Part 2 after the jump.

Teachers and staff at three Civitas charter schools overwhelmingly ratified their first contract today, crediting a collaborative negotiations process for achieving the breakthrough agreement.

The three-year collective bargaining agreement at Civitas’ Ralph Ellison Campus, Northtown Academy and Wrightwood Campus is the first of its kind for charter schools in Chicago. The Chicago Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff is the union that represents nearly 140 teachers at the three schools.

“This contract puts students first, gives teachers a voice and a seat at the table, and makes parents and the community partners in education,” said Emily Mueller, a high school Spanish teacher at Northtown Academy and chair of the negotiations.

Read the entire press release here.

The 29 page agreement breaks vital new ground, and not simply because it brings together leading forces in the ranks of the charter school movement and teacher unionism. Just as importantly, the contract embodies a new model of labor relations in education, based on a disarmingly simple proposition: that a school which respects, nurtures and supports teacher professionalism in all of its work will provide the best education for students.

“At its core, this contract is about shared expectations and shared responsibility. Our educators are being asked to take a leading role in the success of their school, and they’re being provided with the professional supports needed to help make that success possible,” said UFT and AFT President Randi Weingarten.

“Green Dot has had great success in working with the unionized teaching force in Los Angeles and we are looking forward to continuing our partnership with Randi Weingarten and the United Federation of Teachers in New York,” said Green Dot Public Schools founder and Chairman, Steve Barr.

Here are the main features of the agreement:

• A Just Cause Standard for discipline and dismissal, in effect from the first day of employment for teachers and guidance counselors, and a system of Progressive Discipline.

• Due Process, with a four step grievance process that culminates in binding arbitration.

• Professional Mediation, with a broad scope that allows it to be used to address any school based issue or disagreement.

• Educators work an un-timed “Professional Day” which requires that they be on-site during the student day, staff meetings, professional development, and preparation time. The school year has a base of the same number of days as the annual NYC Department of Education calendar, with eight additional staff development days. A school Calendar and Programming Committee, with the majority of its members democratically chosen by the UFT chapter from its members, has the authority to reconfigure the NYC Department of Education school calendar, with the ratification of the majority of the staff.

• Reflecting the longer “professional day” and work year, educators are paid a 14% Pay Premium above the NYC Department of Education salary scale, with a top salary of over $114,000. 4% of the school’s budget is reserved for Stipends, paid to educators for services beyond their usual responsibilities. A Stipend Committee, with the majority of its members democratically chosen by the UFT chapter from its members, makes all the decisions on how that stipend budget is spent.

• The contract sets a Maximum Class Size of 30 and a maximum student-teacher ratio for the entire school of 20 to 1. For the first time in any educational collective bargaining agreement, the contract sets a Maximum Student Load for teachers of 130 students. [As a point of comparison, a NYC Department of Education high school teacher in the main academic subjects could see as many as 170 students every day.]

• To provide for Teacher Voice and Leadership, the contract establishes a number of school committees, with the majority of their members democratically chosen by the UFT chapter from its members. In addition to the already cited Stipend and Calendar and Programming Committees, there are Leadership, Professional Development, Hiring and Budget Committees.

• Professional Evaluation: Teachers and guidance counselors will be evaluated based on Green Dot’s system for professional evaluation and support which includes the development of personal goals, the evaluation of progress against those goals, and the development of up to two intervention/corrective action plans before disciplinary action can be taken.  The principles of this system are drawn from the standards of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

• Benefits: Employees participate in a GHI and HIP plan modeled after the plan for NYC municipal employees, the UFT Welfare Fund, and the Teacher Retirement System, the city’s pension plan for teachers.

• Leaves of Absences: Employees can take up to a 10 month leave for childbirth and rearing, up to 200 days of which can be paid and up to 6 months with full benefits.  Other eligible leaves include military, jury duty, bereavement, and religious observance.

The ethos of the contract is one that places a premium on teacher voice and democracy in the workplace. It is rooted in the firm conviction that schools are successful when they recruit and retain the very best professional educators and give them the means to educate their students. In response to a question at the signing, Barr said that the existence of the just cause standard and due process were a strong “comparative advantage” for Green Dot in recruiting the best career educators who do not want to go into the “at will mosh pits” of some charter schools.

Here is the actual agreement [Green Dot Contract], and its appendices [Appendix A: Salaries; Appendix B: Teacher Evaluations; Appendix C: Staff Evaluations].

Under this agreement, the pension and health benefits of all UFT members — in service and retiree — remain completely intact. In particular, the agreement preserves the hard-won age 55 retirement pension. After completing ten years of service, future members will pay an additional contribution for these benefits. Effective September 2009, UFT members will no longer have to work the two days before the Labor Day weekend.

“This agreement is a win for everyone,” said UFT President Randi Weingarten. “We are all very concerned about the heavy losses our pension system has incurred during this economic crisis and the looming cuts for schools. No only does this deal help shore up the city budget with new savings, which will hopefully be used for schools, it also maintains the age 55 retirement benefit that we fought many years to achieve and returns us to the tradition of teachers and students starting school after Labor Day, something that our members, particularly those with families, very much wanted.”

The Context
As a result of the worst economic crisis in the United States since the Great Depression, public services – including public education – have been subjected to draconian budget cuts, public sector workers have been laid-off and public sector unions have come under pressure to diminish the salaries, health benefits and pension benefits of their members.

From the start of this economic crisis, the UFT has identified two primary objectives which have guided our response to this crisis: protecting the quality of the educational services provided to New York City public school children and securing the economic livelihood and professional status of our members.

The UFT has rightly rejected efforts to raise the retirement age of New York City public school educators and otherwise reduce their pension benefits – efforts that have grown in intensity since two large state public employee unions earlier this month negotiated agreements which included such measures.

The Agreement
Here are the details of the agreement:

• Pension and health benefits for all UFT members — in service, retiree and future — remain intact.
• All UFT members who have been required to report to begin work on the Thursday before Labor Day will report back to work the Tuesday after Labor Day, effective September 2009.
• The 55/25 and 55/27 early retirement benefits are preserved.
• All UFT members will continue to receive the 7% guaranteed annualized rate of return for the fixed investment option in the voluntary Tax-Deferred Annuity (TDA) programs for BERS and TRS members. The additional 1.25% rate above the state-guaranteed 7% will no longer be available, a modification that reflects the downturn in investment income after the stock market collapse last year.
• New UFT-represented employees will continue to have the same pension benefits as current members, but they will make additional contributions for these benefits — a return to the old Tier Four contribution rules. Breaking it down, under the 55/27 retirement plan, new employees will make a 4.85% pension contribution for 27 years and 1.85% thereafter, up from the current 4.85% contribution for 10 years and then 1.85% through 27 years.
• New UFT-represented employees will become vested in the pension plan after 10 years of service, rather than the current five. The impact of this change is modest since most UFT-represented educators can elect to withdraw their pension contributions as a lump-sum payment if they quit during their first 10 years on the job.
• New UFT-represented employees will be eligible for retiree health insurance coverage after 15 years instead of 10 years.

Read the actual agreement here.

This “sick day” allowance is realistic and makes common sense. It is fair though not generous.

Research has shown that adults who work with children have a far greater than average exposure to common infections. It has been statistically demonstrated that they are even more at risk than are doctors, nurses and hospital workers. Many schools are overheated and poorly ventilated in winter because windows can’t be opened and the furnace is on full blast.

Kids often cough and sneeze openly while jammed in narrow hallways during change of classes or are confined in the close quarters of a trailer or classroom. A percentage of these kids may come from countries from which there is added risk of proliferation of disease because poverty and the lack of available quality medical care may have precluded children from being properly immunized.

Good people get sick or hurt. It is not “unprofessional” or insubordinate to get the flu or to require surgery. And it is not for the principal to judge whether a person claiming sickness is sick enough to be absent.

But some principals are now sending letters to staff members warning them of the consequences of future absence after those educators have been out 5 or 6 days over many months. The letters are not for file, but they are outrageously provocative. Principals have been known to give “U” ratings for poor attendance based on a few extra days during which the staff member was critically ill.

Grim statistics indicate that these ratings are among the most difficult to overturn regardless of the merits of the case and even if the educator has no history of attendance abuse. The rating can threaten their livelihood, or at least cost them significant income because of frozen salary steps or ineligibility for per session employment.

By showing callousness, some principals feel they are simply fulfilling the DOE’s implicit mandate for being a strong leader who makes tough decisions.

Our contracts are legal documents and the hard-fought rights and protections that are built into them are integral to the dignity of our workplace. There can be no consent to their abrogation.

Passivity and acquiescence are inexcusable. If they are adopted as optional responses, then countless other clauses of the contract will eventually be targeted. In some schools, certain rules for programming and other areas are already being eroded by lack of enforcement.

It is imperative that the school chapter thwart any principal who tries to create contractual “loop holes” where there are none. If you indulge in appeasement, then those “loop holes” will eventually rip our contractual garment to shreds.

It takes inordinate courage to assert basic freedoms under the Klein era. But it is absolutely vital to the survival and prestige of our profession for us to stand firm and never give in to brute intimidation.

Is your staff united? Do they stick together against invidious attempts to divide and conquer? Do they practice a “one for all/all for one” philosophy? Some individuals may, for either idealistic or cynical reasons, choose to “go it alone” and work out a secret personalized deal to advance themselves even at the expense of their professional colleagues. That danger must be met head-on.

Never seek conflict. Always pursue harmony in all your dealings at school. Be a force for conciliation and partnership. But if you are forced to fight, then do so with all the tenacity and cunning that your collective discernment and passion demands.

Your school is the home front. That is where your defense begins. The whole union will fight with you as you fight for yourselves.

It’s not worth reading but it’s worth seeing the cover of the The Leadership Limbo, which has a caricature of UFT Prez Randi Weingarten, dressed as a union thug, forcing former NYC Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew to dance low and backward under a limbo stick. It’s probably actionable. It’s certainly nasty.

This big new study, which must have involved dozens of hapless junior researchers in a truly cynical enterprise, rates the 50 largest school districts on how much freedom its administrators have from “restrictive” union contracts.

We can proudly say that NYC was 36th of 50, putting it in the “bottom 15″ and meaning the UFT insists on such draconian measures as equal pay, pay for overtime work, and reasonable protections against arbitrary administrative actions.Other signs that the book is exploiting race: one of its featured findings is that “nearly 10 percent of the nation’s African-American K-12 students population attend school in the 15 lowest-scoring districts–making these contracts major barriers to more equal educational opportunity.” Aside from the fact that African-Americans mostly live in large urban districts, making believe that labor contracts are barriers to equal educational opportunity is despicable.

Today, in its weekly Education Gadfly, Fordham dispelled any lingering doubts about its rightward turn by proposing that Mike Huckabee be the next secretary of education, under a president John McCain. This is a guy who seriously wants the schools to teach creationism and disavows evolution.

This is an extremely troubling sign of what to expect should John McCain become president, and it should scare every Democrat into campaigning for the party’s candidate. As to the anti-labor screed, it’s hard to imagine that it will have real influence over anyone other than those who already hate teachers and labor.

Whether it’s called pay-for-performance, merit pay, or incentive pay, the idea that the way all kids will achieve is to pay one or two “great” teachers a lot more than everyone else in the school is rapidly gaining favor. But in New York City last month, the United Federation of Teachers and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced a different approach: a groundbreaking, voluntary school-wide bonus program designed to raise student achievement in schools serving our most needy children.

Attempts to change the teacher compensation system are not new. Earlier efforts failed largely because they were imposed on teachers rather than designed with them, and they often used quotas and subjective evaluations to identify deserving recipients. Plans that paid more to individual teachers bred suspicion, secrecy and unhealthy competition in a profession that succeeds when educators share best practices and engage in collective problem solving.

The New York City plan addresses those problems. It has collaboration, not competition, at its core. It recognizes that student academic success depends on a team effort — that the work of the first-grade teacher lays the foundation for the third graders’ math prowess, or that the speech therapist enables the hearing-impaired child to master phonics.

Equally important, the program gives school-based educators a voice. They vote each year whether or not to participate in the program. They elect their colleagues as their representatives on a school compensation committee. And they determine how the money will be distributed among the staff.

Under this unique plan, participating schools that meet improvement benchmarks established by the city in consultation with the union will receive $3,000 per educator. A school compensation committee comprised of an equal number of administrators and front-line educators will decide by consensus how to allocate the money. The committees can decide to give everybody the same amount, or they can award differing amounts to different staffers, as long as everyone shares. That means the people who really know the school make those decisions, not some distant computer crunching numbers.

Of course, pay changes alone won’t boost student learning. Good teachers will tell you they need smaller class sizes, updated facilities, time to work together and a safe, respectful environment for kids to flourish.

Our school-wide recognition program is a model of what can be achieved when unions and school management work together as equal partners toward common goals. Cooperation is its hallmark. Together, the union and the administration hammered out this agreement. Together, we will identify the eligible schools and the criteria for school-wide bonuses. And together, classroom educators will have a voice and a vote, along with their principals and other administrators, in the distribution of any awards.

This is a groundbreaking way for educators to feel invested in their school’s success. Research shows that schools that develop esprit d’corps, including those that have traditionally been hard to staff, are better able to recruit and retain qualified teachers and have a better academic track record.

Much like the debate over charter schools, the notion of differentiated pay for teachers has been misrepresented by critics of teacher unions who chronically oversimplify the complex challenge of educating children in the 21st century. By opening two of its own charter schools and demonstrating how to do it right, the UFT tried to change the charter school debate by stripping it of ideological overtones.

With this new school-wide bonus program, we hope to similarly refocus the misguided debate over ‘merit pay.’ Treating schools like corporations, teachers like sales agents and students like widgets ignores what matters most in teaching and learning. In shaping any compensation system, acknowledging the unique realities of teaching is key, as is creating systems that foster a collegial, supportive environment so both educators and students can thrive.

Joe Torre reached the post season playoffs the last twelve years . . . for Yankee management it wasn’t good enough. Steinbrenner and company offered him a contract with a substantial pay cut with performance incentives for reaching the post season.

Torre turned it down!

He especially objected to the incentives – the assumption that somehow he could coach better in the playoffs for monetary incentives. Incentives were an insult.

Torre has a lot in common with teachers – will teachers teach “better” when offered incentives?

At least for teachers salary is based on years of service and the newly agreed upon “bonuses” are over and above base salaries.

Actually the NYC Agreement, to a degree, mirrors what happens with post season money for baseball players. The players themselves decide how to divvy up post season dollars. The players determine full shares and fractional shares – for players, for players who only play part of the season, coaches and other staff.

Schools themselves will have to vote whether to participate in the program and elected representatives of the UFT Chapter, and Management, will have to agree upon the division of the bonus cash, i.e., shares.

There is a certain irony that the Randi Weingarten negotiated the bonus agreement as the Shanker biography, “Tough Liberal,” is rolled out. The bonus plan is truly Shankeresque.

The drumbeat for merit pay, aka pay for performance, is resonating across the country, from the draft NCLB legislation, the foundations, the blogs and the NYC school leadership.

The NYC bonus plan moves the focus from individual teacher bonuses to school wide bonuses.

The individual pay for performance ideologues ignore the reams of research that point to collaboration as the key to increasing performance.

Perhaps, just perhaps school systems will begin to provide supports for teacher collaboration – the key to school improvement.

Brian Lehrer at WNYC interviews UFT President Randi Weingarten.


A look at the gender equity aspect of 55/25, here at Edwize:

One of the important benefits of the 55-25 pension improvement that is often lost in discussion is that it creates greater equity for women teachers, by making it easier for them to retire at an age comparable to their male colleagues. This is an issue of fairness, but it is also a question of building a strong profession of career educators. Women will be more likely to commit to teaching as a life-long profession if they know they will not be penalized for taking a few years off to raise their own children.

and over at Ed in the Apple:

The teacher who took two full child care leaves reaches age 55 with 26 years of service. Under the current law they can not retire with full benefits until they reach 30 years of service . . . [at] age 59.

The newly negotiated pension agreement will give the teacher referenced above the right to retire at age 55 – with 26 years of service.

Ed at the AFT Blog Let’s Get It Right take a closer look:

Another issue is that individual merit pay can pit staff against each other. I’ve read accounts of experiments in the UK that underline this. The city is implementing a team-based reward. The hope is that this will create opportunities (and incentives) for collaboration and teamwork. The program has due process. It only comes into effect if the principal of the school and 55 percent of the UFT staff agree to it. Finally, if I’m reading this right, the plan covers not just teachers, but teaching assistants and a number of key administrative staff as well. A labor-management committee will, if a school meets the benchmark, figure out how to distribute the money, and again, the membership in the school has a chance to ratify the plan.

AFT issued a call to dramatically improve that [teacher] compensation. But I’m under no illusion that we can achieve that goal by simply doing more of the same. This is a step toward a system that both does something different and that can empower the people that do the work.

Can you guess who made this point?

In the schools, it is a much more collaborative effort. It’s really hard to tell whether it is just you or whether it is other teachers in the schools that support you. They in fact may have kids for parts of the day that you don’t have them.

AFT President Edward McElroy takes a broad view:

The United Federation of Teachers and Mayor Bloomberg have worked together to develop a locally negotiated, voluntary, schoolwide initiative that rewards and promotes the collaborative work environment favored by educators. Such initiatives have long been advocated by the AFT. The agreement also provides pension equity for all current and prospective teachers and paraprofessionals. We know that changes in compensation systems work only if, as in this system, they have been developed with—and have the buy-in of—teachers directly affected by the changes.

ACORN Education Committee Chair Julia Boyd thinks school bonuses encourage working together:

The money will go to the entire school – not just individual teachers. A team, made up of teachers and administrators, will decide how best to allocate the money at their local school to continue to boost performance. It’s an incentive for an entire school’s staff – teachers and principals – to come together and improve student achievement.

The agreement announced on Wednesday by the UFT and Mayor Bloomberg will mean more money for New York’s neediest schools and real incentives to help educators succeed. Kudos to UFT President Randi Weingarten for her willingness to think big and develop just the kind of innovative approach that might actually help retain our best teachers in some of our toughest schools.

The plan isn’t merit pay. It’s $20 million for 200 of New York’s lowest performing schools. The money will go to the entire school – not just individual teachers. A team, made up of teachers and administrators, will decide how best to allocate the money at their local school to continue to boost performance. It’s an incentive for an entire school’s staff – teachers and principals – to come together and improve student achievement. And it recognizes that talented professionals who choose to work in some of New York’s toughest schools need and deserve support for the work that they do.

Some people are already attacking the plan – saying it will further encourage teachers to teach to tests and will put added pressure on schools to increase scores. They don’t get it. The single most important thing we can do to help students succeed is to find a way to retain our best and most committed teachers in our toughest schools. It’s a savvy investment that will boost morale and a simple recognition that teachers in these schools deserve some credit when their students succeed.

Every time anyone does anything bold in public education the knives come out. But it’s important that we step back and give Randi and the UFT credit for being the first union in any major city in the country that’s willing to experiment and slaughter some sacred cows to improve student performance. We’re going to need more bold thinking and more willingness to experiment if we are ever going to turn things around at low performing schools. The UFT calls itself a union of professionals. Today it really earned the name.