As others have said this is a ploy to allow the school district to get rid of bad union teachers and I think that's a good thing. People need to start realize this isn't a union issue it's a PUBLIC union issue and the public unions have become a problem.
Public unions have not proven themselves in the same way as private unions have. Private unions were (and in some cases still are) a good tool to protect employees against corporate greed run a muck.
But as we've seen with our over spending governments the inclination of the government is to be overly generous with people like teachers and that's now being abused.
This isn't a liberal/conservative issue. FDR is still the most liberal president we've ever had and even he said public unions were "unthinkable and intolerable". The head of the AFL-CIO was against public unions in the 50s.
"[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."
Isn't that exactly what's happening right now? Look at this quote from the article...
"This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied."
Isn't picking and choosing teachers exactly what has to be done in order to keep good teachers and get rid of bad ones? How out of control do you have to be when you don't acknowledge the fact that the school should be able to pick which teachers it thinks are best?
As others have said this is a ploy to allow the school district to get rid of bad union teachers and I think that's a good thing.
It's probably not. They probably have no idea who the bad teachers are. It's most likley an attempt to get rid of the most senior teachers, regardless of ability. And political -- an attempt to kill organizations that tend to be Democratic (this would be equivalent to trying to dismantle fundamentalist churches, as their Republican leaning).
"is to be overly generous with people like teachers"
That seems to be the talking point nowadays. But, having a lot of family and friends that are teachers, just isn't true from what I know. I'm not sure where you think the abuse is coming in (benefits, pay?)
Most teachers salaries max out quite low compared to what could be made in private industry. And even their benefits aren't that much better than private industry, if at all. I have paid less for health benefits for the past 4 years in various jobs (for companies both small and large) and I always had better benefits than my sister, aunt, g/f, etc.
Schools should absolutely be able to pick teachers that are both good and bad. But a blanket firing shows a complete lack of respect and lack of commitment to fixing a problem.
And then you have really good teachers who wanted to teach for free but wasn't allowed to (they finally, wisely relented) because of some dumb technicality:
(p.s. yes, he was my middle school teacher, and he is an AWESOME teacher)
The future of the education system is grim, and only by drastic measures can a difference be made.
A question: I don't quite understand why the teachers seem to think that a layoff is better than a firing? Does it affect their tenure/experience, or something like that?
"Public unions have not proven themselves in the same way as private unions have. Private unions were (and in some cases still are) a good tool to protect employees against corporate greed run a muck."
Though the article deals with teachers, your quote makes me wonder: If public sector unions are a bad deal, why are police and fire department employee unions exempt from being targeted? Where I live (Texas), these employees have both civil service rules and a union (so they are arguably double-protected) while other public employees--except teachers--have neither and are at-will employed. I have seen no hint that police and fire should have their union representation or civil service requirements eliminated; the exact opposite is stated in places like Wisconsin and Ohio.
I absolutely understand the need to choose good teachers over bad teachers. However, how much will the teachers' salary play into the selection process? I would imagine a teacher with 20 years experience gets paid quite more than a teacher with five years experience. Serious question, does salary go into consideration when rehiring or is it solely based on teaching skill?
I agree with you on the points that we should be able to select the best teachers for our schools, however, I think most of that is rhetoric designed to distract from the fact that it's a budgetary issue. Selecting the best teachers and best schools requires school choice, not bureaucrats deciding for us who is best and who is not. School choice, vouchers and real reforms are no where near this debate. The debate is framed in this language to obtain popular support.
It's a budgetary issue, remove the ethos and pathos and you'll find at the core of the issue a budgetary one. The council needs to eliminate $40 million dollars, one way to do this is to ensure all your teachers have no seniority and thus are all at the bottom of the pay scale. Layoffs will just remove the lowest paid employees so they all must be fired and then rehired to ensure that their previous seniority isn't factored into the calculations. A $40 million dollar deficit spread across 1926 teachers is $20,000 per teacher per year, you're not going to negotiate that kind of drop. Anyone want to bet that the avg. teacher salary minus the base teacher salary in Providence is about $20,000?
However, a cold numbers based story like that wouldn't play well to the public so you need something else like selecting the 'best' teachers, and you can be sure that if the board was given the option that the 'best' would become the 'cheapest', especially in an uncompetitive market such as public schooling (aka. state sponsored daycare).
I'm a big fan of real school choice, but this just seems like a way for the school district to lawyer their way out of an agreement, and obtain popular support by couching the argument in terms that are not on the table. If it's about letting the best teachers rise to the top, the school board should fire all the teachers, and provide vouchers for parents to use in obtaining their children's education. This is about firing a bunch of people and rehiring the same people at a lower price.
This is how it worked at my private school in New Hampshire.
Every single teacher, regardless of how long they have been teaching there (some more than 30 years) were hired for a 1-year period and then re-hired (or not) for the next year. Every single one of them had to do the same process.
It seemed like a very good way to never have bad teachers for more than one year. In my 4 years at HS there were only two bad teachers, and the contracts of both were simply not renewed after their first year.
It appears that they did this in order to avoid having to rehire teachers based on seniority first:
Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers.
So it looks like there were lots of senior teachers the board wanted to eliminate, not necessarily all of the teachers.
Sure, they are politicizing the process. They don't want to deal with union rules so they fired everyone. It also lets them skip out on benefits, I believe.
But, think to yourself, for all of the amazing teachers they fired, how many just had the wind let out of their sails? I wouldn't come back as enthusiastic about doing the right thing after getting fired like that.
Isn't this basically a tenure thing? AFAIK public unions make firing a First-In-Last-Out operation, which means the senior teacher you hired 10 years ago is there to stay until every single other teacher that came after is gone.
In my completely non-expert opinion, tenure seems to be a multiplier. From a students' standpoint: A good teacher with tenure is a godsend, because they feel comfortable challenging the system to make sure their job (educating the kids) gets done. Conversely, a bad teacher with tenure is a cataclysm, because they don't really want to be there, the kids don't really want them to be there, and the school administration doesn't really want them to be there, but by God, they're staying, because it's easier to collect a paycheck and hate your job than change your situation. To use a metaphor from Kevin Smith's Clerks, tenured crappy teachers are perennially shitting their pants instead of lifting the lid on the toilet seat.
perhaps, since you're suggesting it's useful, you can tell me what subjects taught in a K-12 education necessitate the teachers challenging the system?
i'd consider perhaps high school literature and history teachers, but beyond that?
Could someone please explain how teachers' unions protecting "bad teachers" from being fired is in the best interests of the teachers unions?
They get accused of that a lot, but I can't see how that would work for them. If my coworkers were making me look bad, I sure wouldn't want to associate myself with them. It seems to me it would weaken the credibility of the union and thus take away the power the union has to back me up.
Just wanted to point this out for those of you who haven't seen this in the news. To combat a $40 million budget deficit, all of the teachers were fired (not laid off).
Just curious what other peoples thoughts are. More specifically, what long-lasting implications do you think this kind of policy is going to have on the USA's ability to keep up with the rest of the world? I think I'm speaking more to the attitude that surrounds education and not necessarily this specific instance.
If I understand the article correctly, this was a difficult but perhaps correct decision. But I don't know the details, so here is what I understood:
1. The school board had to close a budget deficit by getting rid of staff, but they did not have time to get exact numbers.
2. Under the terms of the union contract, they had a deadline to inform teachers if their jobs were in trouble. So they have sent everyone official notices in preparation for only having to eliminate some of them.
3. If they sent layoff notices to everyone, when they found out how many slots they had left, they would have to take teachers back by seniority rather than merit.
4. So they sent termination notices so they could hire back whoever they wanted.
Now, as I said, I don't know the backstory. This may be an attempt by a controlling superintendent to get rid of a faction that disagrees with him.
But from the facts in the story, it looks more like a union that negotiated a contract more in the interest of the senior teachers than in the interest of the school district or the students. And that because of the limitations in the contract, the board had little choice if they wanted to retain their best teachers.
It's important to note the reason they were fired. As teacher Richard Larkin said, "You [the mayor] want to pick and choose teachers." If they were laid off, the district would be obligated to rehire them in order of seniority.
According to the article, "Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired".
So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers, and getting rid of low quality teachers with seniority. Overall, this will probably be very helpful in allowing the US to maintain our lead over (most of) the world.
They were given notices of _intent_ to fire. Most of those orders will be rescinded before the school year is over. The law requires that teachers be notified by March 1st of any possible change in employment by the end of the year. The city couldn't predict which schools will be closed or affected, to prevent opening the city to lawsuits, they sent notices to all teachers as a precaution.
Also, the city's deficit over the next two years is closer to $180 million, due to falling revenue.
I suspect this was done to defeat a union contract that made it difficult to shrink the workforce. The logic behind collective bargaining is "if you don't like it, you have to fire all of us." That's usually a good tactic, as most employers arent willing to do that, but sometimes the bluff gets called. In terms of how this impacts education, it depends on whether this is a trend and how you feel about unionized teachers.
what long-lasting implications do you think this kind of policy is going to have on the USA's ability to keep up with the rest of the world?
Excellent implications. The dregs of the teacher pool (and in American public schools, the worst teachers are pathetically, heinously bad) will be sifted out, and the best will be hired back. It will also allow a fresh start for the training of new teachers.
If states had as much money as they thought they had, the teachers would be sitting fat and pretty.
It says more about the idiotic financial management of local government than it does about teachers. (Watch out California - you guys are really fucked). So compared to the rest of the world, I think the US is fine - and by fine I mean in a financial cluster.
There's a stereotype that men are more in favor of small government and women are more likely to be elementary school teachers than men. Yet, all 3 of the women on the board voted for the dismissal whereas 3 out of the 4 men voted against.
Doesn't necessarily mean anything, could be random noise, but that caught my eye at the end of the article.
[+] [-] TomOfTTB|15 years ago|reply
Public unions have not proven themselves in the same way as private unions have. Private unions were (and in some cases still are) a good tool to protect employees against corporate greed run a muck.
But as we've seen with our over spending governments the inclination of the government is to be overly generous with people like teachers and that's now being abused.
This isn't a liberal/conservative issue. FDR is still the most liberal president we've ever had and even he said public unions were "unthinkable and intolerable". The head of the AFL-CIO was against public unions in the 50s.
(Facts taken from the New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/47u53dq)
Here's the exact FDR quote...
"[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."
Isn't that exactly what's happening right now? Look at this quote from the article...
"This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied."
Isn't picking and choosing teachers exactly what has to be done in order to keep good teachers and get rid of bad ones? How out of control do you have to be when you don't acknowledge the fact that the school should be able to pick which teachers it thinks are best?
[+] [-] kenjackson|15 years ago|reply
It's probably not. They probably have no idea who the bad teachers are. It's most likley an attempt to get rid of the most senior teachers, regardless of ability. And political -- an attempt to kill organizations that tend to be Democratic (this would be equivalent to trying to dismantle fundamentalist churches, as their Republican leaning).
Everyone looks to Finland as this great example of how education should be done, yet it looks nothing like what is being done here. And Finland is 100% teacher's unions. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-higgins/why-do-the-educ...
[+] [-] ffumarola|15 years ago|reply
That seems to be the talking point nowadays. But, having a lot of family and friends that are teachers, just isn't true from what I know. I'm not sure where you think the abuse is coming in (benefits, pay?)
Most teachers salaries max out quite low compared to what could be made in private industry. And even their benefits aren't that much better than private industry, if at all. I have paid less for health benefits for the past 4 years in various jobs (for companies both small and large) and I always had better benefits than my sister, aunt, g/f, etc.
Schools should absolutely be able to pick teachers that are both good and bad. But a blanket firing shows a complete lack of respect and lack of commitment to fixing a problem.
[+] [-] mirkules|15 years ago|reply
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/disgraced-teacher-enjoys-wel...
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/05/04/200...
And then you have really good teachers who wanted to teach for free but wasn't allowed to (they finally, wisely relented) because of some dumb technicality:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/29/local/la-me-lopez29-...
(p.s. yes, he was my middle school teacher, and he is an AWESOME teacher)
The future of the education system is grim, and only by drastic measures can a difference be made.
A question: I don't quite understand why the teachers seem to think that a layoff is better than a firing? Does it affect their tenure/experience, or something like that?
[+] [-] techsupporter|15 years ago|reply
Though the article deals with teachers, your quote makes me wonder: If public sector unions are a bad deal, why are police and fire department employee unions exempt from being targeted? Where I live (Texas), these employees have both civil service rules and a union (so they are arguably double-protected) while other public employees--except teachers--have neither and are at-will employed. I have seen no hint that police and fire should have their union representation or civil service requirements eliminated; the exact opposite is stated in places like Wisconsin and Ohio.
[+] [-] ryanto|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fleitz|15 years ago|reply
It's a budgetary issue, remove the ethos and pathos and you'll find at the core of the issue a budgetary one. The council needs to eliminate $40 million dollars, one way to do this is to ensure all your teachers have no seniority and thus are all at the bottom of the pay scale. Layoffs will just remove the lowest paid employees so they all must be fired and then rehired to ensure that their previous seniority isn't factored into the calculations. A $40 million dollar deficit spread across 1926 teachers is $20,000 per teacher per year, you're not going to negotiate that kind of drop. Anyone want to bet that the avg. teacher salary minus the base teacher salary in Providence is about $20,000?
However, a cold numbers based story like that wouldn't play well to the public so you need something else like selecting the 'best' teachers, and you can be sure that if the board was given the option that the 'best' would become the 'cheapest', especially in an uncompetitive market such as public schooling (aka. state sponsored daycare).
I'm a big fan of real school choice, but this just seems like a way for the school district to lawyer their way out of an agreement, and obtain popular support by couching the argument in terms that are not on the table. If it's about letting the best teachers rise to the top, the school board should fire all the teachers, and provide vouchers for parents to use in obtaining their children's education. This is about firing a bunch of people and rehiring the same people at a lower price.
[+] [-] simonsarris|15 years ago|reply
Every single teacher, regardless of how long they have been teaching there (some more than 30 years) were hired for a 1-year period and then re-hired (or not) for the next year. Every single one of them had to do the same process.
It seemed like a very good way to never have bad teachers for more than one year. In my 4 years at HS there were only two bad teachers, and the contracts of both were simply not renewed after their first year.
[+] [-] ffumarola|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] extension|15 years ago|reply
Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired
[+] [-] jergason|15 years ago|reply
Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers.
So it looks like there were lots of senior teachers the board wanted to eliminate, not necessarily all of the teachers.
[+] [-] ffumarola|15 years ago|reply
But, think to yourself, for all of the amazing teachers they fired, how many just had the wind let out of their sails? I wouldn't come back as enthusiastic about doing the right thing after getting fired like that.
[+] [-] mcantor|15 years ago|reply
In my completely non-expert opinion, tenure seems to be a multiplier. From a students' standpoint: A good teacher with tenure is a godsend, because they feel comfortable challenging the system to make sure their job (educating the kids) gets done. Conversely, a bad teacher with tenure is a cataclysm, because they don't really want to be there, the kids don't really want them to be there, and the school administration doesn't really want them to be there, but by God, they're staying, because it's easier to collect a paycheck and hate your job than change your situation. To use a metaphor from Kevin Smith's Clerks, tenured crappy teachers are perennially shitting their pants instead of lifting the lid on the toilet seat.
[+] [-] sigstoat|15 years ago|reply
i'd consider perhaps high school literature and history teachers, but beyond that?
[+] [-] angus77|15 years ago|reply
They get accused of that a lot, but I can't see how that would work for them. If my coworkers were making me look bad, I sure wouldn't want to associate myself with them. It seems to me it would weaken the credibility of the union and thus take away the power the union has to back me up.
[+] [-] ffumarola|15 years ago|reply
Just curious what other peoples thoughts are. More specifically, what long-lasting implications do you think this kind of policy is going to have on the USA's ability to keep up with the rest of the world? I think I'm speaking more to the attitude that surrounds education and not necessarily this specific instance.
[+] [-] asolove|15 years ago|reply
1. The school board had to close a budget deficit by getting rid of staff, but they did not have time to get exact numbers. 2. Under the terms of the union contract, they had a deadline to inform teachers if their jobs were in trouble. So they have sent everyone official notices in preparation for only having to eliminate some of them. 3. If they sent layoff notices to everyone, when they found out how many slots they had left, they would have to take teachers back by seniority rather than merit. 4. So they sent termination notices so they could hire back whoever they wanted.
Now, as I said, I don't know the backstory. This may be an attempt by a controlling superintendent to get rid of a faction that disagrees with him.
But from the facts in the story, it looks more like a union that negotiated a contract more in the interest of the senior teachers than in the interest of the school district or the students. And that because of the limitations in the contract, the board had little choice if they wanted to retain their best teachers.
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|15 years ago|reply
According to the article, "Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired".
So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers, and getting rid of low quality teachers with seniority. Overall, this will probably be very helpful in allowing the US to maintain our lead over (most of) the world.
[+] [-] ubercore|15 years ago|reply
Also, the city's deficit over the next two years is closer to $180 million, due to falling revenue.
[+] [-] Umalu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyclif|15 years ago|reply
Excellent implications. The dregs of the teacher pool (and in American public schools, the worst teachers are pathetically, heinously bad) will be sifted out, and the best will be hired back. It will also allow a fresh start for the training of new teachers.
[+] [-] damoncali|15 years ago|reply
It says more about the idiotic financial management of local government than it does about teachers. (Watch out California - you guys are really fucked). So compared to the rest of the world, I think the US is fine - and by fine I mean in a financial cluster.
[+] [-] pluies|15 years ago|reply
It's also interesting for those of us who live in said rest of the world. Thanks!
[+] [-] lionhearted|15 years ago|reply
> Yes: Melissa Malone, Kathleen Crain, Niña Pande, Julian Dash
> No: Robert Wise, Brian Lalli, Philip Gould
There's a stereotype that men are more in favor of small government and women are more likely to be elementary school teachers than men. Yet, all 3 of the women on the board voted for the dismissal whereas 3 out of the 4 men voted against.
Doesn't necessarily mean anything, could be random noise, but that caught my eye at the end of the article.
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] moblivu|15 years ago|reply