Face the State Staff Report
DENVER--Later today, a Denver teachers' union vote will provide a defining movement for school reform efforts here. The outcome of the vote, according to leading education reformers, will impact not only the school, but the public view of union officials.
To answer her question, here are five leading ideas from the DPS-DCTA Agreement:
1) Schools have very limited choice in accepting or rejecting poorly-performing tenured teachers who transfer from other Denver schools (Article 13)
2) Schools have to wait for all tenured teacher transfers to be placed before they can begin hiring well-qualified, well-suited candidates from outside the district (Article 13)
3) When a workforce reduction occurs, schools have to let go teachers with the least seniority first, regardless of how well they perform in the classroom (Article 20)
4) Rigid restrictions on work schedules limit the amount of time teachers can spend in the classroom with students (Article 8)
5) Taxpayer subsidies for teachers to take leave for union activities or service drain money that could be spent on textbooks or other instructional materials (Article 23)
At its meeting today, the board of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association will vote on whether to release the Bruce Randolph School from restrictions in its negotiated bargaining contract. Late last month, the Denver Public Schools board unanimously voted to approve the request. The approval of both the school district and the union is needed, however, to grant waivers from union rules.
Bruce Randolph currently serves students from sixth to tenth grade, but is in the process of expanding up through twelfth grade. More than 90 percent of the student population is eligible for free and reduced lunch, a federal government designation for poverty. The school is rated low on the state’s School Accountability Reports, but has improved from unsatisfactory in previous years.
Leading the charge to free the school from the union's domain is Bruce Randolph principal Kristin Waters, who together with other school leaders, including teachers, is fighting to gain greater control over the hiring process. Nearly 70 percent of the school's teachers, including DCTA members, cast a secret ballot in support of the autonomy proposal.
Alan Gottlieb, a policy expert with Denver’s Public Education and Business Coalition, says DCTA’s decision reflects a union at a crossroads. “The union is either going to show that it has some ability to think on its feet and be innovative and creative, or it’s going to reinforce a lot of people’s belief that it’s the biggest obstacle to reform,” Gottlieb said.
Lawyers for the Colorado Education Association, DCTA’s parent organization, sent a memo to Randolph teachers in December claiming that ratification of the autonomy proposal would force them to forfeit all their rights under the district’s bargaining agreement. But a December 17 memo from DPS lawyer John Kechriotis rebutted the claim, observing that the salary and fringe benefits provisions and certain evaluation procedures would remain in effect.
“It seems fairly clear that the CEA analysis is, at best, misleading and overreaching and more often than not, false in its conclusions,” Kechriotis wrote in the memo.
Kris Enright, executive director of the Professional Association of Colorado Educators, an alternative non-union teacher membership organization, is hopeful that the union and other education interest groups will lend their support to Waters and her staff.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity for everyone in education to rally around the professionals at Bruce Randolph, because they’re doing what we all came into the profession to do: They want to diagnose the needs of individual students and give them good instruction,” said Enright, a former classroom teacher and school administrator.
He pointed out that autonomy from district red tape and union work rules alone will not guarantee success for the Bruce Randolph staff.
“They need some individuals to help support them in new environment where they will be responsible for things they haven’t had to do in the past,” Enright said.
Enright visited Bruce Randolph and met with Waters, and left persuaded that they are on the right track to yield further academic progress.
“The rules they’re operating under simply don’t meet those kids’ needs,” he said. “[Waters] and her staff are going to go through very challenging time, but watching her interact with those students, you know that her motivations are good.”
According to Gottlieb, other Denver schools are looking to follow in Randolph’s steps. Not all would be dissuaded by a vote of rejection from DCTA today.
“It might discourage some, but I don’t think it would discourage all,” he said.
Gottlieb added that more DPS schools requesting and receiving greater autonomy will reshape the process of collective negotiations. “It’s no longer going to make sense to have this 100-plus page document,” he said.
Enright said such a change would be a boon, reflecting the hope of a positive trend that may result from Bruce Randolph’s bold step.
“I think it’s best to put teachers, administrators, and parents in a position where they have the opportunity to do what’s best regardless of what the global needs of the district are,” he said. “No single contract or single game plan is going to meet the needs of every school.”