The dissolution of the ATR pool, the shrinking of the rubber rooms and an expedited discipline process, using student achievement data in the tenure granting process, salary compensation schedules that include raises for “merit” are all possible for the creative.
Some iteration of the District 79 Reorganization Plan, the Peer Review Plus Program (Article 21J), peer review (including teachers in the evaluation of probationary teachers), differentiated staffing similar to the Lead Teacher (MOA, 2005, para 13), perhaps some of the elements in the New Haven and Detroit contracts could produce a “win-win” contract. A contract that the mayor could laud as a national model and a contract that would satisfy the union membership.
Read the gory details at Ed in the Apple. GAG, GAG, GAG.
Michael Fiorillo wrote:
Someone I know works in District 79 (Alternative High Schools) and the reorganization (overseen at the time by Michael Mulgrew) was a disaster for teachers and students. Every teacher had to re-apply for their job, and fewer than half were re-hired. The resources are being cut back, students are seeing opportunities for schooling limited, and the district is infested with Ivy League and TFA know-nothing parasites.
Marjorie Stamberg responded:
Michael, your remarks on D 79 are well put! The recent NY Times profile on District 79 superintendent, Cami Anderson, a TFA "superstar" was revealing -- their most important "goal" -- not educating kids, but "moving up" the corporate school ladder with resume builders like the D79 "restructuring ' (i.e., closing schools, throwing teachers into the ATR pool, losing kids, denying special ed services, etc).
Roz Panepento, former chapter leader of ASHS, (Auxiliary Services for High Schools) one of the D79 schools which was first down-sized, then closed, has written a retrospective on the catastrophic 2007 reorganization of D79 and our battle to save staff positions and save kids. I would like to post it on some of the blogs, for colleagues information.
--Marjorie
It's important to keep our eyes on the prize. Our enemy is Bloomberg, Klein and the Dept. of Ed. (as political representatives of an elite that has no interest in teachers' or students' rights or education). Our enemies are NOT other teachers, be they TFA, Ivy League graduates (I am, too) or anything else, and whatever their current state of awareness or attitude toward us. Those can change in the course of events, and we may find ourselves on the same battle lines, one day. A scenario: the powers that be win the charter war, and the struggle turns to organizing the unorganized as management turns the screws... We should make efforts to reach out to these teachers as co-workers. No one said it would be easy. Otherwise, we are simply watering the seeds of division that have already been sown, and will flourish amid the existing garden of racism, mainstream vs. alternative, pension plan, "tenured vs. non-tenured", and other divides that have historically hindered teachers (and others...) from uniting and confronting our exploiters.
ReplyDeleteLycophidion,
ReplyDeleteYour point is well taken, however, you misconstrued what I wrote, or perhaps should have written more clearly. My point as that the district is infested with Ivy League and ex-TFA know nothings that are in administrative positions.
As for organizing charter school teachers, well yes, of course. But that does not eliminate the necessity of opposing charters as a public policy measure.