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For the second time, the state’s labor relations board has ruled that the city must accept mediation in its teacher evaluation talks with the United Federation of Teachers.

The board, the Public Employees Relations Board, first decided in March to heed the UFT’s request and appoint a mediator to broker negotiations about teacher evaluations in the 33 schools that until December had been receiving federal School Improvement Grants. But the city appealed the decision, arguing that it was no longer planning to negotiate a separate evaluation system for just those schools.

Now the board has affirmed its stance and once again ordered the city into mediated talks with the union.

When the board first granted the request, its director of conciliation said that because the city had not yet formally applied to switch the schools to a reform model that does not require new teacher evaluations, it was still obligated to seek a deal for the 33 schools. Today, the board ruled that the city’s bid to switch the overhaul model — to “turnaround,” in a swap that the state has not approved — “does not nullify its obligations.”

City lawyers are regrouping after the setback. “We strongly disagree with the board’s ruling and are reviewing our legal options,” said Department of Education spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti in a statement. (more…)

Tisch spoke on a GothamSchools panel in 2011.

Breaking her silence on the city’s plan to overhaul 33 struggling schools, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said late Wednesday that she believes “turnaround” is a political strategy, not an educational one.

“There’s a fight going on here that has nothing to do with what’s going on at the school,” she said. “It’s a labor dispute between labor and management and has nothing to do with the kids.”

Tisch was referring to the stalemate between the Bloomberg administration and the teachers union that gave rise to the city’s turnaround plans. Bloomberg announced the plans in January as a way to get federal funds for the schools even though the city and union had not been able to agree on new teacher evaluations, a requirement of less aggressive strategies already in place. The turnaround strategy, which require the schools to be closed and reopened after changing their names and half of their teachers, has only deepened enmity between the city and UFT.

On Wednesday, Tisch visited one of the schools, William E. Grady Career and Technical Education High School, and said she was impressed by the changes underway, which she attributed to its principal, Geraldine Maione. The school received millions of federal dollars in the last two years while undergoing “transformation,” which funded extra tutoring, additional programs, and new technology.

“This is a school that is moving in a really fine direction,” Tisch said of Grady, which received a B on its most recent city progress report. ”This is the wrong message to this school at this time. Don’t be so dismissive of the efforts going on in that building.”

It was Tisch’s second visit to the school. Last week, she brought fellow Regent Kathleen Cashin for a visit that was scheduled after she met Maione in February at a principals union event featuring Diane Ravitch. On Wednesday, Maione said, Tisch and Cashin brought State Education Commissioner John King along with them. (more…)

The “strong possibility” of a school bus strike that the city raised the alarm about back in November hasn’t come to pass. But it has still caused a headache at the Department of Education.

A message sent to principals last week noted that MetroCards distributed to schools at the time were being used, even though they were meant to be handed out only in the case of a bus strike.

Those MetroCards were disabled last week and the city asked principals, perhaps quixotically, to collect the ones that had already made their way into circulation.

“If you find that the MetroCards delivered in these packages were inadvertently distributed, please collect them immediately,” read the note tucked into the Principals Weekly newsletter.

The message was very different in tone from the alarmed dispatches sent to principals — three times, one principal told GothamSchools — the day Mayor Bloomberg held a hastily planned press conference to announce the strike threat. At the time, city officials said the union that represents bus drivers had threatened to strike immediately, a charge that union officials disputed. They said the union had raised the possibility of a strike — as it had repeatedly in recent years, without action — but not set a timeline.

Teachers and staff members of Fahari Academy Charter School officially belong to the United Federation of Teachers now.

In October, the staff of the two-year-old middle school, which has posted lackluster test scores and struggled to retain teachers, voted to join the union. But before they could become card-carrying members, either the school’s board or a state labor relations committee had to sign off on the arrangement.

This week, the school’s board gave the union effort the go-ahead, hashing out a brief agreement with the UFT that endorses the union as teachers’ sole bargaining agent. The outcome wasn’t unexpected: When the staff voted to unionize, members of the school’s board signaled that they were open to discussing the teachers’ desire to organize.

Today, the board’s director, Dirk Tillotson, told me that the board saw that the teachers had met the requirements for unionization and that the most prudent path forward included recognition. Tillotson is a lawyer who runs a charter school incubation program for the state’s charter schools association.

“We could have dragged it out in the way that many of these other campaigns had been dragged out,” Tillotson said. “We’d rather to move past the fight about unionization and make it about student achievement. … Looking at student progress on the report card, we didn’t do well. I don’t think anyone can be happy if we have another year like that.” (more…)

School buses at Coney Island in 2008.

For Simon Jean-Baptiste, a veteran school bus driver who belongs to Local 1181, the city’s announcement Friday that his union could go on strike at any moment was news to him.

“It’s the city that we heard that from,” Jean-Baptiste said today.

Jean-Baptiste, a former vice president in the union, said he had no idea there was any kind of citywide strike threat until he first heard about it from media reports prompted by a last-minute press conference called by Mayor Bloomberg on Friday. Bloomberg warned that Local 1181′s leadership opposed the city’s plans for a new contract for pre-kindergarten bus drivers because the city would not guarantee job security for experienced drivers. As a result, he said, an “immediate” strike was possible.

At the same time, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott sent a comprehensive plan to principals for how they should handle a strike should it occur.

Hours later, Local 1181 President Michael Cordiello said in a statement that a strike over seniority rights was “likely” but not imminent. Today, Cordiello said in a statement that the union was beginning to weigh its options.

“We do not want to strike, but we have been forced to keep our options open by cost-cutting proposals by Mayor Bloomberg,” he said.

As buses rolled up to schools on time this morning, and with no strike imminent, some are questioning the urgency with with Bloomberg and Walcott presented the threat. (more…)

School buses at Coney Island in 2008.

The bus drivers union that Mayor Bloomberg warned earlier today could wage an imminent strike on the school bus system confirmed that a strike was “likely” but disputed that there were “immediate plans to do so.”

A labor dispute between the city and the union, the Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 1181, is over job protections for school bus drivers that would essentially guarantee employment for current employee regardless of which bus contractors win an upcoming contract for busing services.

The city says it considers the strike illegal and is asking the National Labor Relations Board, which adjudicates conflict between employers and employees, to seek a court injunction to stop it. A strike would affect 152,000 of the city’s 1.1 million students, including more than 50,000 students with special needs, according to the city.

At a hastily assembled press conference today, Mayor Bloomberg said the union had not officially informed the city that it would strike but had signaled the intention strongly in conversations beginning Wednesday. The conversations took place because the city said it planned to announce that it would consider hiring new companies to provide pre-kindergarten busing. That announcement happened today.

“They were very clear to our people that they would intentionally strike the system,” Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott said about Local 1181 at the press conference.

In a statement, Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 1181 President Michael Cordiello confirmed the threats but said it would not happen right away and he criticized Bloomberg for painting a doomsday scenario.  (more…)

Yet another charter school is on the path to unionization after a majority of its teachers voted to seek representation from the United Federation of Teachers.

Teachers at Fahari Academy Charter School, a third-year school in Crown Heights that currently serves fifth through seventh grades, announced the vote in a press release today. They said they hoped the decision would “help foster a positive school culture.”

“The union is vital for Fahari,” teacher Jeffrey Embleton said in the release. “Having union recognition will give us the voice we need to best serve our students.”

Fahari had its charter authorized by the Department of Education in 2008 and opened its doors in 2009. In its inaugural report card, released last month, the school received a D, including an F on the student progress component. In April, the New York Post reported that the school was trying to expel a student with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for offenses such as name-calling and roughhousing.

The staff notified the school’s executive director, Catina Venning, of their vote in a letter today. At the same time, the UFT has begun the legal process that will allow the union to negotiate as a third-party bargaining unit for a contract for Fahari teachers. (more…)