‘Lead teacher’ pilot to begin in District 9
By ELLIE SPIELBERG
In what may turn out to be a landmark agreement, the UFT and the Department of Education, at the urging of a Bronx-based community group, agreed to a yearlong pilot project that will create approximately three dozen "lead teacher" positions in District 9 in the Bronx.
"We have sought for a long time a career ladder for teachers, and this program, if it works, may be a model for the city," said UFT President Randi Weingarten to the union’s Executive Board, which approved the pact on June 14.
Weingarten said that the "lead teacher" program, initiated by The Community Collaborative to Improve District 9 Schools (CC9), is "very much like the top step in the career continuum proposal that the UFT made several years ago," and that she was cautiously optimistic it could improve struggling schools and student achievement by providing career advancement opportunities and innovative pay incentives that would attract and retain master teachers in our profession.
She also said the agreement demonstrates the UFT’s willingness to embrace salary differentials based on "fair, objective criteria." It is in line with the proposals approved by the DA in January 2000 and publicly expressed by Weingarten at the May 2000 Spring Conference and to the Association for a Better New York.
The career ladder-CC9 agreement calls for assigning two lead teachers to each participating elementary and intermediate school. They will share one class, with half the day spent teaching and the other half providing professional support to the teaching staff, either individually or in groups.
"That ensures that the lead teachers remain classroom teachers, and not administrators. It was very important to maintain that ongoing connection to the classroom," Weingarten said.
In the middle school pilot, lead teachers will teach three regular classes a day and provide professional development for three periods a day. On both levels, lead teachers will maintain a duty-free lunch and a prep period per day.
All will also work four hours a month outside of the normal workday and one extra week before the start of school.
Funding for the project will come from a $1.6 million grant from the Department of Education and $200,000 from Community Coalition 9 representing local community-based organizations. Lead teachers will be paid $10,000, which will be pensionable, in addition to their regular salary. The city will pay most of the project’s cost, estimated at $2 million, with the rest coming from private foundations.
Lead teachers must have a minimum of five years experience. To ensure an objective selection process and avoid favoritism in the hiring process, they will be selected via a two-stage process.
First, similar to Article 18g, a regional personnel committee, made up of four representatives from the DOE, two from the UFT and two from CC9, select a pool of applicants. In this instance, because of the close collaboration between CC9 and the UFT, the regional committee was made up of equal members of each group.
Second, candidates will be interviewed by each school’s personnel committee as constituted in the School-Based Option Transfer and Staffing Plan, which has a majority of teachers. Selections, to the extent possible, will be made by consensus. The principal - just like the staff on the SBO Committee - will have the power to veto any selections. Candidates not selected may appeal.
Since it is a one-year pilot project, those selected as lead teachers will retain their rights in their prior schools.
The participating schools are PS 4, 28, 35, 53, 64, 73, 88, 90, 126 and IS 166.
CC9, a collaboration of parents and community-based organizations, has established itself as a powerful force in the fight to stabilize schools in District 9 since its inception three years ago.
According to UFT District 9 Representative Herb Katz, who works with the group in "school family partnership" committees that have been created at 10 schools, the CC9 initiative is an example of cooperation between parents and teachers at its best, "exactly what you would envision when the two groups are respectful of one another, clearly see a common set of goals and unite to improve the schools they share."
Parents in the coalition felt that a high turnover of teachers was a major reason their kids were not doing well in school. They set out to create a school environment that would attract teachers and make them want to stay. The lead teacher model is a strong component of developing that environment.
"Frustration" was what motivated parent Denise Moncrief to get involved with CC9. "I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to. CC9 let me see that a whole lot of parents felt the same way.
"My son’s teacher wasn’t bad," Moncrief, one of the two parent leaders of the group, said. "She was just fresh out of school. There are outstanding teachers, but even they can need guidance, someone to bounce ideas off or say she’s having trouble, because you can’t go to a supervisor for that. That dynamic won’t work," she said.
"CC9 gave me my voice and my power. It showed me that the schools are here for us, because if we pulled our kids out they couldn’t function. Influencing education is not a privilege, it’s our right," she said.
Ocynthia Williams-Watson, the other parent leader, also stressed the importance of on-the-spot teacher guidance, noting that an experienced teacher acting as a mentor to new teachers could make a great difference not only in the quality of education that the students will receive but in influencing new teachers to stay in the system.
Dial-A-Teacher Director Amina Rachman, who serves as the UFT’s parent outreach coordinator, said, "The CC9 parents are so powerful, no one can say no to them. They got Chancellor Klein to agree not to break up this cluster of 10 schools when the DOE reorganized the districts."
Katz called the CC9 parents "a marvelous group of human beings who not only talk about an interest in children but back it up with deeds and actions.
"They are not into a blame game; they’re into working together collaboratively to make the schools better, and I’m honored to be working with them."
In addition to the lead teacher model, the CC9 program calls for:
Weingarten applauded the group’s effort to work together "school by school, community by community," and pledged that the union will help "drive this agenda."