicking off a prolonged fight in which the United Federation of Teachers accused KIPP of intimidating teachers who wanted to unionize. (more…)

After wrestling down a unionization attempt and struggling with academic performance, a Brooklyn KIPP school is bringing in a new principal and letting go of teachers.

Concerns about high teacher turnover surfaced at the KIPP AMP (Knowledge is Power Program: Always Mentally Prepared) school in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, two years. The concerns were the driving force behind teachers’ decision to join the teachers union against the will of the school’s board. A year later teachers opted out of union membership, kicking off a prolonged fight in which the United Federation of Teachers accused KIPP of intimidating teachers who wanted to unionize.

Now, the school could experience what teachers initially feared: turnover and instability. It’s unclear how many teachers will lose their jobs.

A teacher at the school said today that the school’s leadership has informed most of its teachers that they will not have jobs next year.

KIPP co-founder David Levin, who is also the superintendent of KIPP’s New York schools, said that claims that the majority of KIPP AMP teachers would lose their jobs were incorrect. He would not say how many staff members had been asked to leave the school. (more…)

KIPP New York City's logo, from its web site.

Middle school teachers at a KIPP charter school in Brooklyn asked the state this week to let them split from the city teachers union, more than a year after teachers at the same school voted to unionize. The union plans to fight the decision, saying that a group of teachers remain committed to becoming United Federation of Teachers members.

Sixteen staff members signed the petition to break from the UFT. The petition was spearheaded by a guidance counselor named Dameon Clay, his attorney said. Staff who signed the petition include classroom teachers as well as social workers, the dean of teaching and learning, an operations manager, and the office manager.

I couldn’t reach any of the teachers for comment, but Lyle Zuckerman, the attorney representing Clay, said the decision was a judgment about how the teachers could best help themselves and their students. “I think they’ve come to the conclusion that their goals and the educational mission of the school is just going to best be served by them having a direct relationship with the school’s administration,” Zuckerman said.

When they first voted to unionize, teachers at KIPP AMP said they wanted to “create a more sustainable culture so that we can better serve our students and reduce teacher turnover.” At least three teachers who had formed the initial organizing committee at the school are now signing the petition to break from the union. One is Kashi Nelson, a classroom teacher who also sends her daughter to KIPP AMP and who explained her reversal to Alexander Russo last year. (more…)

A KIPP charter school in the Bronx. (By Leila Haddouche, via Flickr Creative Commons)

The next front in the tug of war between teachers unions and charter schools is about to commence, and this development will occur at the bargaining table. The game: UFT vs. KIPP.

There’s been no official word yet, but everyone involved in the saga between the politically powerful teachers union and the prominent charter school network is expecting that 16 KIPP teachers in Brooklyn will become official members of the city teachers union today.

UPDATE: It’s now official, confirmed by both the union and KIPP. Press releases from both parties are below. And here is the PERB decision.

David Levin, KIPP’s co-founder and the superintendent of New York City KIPP schools, told me this afternoon that he hopes negotiations will begin as soon as next week.

Teachers at the charter school, KIPP AMP, petitioned to form a union in January, but their pitch has to be accepted by the Public Employee Relations Board before the union becomes official. Reports had said a final decision would come yesterday, but both the union and KIPP officials were still waiting for word this morning. Now, all signs point to PERB sending the green light to the union today. (more…)

One confusing point in the ongoing saga between the KIPP charter schools and the city teachers union is exactly how many KIPP teachers actually want to belong to the union.

While 16 teachers at the KIPP AMP school in Brooklyn submitted cards to the state labor board saying they want to join the United Federation of Teachers, at least one of those teachers changed her mind after submitting the card, and teachers at two other KIPP schools the union has tried to represent are resisting the push. Yoav Gonen described the union’s effort at those schools as “meddling” in today‘s New York Post.

But add at least one more person to the ranks of KIPP teachers who are actively seeking union help: A staff member on the payroll of KIPP Academy, one of the original KIPP schools, who turned to the union after the charter school network allegedly decided to move him to a new school and dock his pay.

The teacher detailed his complaint in a January letter asking KIPP Academy’s principal, Blanca Ruiz, for a meeting where he would be represented by a UFT official. The union sent me the letter but whited out the name of the teacher who filed the grievance, and the union did not make him available for an interview. (more…)

The logo of the Brooklyn KIPP school where teachers have asked to join the union. From the school's web site.

In their first-ever appearance together since they became locked in an organizing dispute in January, the KIPP charter school network and the city teachers union remained at odds earlier this week over a petition by Brooklyn KIPP teachers to join the union.

In a conference before the state labor board, the union implored a judge to make the teachers’ petition official. KIPP officials asked instead that the state conduct a secret-ballot election of teachers before deciding whether to grant them a union. A wide majority of teachers at KIPP AMP have already turned in cards confirming that they want to unionize. New York state law only requires that card-check majority in order for public employees to form a union.

“We think an election is a fair way to accurately decide, in a democratic process. We believe in an election,” David Levin, the superintendent of KIPP New York told me in an interview yesterday.

Leo Casey, a vice president of the union, called the move a stalling tactic. “The bottom line is that they’re trying to drag it out, and they still refuse to accept that their teachers want to have a union at this point,” Casey told me in an interview yesterday.  “But the law is the law.”

The Public Employee Relations Board is expected to make a decision in the next 30 days. The skirmish is part of a larger battle between charter school supporters who believe the schools’ selling point is the fact that their teachers are not represented by unions — and teachers unions, which across the country are fighting to recruit charter school teachers into their fold. (more…)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan weighed in yesterday on the debate over whether the KIPP charter school in Brooklyn, KIPP AMP, should unionize, as the teachers have moved to do — without taking either side of the argument. (KIPP officials appear to be resisting the unionization effort.) Instead, Duncan told NPR’s Tom Ashbrook that the decision might not matter.

Here’s Duncan’s full answer (emphasis mine):

Well, let me just say, in Chicago, and I’m sure this is true nationally, we had great union schools and we had poor union schools, and we had great non-union schools and we had poor non-union schools. And so, that’s a piece of the puzzle, but it’s much more complex than that.

Does a third-grader know whether they’re going to a union school or a non-union school? They don’t know that. And frankly, they don’t care. All they care about is, are they being challenged. What I want to do, Tom, I want to be very, very clear: I want to take to scale what is working and I want to eliminate what is not working. There are great examples of success in those two camps and there are examples of failure.

Duncan also demonstrated even-handedness in talking about the current contract debate between Michelle Rhee, the D.C. schools chancellor, and the teachers union there, which, like New York City’s union, is part of the national American Federation of Teachers. “I have a lot of confidence in the chancellor, Michelle Rhee, and Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, doing the right thing by children,” Duncan said.

The equal time for Rhee and Weingarten comes after Obama heaped praise on Rhee alone during the campaign. It also offers evidence for exactly how Duncan plans to approach debates inside the Democratic Party on education. The model here is to cite pragmatism above ideology: He doesn’t voice any faith in the labor movement as a cause, or, alternatively, voice disapproval of it. He simply says he wants to support “what works.”

You can listen to Duncan’s full interview, which included the fun fact that Duncan’s family did not have a television set when he was growing up, here.

Part of the flier the union sent out today.

In its campaign to unionize a KIPP charter school in Brooklyn, the national American Federation of Teachers union has a new target: other teachers in the wide KIPP network. The AFT today reached out to KIPP teachers from San Jose to D.C. to Boston, asking them to join an e-mail campaign to urge the charter network’s co-founders to recognize the union.

The saga began earlier this year, when 15 teachers at the Brooklyn school, called KIPP AMP, told school officials that they want to form a union with the help of the local United Federation of Teachers. They said a union would help them feel more secure in their jobs and have a stronger say in building their school.

KIPP leaders, who have traditionally touted their freedom from teachers unions as a strength, because it allows them to hire and fire as they please, could have recognized the union and worked with it. Instead, they have hedged — and even indicated they might fight back against the teachers or drop their affiliation with the Brooklyn school. A state labor board is now considering the teachers’ petitions. (And the group of teachers, meanwhile, has swelled to 16 from 15.)

The fliers sent today ask KIPP teachers to send e-mail messages to KIPP’s co-founders, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, asking them to recognize the union — and offer teachers tips on how they could form a union themselves. Titled “BE NICE,” a riff on the KIPP motto, “Work Hard. Be Nice,” the fliers narrate the story of how Levin and Feinberg founded KIPP 14 years ago. “They put good ideas together with hard work and a relentless drive,” the flier says. “They also worked for supportive administrators who gave Dave and Mike the power they wanted to start a new program.”

The flier goes on:

Today in Brooklyn, a dedicated group of KIPP teachers and parents want the same thing and they’re forming a union and PTA to have a stronger voice. They’re asking for the power to add their own knowledge to the program and to sustain the school’s success.

Full flier is below the jump. (more…)

The national branch of our local teachers union apparently has decided that the story of the KIPP charter school network’s alleged resistance to a unionizing drive is a national story. I just got a fancy memorandum from the American Federation of Teachers’ press office addressed to “Education Writers.” The memo, titled “KIPP AMP Unionization Facts,” summarizes the story and offers to put journalists in touch with the Brooklyn teachers waging the campaign.

It includes more detailed language describing one of the accusations than I had heard before:

Under the guise of discussing testing, school leaders met with students and asked them for “dirt” on the teachers who favor unionization. As inappropriate as that is on its face, the meeting also took place during the school day, interfering with instructional time. This behavior does not fit into KIPP’s five pillars: high expectations, choice and commitment, more time, power to lead and focus on results.

I called Dave Levin, the superintendent of New York City KIPP schools, for comment not too long ago but haven’t heard back yet.

Here’s the full memo: (more…)

Teachers at a KIPP charter school in Brooklyn are moving forward with their campaign to form a union, undeterred by what they describe as managers’ moves to intimidate them. Indeed, rather than back down, the teachers leading the union drive have actually added one more person to their ranks.

Sixteen teachers filed petitions today to the state Public Employee Relations Board saying they want to unionize, working with the powerful United Federation of Teachers. That number is up from 15 teachers who were part of the original campaign last month. The first effort could have ended smoothly, with the teachers forming an official union, had leaders at KIPP recognized the effort within 30 days. But KIPP leaders did not recognize the campaign, leaving the state to judge whether the union should be formed.

The UFT in the last 10 days has filed two complaints to PERB on behalf of the teachers, accusing KIPP leaders of waging an intimidation campaign to stop staff from unionizing. A complaint filed this week accused KIPP co-founder David Levin of telling teachers that unionizing could throw teachers’ retirement benefits and pension plans “in jeopardy.” The complaint quoted Levin as saying “all of that goes away” if the teachers form a union.

Levin disputed that characterization in an interview this morning. “It wasn’t about discouraging them from doing that,” he said. “It was about providing them with information about what their rights and options are in this process.” He said he intends to cooperate with the law as the teachers work to form a union, and declined to say whether he plans to file counter-objections that could thwart the effort.

In a statement issued today, UFT President Randi Weingarten said KIPP has not cooperated with the union. “We are really disappointed that neither the initial thoughts expressed by management about working together nor the KIPP motto of team and family extend to the hardworking and dedicated teachers of the school,” Weingarten said.

The new petition to unionize has an additional difference from the one teachers sent to administrators last month: It lists the total number of teachers at KIPP AMP as 19, down from 20. A UFT spokesman, Brian Gibbons, said that apparently one teacher quit the school in the last month.