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Teachers at Green Dot New York Charter School are getting a raise, a bonus, and a little less job security.

These are some of the modifications that are set to appear in a two-year renewal of Green Dot’s landmark contract with the United Federation of Teachers. Green Dot offered its teachers a 28-page “thin contract” a year after the school opened in 2008, leaving out many of the work rules and policies – including tenure and seniority-based layoffs – that are found in the bulky union deal with the Department of Education.

That contract expired in August and Green Dot and union officials have spent the last few months hammering out a new version. It was tentatively approved by board members on Sept. 26, but details of the contract had not been shared with teachers until this week.

In a statement issued today, the chief negotiators, Leo Casey, a UFT vice president, and Gideon Stein, who serves on the school’s Board of Trustees, shared details of the contract.

Under the new terms, the staff will receive a 3 percent raise each of the next two years, amounting to what will be 20 percent above the current salaries in the Department of Education. Last year’s teachers will also receive a $2000 bonus because of the school’s high performance. The school’s first students are now seniors so graduation data isn’t available, but 95 percent of students have passed the Regents exams they have taken, according to the Green Dot web site.

“The teachers and other staff are being paid more in recognition of being part of a very successful school,” Stein said.

In one concession, teachers will no longer be able to use an independent grievance process in their first year. Instead, they can be fired any time during their first year for any reason. Once the first year is complete, any grievance would return to being handled by an independent arbiter. (more…)

The city teachers union declared this afternoon that its contract talks with the city are deadlocked and asked a state employment panel to intervene.

The move takes the negotiations one step closer to fact-finding and arbitration, a complex process that observers say could mean nearly a year before a new contract is reached.

“Despite weeks of meetings and discussions, we have not been able to make real progress in our efforts to reach a new contract with the Department of Education,” United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said in a statement.

“The UFT has no choice but to reach out to a neutral third party to help resolve the differences that are preventing us from a new agreement that is fair to our members and to the parents and children who rely on the New York City public schools,” he said.

A spokesman for the city, Jason Post, would not comment on the UFT’s move.

The declaration of impasse comes at a sensitive time for the relationship between the teachers union and the city. The city is currently pushing for legislative changes that would change how teachers are evaluated and make it easier for them to be fired. (more…)

The city’s teachers union offered the first glimpse of its contract demands tonight, but remained silent on the possible pay raise many have predicted — and on whether the union plans to sweeten its chances at a good contract by endorsing Michael Bloomberg.

The glimpse came at a meeting of the delegate assembly, the union’s ruling body, where members were given a seven page list of demands that fell under categories such as compensation and health.

Union president Michael Mulgrew addressed the crowd, which spilled out of the room and into the hallway of 52 Broadway, the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers. The event was closed to the press, and union members were told not to share the seven-page document with reporters.

According to several in attendance, Mulgrew lectured on the grim state of the city’s economy and the need to get the union’s new contract finalized quickly. One teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, said Mulgrew seemed to be pushing the union to reach a deal quickly, before the economy worsens. “They’re presenting it like there’s this brief window of time, because of the economy, in which to rush the contract through,” he said. (more…)

On his first day of work, Mulgrew visited teacher Carla Greene at P.S. 329 in Brooklyn. (Courtesy of Miller Photography/UFT)

New York City’s teachers union is gearing up for its contract negotiations in the fall, sending out thousands of questionnaires to poll its members about what they want.

The negotiations will be the first serious test of newly elected UFT president Michael Mulgrew who, in the survey’s cover letter, warns that the talks will be “tough” at a time when the city is slashing budgets and laying off employees.

The survey, which at a bulging 35 pages long barely fits in its return envelope, lists a series of desirable changes to the contract under headings like “Class Size,” and “Respect and Professionalism,” and asks respondents to rate the importance of each on a scale of one to five. It must be returned by August 13, and may surprise more than a few union members who could return from summer vacations to find the deadline has passed.

Absent from the survey is any mention of tenure or the Absent Teacher Reserve — the pool of over 2,000 teachers who have lost their jobs and have yet to find work within the city’s school system.

“The questionnaire was designed by our negotiating committee, and it’s a key part of the process because it allows members to weigh in on the issues important to them,” UFT spokesman Brian Gibbons wrote in an email. “The information we’ll get from this survey will help us shape our goals, priorities and demands as we move forward with collective bargaining.” (more…)

Mayor Bloomberg and UFT President Randi Weingarten announced a tentative contract deal last night, just in time for Weingarten’s announcement Wednesday. The agreement would roll back pension benefits for newly hired employees, but preserve benefits for current teachers. It would also scrap the two work days before Labor Day that were added to the work year in the last contract negotiation.

Not mentioned in either Bloomberg’s press release or Weingarten’s e-mail to teachers (sent late last night and obtained thanks to a helpful reader): the small matter of the $81 million-a-year Absent Teacher Reserve. That’s the pool of teachers who are the losers in the system’s new hiring market — but haven’t been able to find positions at schools.

The union and the city struck a deal to try to drain the pool in November, but the number of reserve teachers stayed basically the same.

This appears to be Weingarten’s penultimate loose end before she leaves the city to work at the national teachers union full-time. The final deal she must announce: A contract agreement with the union-represented Green Dot charter school in the Bronx, which officials are unveiling this afternoon.

Here’s how Weingarten described the new citywide labor agreement in an e-mail to teachers, followed by Bloomberg’s press release: (more…)

I was just wondering whatever happened to that Green Dot charter school contract that Steve Barr told me was imminent kind of a while ago. Then we got this advisory from the UFT:

Contract Signing Ceremony for Green Dot Charter High School Indicates New Era of Teacher Union/Charter School Partnership

WHO:            American Federation of Teachers President and United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten; Steve Barr, founder and CEO of Green Dot Public Schools, Inc. and Green Dot New York Charter School Chairman Jeffrey T. Leeds.

WHAT:         Contract signing ceremony for the groundbreaking three-year contract agreement for the Green Dot New York Charter School in the Bronx with Green Dot Public Schools, the prominent charter school operator and educational reform organization based in Los Angeles, CA, and the United Federation of Teachers, the labor union representing New York City’s 100,000 public school educators. (more…)

In a reminder that only six months remain before the current city teachers contract expires, the teachers’ union is now telephone-polling members with questions like “How do you feel about seniority?” and “How do you feel about paying for health care?”

The teacher-blogger NYC Educator first reported the questions on his blog yesterday, relaying questions that were posed to an unnamed teacher in a phone call.

One of the most prescient questions on that list asks teachers when they’d like contract negotiations to end — before or after the 2009 mayoral election? The contract is set to expire in October, and the election is in November. Negotiating a contract before the election would mean working with Mayor Bloomberg for sure, rather than whoever wins the 2009 mayoral race. It could also offer a boost to the mayor’s re-election campaign, as happened in 2005.

Nailing down a contract before the 2009 election could also have an impact on the debate on mayoral control. Some have suggested that the union could, for instance, make a concession on its demanded checks and balances to the mayor’s power over schools now in exchange for help in the contract later. (more…)