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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…)

Council Member Simcha Felder displays one of the cue cards a teachers union representative handed him.

At today’s education committee hearing, City Council members took turns questioning Department of Education officials on the rise of charters schools. Their questions were passionate, specific, and universally accusatory. They may have also been scripted.

Just before the hearing began, a representative of the city teachers union, which describes itself as in favor of charter schools, discreetly passed out a set of index cards to Council members, each printed with a pre-written question.

One batch of cards offered questions for the Department of Education, all of them challenging the proliferation of charter schools. “Doesn’t the Department have a clear legal and moral responsibility to provide every family in the city guaranteed seats for their children in a neighborhood elementary school?” one card suggested members ask school officials. “Isn’t the fundamental problem here the Department’s abdication of its most important responsibility to provide quality district public schools in all parts of the city?” another card said. (View more of the cards in a slideshow here.)

Several council members picked up on the line of thought. “Shouldn’t we aspire to have every school in the city good enough for parents to feel comfortable sending their children?” Melinda Katz, a Council member from Queens, said in questioning school officials. “I remember when Joel Klein became the chancellor,” the committee chair, Robert Jackson, said. “Back then, he used to talk about making every neighborhood school a good school where every parent would want to send their children. I don’t hear him talk about that anymore.”

Asked about the cards, union president Randi Weingarten provided a statement saying that she regretted the tactic. “We are often asked by the council for information and ideas about various issues. Additionally, when I am available, I often respond to what others testify to. In this instance, I was in Washington and couldn’t be at City Hall,” she said in the statement. “I am proud of the testimony we gave today, but I regret the manner in which our other concerns were shared.” (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…)

If you can, make sure to stop by the Harlem Armory tonight for an evening that charter school advocates are billing as the largest gathering of New York City parents ever in one space. The point is to show support for charter schools, which are proliferating in Harlem — to the delight of some parents, but not to the liking of a coterie of teachers and elected officials who have protested the schools’ growth.

Hosting tonight’s event are  Harlem Children’s Zone C.E.O. Geoffrey Canada and KIPP co-founder David Levin. Similar events have been held recently by Harlem Success Academy, the network of four charter schools founded by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz that has been at the center of the political fight. A Harlem Success official says she expects 6,000 7,000 charter school parents to attend tonight, plus some parochial school and traditional public school parents.

Also scheduled to attend are the rapper Lil Mama, whose adoptive mom is a board member of Harlem Success, Mayor Bloomberg, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and school choice advocate Howard Fuller.

Among the political currents swirling tonight will be Canada’s outspoken support for mayoral control of the public schools, which some Harlem elected officials have indicated they’d like to see curtailed; Levin’s ongoing saga with a group of his teachers who are trying to unionize; and Harlem Success’s struggle to get space inside a traditional public school. (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…)

Staff at the four KIPP charter schools in New York City are experimenting with a new way to improve their practice: Every Wednesday, they toss their Blackberries and their Gmail and go e-mail free.  KIPP calls the new tradition, part of a trend at businesses around the country, “Use of Time Wednesdays.”

KIPP is part of a group of elite charter schools that demand extra-long work hours of teachers along with other unique requests, like urging teachers to visit families at their homes after school hours. Supporters say the formula is responsible for the schools’ impressive test scores, but some worry it might not be sustainable as the teachers age and want to start their own families. Teachers at one KIPP school in Brooklyn, KIPP AMP, aired concerns about sustainability as part of their drive to organize into a union.

But KIPP’s co-founder and New York City superintendent, Dave Levin, said the e-mail abstinence days don’t have to do with improving what teachers call the “work/life balance.” He said the point is to enhance face time with students and between staff. “One of the key things to any organization being outstanding is everybody thinking really closely about how to use their time for the best benefit of the kids,” Levin said. “And, as you know, e-mail can take up a lot of time during the work day.”

The rule applies to teachers, who keep their famous cell phones on to stay in touch with parents and students, and to administrators, who have created automatic e-mail messages for themselves to explain why they won’t reply immediately. “KIPP NYC believes it is important to continuously evaluate what we do and how we do it,” an e-mail from one administrator reads. “To that end, each Wednesday is designated as ‘Use of Time Wednesday’, a day in which we focus on doing work away from e-mail.”

Via Flickr.

Here’s a fact of interest in the KIPP vs. teachers union fracas, which looks increasingly like a war: The people who have been the charter school network’s major benefactors are also among the Republican Party’s most generous contributors.

Donald and Doris Fisher, the aging founders of the Gap clothing chain, each donated to George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004; maxed out at the $2,300 limit to Rudy Giuliani in 2007; made regular donations to Norm Coleman, the Minnesota senator Al Franken eventually (presumably) unseated, and poured money into the Republican Party war chest, recent campaign contribution filings show.

The Fishers did send some money to Democrats, too, including $5,000 to a group tied to Rep. George Miller, the chair of the House education committee and a supporter of No Child Left Behind and charter schools. But the overwhelming majority of their giving (especially their federal giving) went to Republicans.

Dave Levin, a KIPP co-founder who got flak when he and students appeared on stage at the 2000 Republican National Convention, said the donations have no bearing on KIPP. “The Fisher’s political activities and their philanthropic involvement in education and KIPP are independent of each other,” he wrote in an e-mail message. (more…)