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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.

New York State United Teachers, the state chapter of the city teachers union, just announced that the union is on the brink of adding about 500 1,200 lifeguards into its fold. The lifeguards used to belong to another union, but they sought out NYSUT hoping it would offer “stronger representation,” according to the press release below.

Most of NYSUT’s 600,000 members are teachers (and most of those are in New York City) but the union also represents some groups that aren’t affiliated with schools, including hospital nurses, group home workers, and day care providers. Read background on how lifeguards got unionized here.

Here’s the NYSUT press release:

Lifeguards join NYSUT seeking a voice, better pay & improved safety
ALBANY, N.Y. February 25, 2009 — Along with their whistles, sun block and rescue buoys, some 1,200 state lifeguards, including nearly 500 who protect beachgoers on Long Island’s shores, will be carrying something else on their stands this summer — a NYSUT union card.

New York State United Teachers announced today that state-employed lifeguards who protect pools, lakes and beaches from Lake Erie to Montauk are affiliating with the 600,000-member union.  The NYSUT Board of Directors will formally vote to accept the new local union — known as the New York State Lifeguard Corps — on Saturday, ending a nearly six-year legal odyssey that started when lifeguards began seeking better pay, improved training and safety equipment, and a voice in their working conditions. (more…)

The city teachers union is accusing the elite KIPP charter school network of waging an intimidation campaign against teachers who are trying to unionize. The dispute began in January, when teachers at a Brooklyn KIPP school shocked the charter school world by petitioning to join the powerful United Federation of Teachers.

At the time, Dave Levin, KIPP’s cofounder and the superintendent of its New York City schools, indicated that he was open to working with the union — even though many KIPP supporters oppose working with unions, which they argue block schools’ ability to teach at-risk urban students by imposing strict work rules on schools. (KIPP stands for the Knowledge is Power Program.)

Now, the union is accusing Levin of urging teachers not to unionize and painting a bleak picture of what will happen if they do. The accusations are cataloged in two complaints the UFT sent to the state labor board in the last nine days arguing that KIPP is improperly blocking teachers’ ability to unionize. The latest complaint, filed Wednesday, adds to complaints first aired in a Sunday New York Times story reporting that KIPP is resisting the teachers’ organizing drive.

The complaints accuse a KIPP human resources official of telling teachers that he is concerned that the Brooklyn school will lose its affiliation with the KIPP network if they organize; they accuse the school’s founding principal, Ky Adderley, of sitting in the hallway every day to monitor teachers, and they accuse Levin of making a rare attendance at a staff meeting to encourage teachers to reverse their decision to unionize.

Levin and a KIPP spokesman did not return telephone messages requesting comment today. (more…)

A page from a manual helping charter school leaders resist unionization.

Labor-management relations may be off to a rocky start so far at KIPP AMP, the Brooklyn charter school where teachers shocked the charter school community last month by petitioning to join the powerful United Federation of Teachers.

The trouble is that KIPP management has so far declined to recognize the teachers’ petition, something the leaders have 30 days to do — or else defer to a more contentious process, the state labor board. Allowing the labor board to decide whether to recognize the petitions opens the door for KIPP to make a legal case against unionization. The 30-day period ends next Thursday.

It is not clear why KIPP is not recognizing the petitions, or whether the charter school network will do so by Thursday. Union officials said they recently sent the charter school network a reminder letter, restating the 30-day deadline, but KIPP has still not recognized. Dave Levin, the KIPP co-founder and superintendent of New York City KIPP schools who will have to make the final decision, has not returned my requests for comment.

Briscoe Smith, the senior vice president and counsel at a Manhattan-based foundation that helps charter schools fight unions (and is loathed by the UFT), said he has not consulted with KIPP. But he said it is possible for managers to challenge workers’ efforts to unionize. (more…)

This interesting comment went over the New York City public school parents list serve yesterday, from Robert Bowen, a parent of grown public school children and a member of iCOPE, Black New Yorkers for Educational Excellence, and the parent commission on school governance:

Moreover, the UFT is positioned as the legitimate opposition to mayoral control. Therefore, they alone will be the definers of the whys and wherefores of the disenting voices.

Reminds me of Sharpton being positioned as the voice of African American concerns.

A week from today, Mayor Bloomberg plans to release his proposed budget for the next fiscal year. Yesterday, though, he was in Albany to lash out at Governor Paterson’s proposed budget for the city, which he said would force him to fire thousands of city employees.

Could these layoffs hit the schools? In the future, yes, that is completely possible. But for now, mass firings are just a rhetorical tool. Lots of balls are still in the air, including the state budget, which won’t be finalized until the end of March; the city budget, which comes at the end of June; and the federal stimulus bill, which seems very likely to include some funds for schools. Any one of those could tip the balance away from the worst.

If the worst does come true, it will be the mayor, and not the state or the city Department of Education, who will ultimately determine whether teachers are fired. If the mayor — Bloomberg for now, maybe someone else in the future — authorizes layoffs, the teachers contract has strict guidelines dictating how they’d occur. The basic principle: Those hired most recently go first. (This is what happened the last time the city laid off teachers, during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s.)

If the mayor doesn’t order layoffs, schools could find themselves in an even tougher spot, because they’ll have to endure more budget cuts in other places, like programs and supplies. Though some principals tell me they’d rather handle budget cuts by eliminating teachers’ positions, not by cutting services, that might not be possible, either. The DOE forces principals to cover those teachers’ salaries until they find a job somewhere else in the system. Overall, barring a stimulus or Wall Street miracle, we’re looking at a bunch of possible futures, none of them good.

The Facebook campaign to make Weingarten senator.

The Times reports today that, early this morning, there were only two possible contenders to replace Hillary Clinton whom Governor Paterson had not called to say “Sorry, you’re not it”: Kirsten Gillibrand, a congresswoman from upstate New York, and Randi Weingarten, the local and now-national union president. Gillibrand is definitely Paterson’s pick, but just before that became clear, there was a groundswell to push Weingarten for the choice.

It didn’t come from teachers; it came from the gay and lesbian community. Above is the image from the Facebook campaign a BGLT group created on behalf of Weingarten, who publicly came out recently. There’s also this story on the Queerty blog.

Did Weingarten ever really consider taking the seat? At first, I thought she was having her name floated simply as a way to raise her image and political stature, not because she was serious. But lately I’ve been getting the sense from people Weingarten consults that she sincerely considered changing jobs. The fact that this Facebook campaign doesn’t hurt that idea.

United Federation of Teachers officials said Weingarten will have a comment on Gillibrand later today.

Hat tip to Examiner on the Facebook campaign.

I just got off the phone with one of the KIPP AMP charter school teachers who led the school’s organizing drive, Emily Fernandez. Maybe the most interesting part of our short conversation was the fact that, during it, Fernandez took two phone calls from students, both homework questions.

Thus is the world we live in now. I can only imagine what my type A peers in Montgomery County, Maryland, would have done with that kind of information, back in the day. Fernandez, for her part, said she likes it that students have her cell phone number. Answering their homework questions makes sure they learn best, she said.

Fernandez was more vague on the subject I called her to discuss: why she and other teachers decided to unionize. She said that she wants to improve the school’s “sustainability” — “making it a school that has longevity for kids and families aas opposed to not,” she said. Against some of the speculation about the school, she said that there hasn’t been an “extreme amount” of turnover at KIPP AMP since it opened. (The school is now in its fourth year.)

More from her:

We really want to see how much we can cooperate and make the school better. We’re not looking to antagonize and change everything. We all signed onto KIPP and support what they want to do.

From the KIPP Infinity web site.

Yesterday, I wondered what sparked the move by the teachers union to push a second KIPP charter school, KIPP Infinity, into contract negotiations. I said I didn’t know whether the union had taken this initiative on its own or whether it was working in concert with teachers at Infinity, which is considered one of the best KIPP schools in the country.

This morning, Dave Levin, the superintendent of New York City KIPP schools, told me that, as far as he knows, teachers at Infinity did not approach the union to ask for a contract. That goes along with this comment from someone identifying him/herself as a teacher at Infinity on Ezra Klein’s blog. It also suggests that one of the United Federation of Teachers’ most dramatic claims yesterday — that 3 of 4 KIPP charter schools in New York City are now represented by the union — is a little misleading.

KIPP Academy, the original KIPP school in New York City, is unionized only because it was not originally founded as a charter school but as a traditional public school. When it changed to charter status in 2000, it had to keep its unionization, according to the charter school law. KIPP Infinity, as I reported earlier, has also been represented by the union since it opened in 2005, though it doesn’t (yet) have a labor contract. Only KIPP AMP will unionize because teachers organized together and pushed for it.

There are a lot of questions floating around about the KIPP schools’ unionization, which, according to two major players, was a surprise even to Dave Levin, KIPP’s cofounder and the superintendent of New York City KIPP schools. People are guessing at exactly how high is turnover at KIPP AMP. (Levin told me this morning that he doesn’t know the exact data but promised to get back to me.) They’re wondering whether more elite charter schools will unionize next. (Open question, though charter teachers across the city were contacted about joining up with the union last year.)

The most important thing to follow, I think, is what kind of labor contract the KIPP teachers end up negotiating. How will the contract handle job protection? Will it go the extreme route of a virtual job for life, or will it allow for discrimination between effective and ineffective teachers? If it does the latter, what will be the definition of an “effective” teacher?

I got some hints of what’s to come — or at least what the union wants — in a conversation with Randi Weingarten, the union president, yesterday. Weingarten said she is not in favor of offering “tenure” that means a “job for life.” Instead, she said that a contract should force administrators to prove that they have “just cause” before they let an employee go. “Just cause” can mean the extreme case of, say, having sex with a student. Weingarten said that it can also mean the trickier matter of incompetence.

Here’s how Weingarten explained “just cause” to me:

Tenure has been interpreted very, very differently. But it shouldn’t be. Tenure was never intended to be a job for life. Tenure is supposed to be a process, due process, so that you promote excellence and you guide against arbitrariness.

What this sounds a lot like is the contract that Green Dot charter school teachers have in Los Angeles, finding a sweet spot between the extreme of so much job protection that bad teachers stay in the profession and so little that teachers feel constantly threatened. (more…)