Opening of Negotiations, Statement of Randi Weingarten, September 2003

Sep 1, 2003 10:30 AM

As we begin these negotiations, I get the feeling that - New Yorkers are watching us and holding their breath. A lot is riding on these talks.

Every new chancellor — rightly so — comes in with a vision, a grand plan to turn our schools around and make sure our kids get a good education. Now, with direct responsibility for the schools, even the mayor has said, “Judge me by what I do for education.”

The city’s plan to transform the school system is historic, and people are watching to see if it can work. Some see this as make-it-or-break-it time.

What matters, of course, are not the changes in the bureaucratic flow chart, or in the regional lines on a map. The real litmus test comes outside of the public glare, in the schools in general and in the classroom in particular, in what happens between teacher and child. That’s where we’ll find out if the new changes improve — not just change — our education system. That’s where we’ll find out how well it works for kids.

What we already know is that, in the end, as always, the burden is on the folks in the classroom, the people who have to make it work and who, ironically, have had the least to say about the changes being imposed on them.

But on a more positive note, common sense dictates that if this transformation of our schools is to succeed, we (management and labor) have to find common ground and move forward together.

It can be done. We even did it in the last contract with Mayor Bloomberg.

In preparing for this session, I looked back over the priorities and goals the union presented three years ago. We did a pretty good job (helped by a national recession) in developing a salary schedule that helped alleviate one of the two components of the teacher shortage. That contract helped tremendously on the recruitment end. In that year, 2000, half of the new hires were uncertified, and 16 percent of all teachers lacked full credentials. Last year and this year show dramatic improvement.

That was a goal we shared and accomplished together.

I emphasize that because our contract is not a DOE contract, nor a UFT contract, but a joint agreement. Unfortunately, it has become commonplace to hear many of you refer to “the union contract,” as in, “We can’t do that because of the union contract,” or “That would be good, but union rules don’t allow it.” (Interestingly, I never hear management say that the “union” contract enabled it to recruit 9,000 certified teachers. Then it becomes “the contract we negotiated with the union” or “because we raised teachers’ starting salaries.”)

In fact, a few of you here with some institutional memory will recollect that more than a couple of those reviled so-called “union” rules weren’t proposed by the union at all. They were management’s demands, not ours. So I ask you, with all the accountability mavens out there, why not take responsibility (even ownership) of the outcome of our negotiations by calling it our contract, not the union contract.

Now it’s time to focus on the harder part of solving the teacher shortage — teacher retention. I hope that that is a goal we share as well.

Because if we can’t keep the teachers who are hired, building a cadre of experienced, well-prepared teachers becomes like trying to fill a bucket that has a hole in its bottom. It’s costly and counterproductive to hire thousands of well-qualified people every year, invest millions of dollars in incentives, orientation and professional development — only to see one of every four leave within a year and more than one of every three by the end of the third year. Worse, it’s bad for kids. Experienced teachers are more confident and more competent than brand-new teachers.

And the problem of attrition is not limited to new employees. Retirements are at record highs, amounting to 15,000 in the last three years. The latest figures show 2003 retirements through August already running well ahead of last year’s total.

(Parenthetically, we need to make better use of our experienced paraprofessionals as a pool of potential teachers. Rather than repeat all the educational and societal reasons why they make excellent teachers for our students, let me give you the business person’s bottom line: the retention rate of teachers who were paras is, by all indications, much higher than that of other new teachers or Fellows, in whom we invest so much. A cost-benefit analysis of the Paraprofessional Career Ladder would show that the yield in dollars, community good will and educational value is huge.)

More broadly, however, we have to ask ourselves the question: What will entice well qualified people to remain in teaching?

Salary, of course, is important.

Survey after survey show that low salaries are a primary deterrent to entering and remaining in teaching. The latest National Education Association study found the largest segment of teachers, 37%, cited low salaries as the reason for not remaining in teaching. (Over half of African-American and Latino teachers gave that reason.) While teachers don’t enter the profession expecting to get rich, they do expect to be able to afford for themselves and their families a decent, middle-class life without the burden of working additional jobs. That’s our goal for a fair raise — and it should be yours as well.

What we cannot afford to do is see the progress we made in the last negotiation disappear; the mantra of “fiscal crisis,” which always seems to get louder when collective bargaining nears, cannot be used as an excuse for salary erosion. In the late 1980’s school salaries were roughly competitive with the surrounding areas; in the ‘90’s concerns about the then so-called ‘fiscal crisis’ depressed teacher pay. Not surprisingly, by the late ‘90’s we had a huge shortage that took its toll on the quality of education in our schools. We cannot do that to children again. And we don’t have to.

While we have to remain cognizant of the fiscal realities, we should look at all the realities: (1) Wall Street is projecting a doubling of profits this year to the third highest level in 25 years, resulting in hundreds of millions of additional tax revenue; (2) economists and reams of monthly data tell us that employment is now higher than in any period except the “bubble” years; (3) despite the multi-billion dollar deficits that had been projected for this fiscal year, the budget is balanced (due to the hard work of many people, including the mayor) and the fiscal year ended with a $1.3 billion surplus. And it seems that every day we hear about another school spending initiative.

Without a doubt, if salaries stagnate again, we will not be able to recruit or retain teachers, especially as the job market improves. The city’s increased investment in training would benefit only the higher paying school systems to which our teachers would depart, taking with them their new skills.

For the same reasons, health benefits must not be allowed to erode. In the five years that I’ve been union president, I’ve noticed a sharply increased concern among members about maintaining health benefits. New treatments and new drugs have raised awareness of the need for adequate coverage, and of course the costs of those have also raised anxieties about coverage. In particular, the PICA program, has brought much-needed relief to many families. The city simply cannot renege on those commitments.

Beyond a decent salary and benefits, national surveys show that teachers, especially those in high poverty areas, leave because of poor working conditions, including lack of administrative support, lack of voice, heavy workloads and classes that are too large.

(By the way, those workloads and class sizes of New York City teachers add up to one of the highest teacher productivity levels in the state and nation and even exceeds those in most of the countries whose education systems we admire.)

Teachers don’t expect lavish offices and perks. They do what they do to make a difference in the lives of children. But they do expect to have the working conditions, autonomy and latitude of professionals.

Sadly, in our schools today, teachers are being stripped of their professionalism and denied the support and respect they have every right to expect. If that situation doesn’t improve, I have no doubt our schools will continue to reel under destabilizing staff turnover rates. Here’s why I say that.

In these first two weeks of school, reports are pouring in of administrators who, clearly under orders from above, are dictating everything from the arrangement of the classroom furniture and decoration of the bulletin boards to the number of minutes spent on each activity. Teachers must purchase many of their own materials. They must teach essentially the same programs to all their students, regardless of their level of proficiency. (And, I must add, even if the “programs” are little more than pedagogical philosophies.) Their opinions on decisions affecting them and their students are not sought, and if offered, they are more times than not ignored. Their classes are overcrowded. Security is scant. And the pressure to achieve high student test scores is constant even when required resources are not provided. Many do not have access to things considered basic necessities in other workplaces, like telephones, copiers, computers, and even time for bathroom breaks.

Some of the orders teachers are being handed are absurd on their face. For instance, middle school students, most taller than I am and desperate to be seen as grown-up, are supposed to sit in a circle on a rug on the floor, kindergarten style. I don’t know who’s going to pull out their hair first, the teachers or the kids.

And then there are the high schools where teachers are told to cluster students in groups for quizzes, rather than emulate the conditions under which they will have to take more high-stake tests.

I’m beginning to think, why bother having teachers, when all some superintendents want is robots who will follow whatever orders come down from on high.

For our Teaching Fellows, concern about student discipline ranks among the top reasons for their leaving. When you speak to them in greater detail, that, too, comes down to a question of lack of respect — both from students and from supervisors. Safety and civility in school emanate from an atmosphere of respect for rules, respect for authority and adults modeling respectful behavior toward one another. But students quickly learn that rules are meaningless and their teachers are powerless. Teachers are demeaned when administrators can’t or won’t back their attempts to enforce the rules, and kids pick up on that. And they are demeaned when a student’s word is believed over theirs. As Karen Hunter revealed in her Daily News column last week about the “rubber rooms,” kids know that all they have to do is charge “abuse” or “corporal punishment” and they can, at least temporarily, get rid of a teacher who expects them to follow school rules.

Both Chancellor Klein and Mayor Bloomberg have brought to their jobs reputations as expert managers. Is this the way a good manager treats valued, skilled professional employees?

All of these conditions send one message, and one message only: Your professionalism is neither valued nor respected. You are here to do as you’re told. Your competence is measured by your compliance with the “bulletin board by-laws“ and your productivity is measured strictly by test scores. Most of all, you are accountable regardless of the obstacles placed in your way.

Our goal for these negotiations is to change that message, to achieve for front-line educators the voice and the professional consideration that will make public education work for all our children.

Because in education, there’s only one bottom line: results for kids. Results not only in higher academic achievement, but also in character development and sense of civic responsibility. So what do you need to get results for kids?

You need to respect your professional staff.

You need to retain qualified teachers.

You need to provide adequate and appropriate resources.

Those then are the new three R’s. That’s how you get to readin’, ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic. With retention, respect and resources.

Now let me raise one other issue.

As best as I can understand from published reports, your collective bargaining goals are to continue to shake up the system until every school is a great school. If you really mean that, then we are prepared to meet your rhetoric head-on.

I’m tired of hearing that old bromide about how the union contract is the root of all the ills of public education. We’ve been fighting that myth for years, but reality never catches up with perception.

Take the myth that you can’t fire an incompetent teacher. The Board of Education used to complain that the problem was the six months limit on the past period during which teachers’ actions could be used as evidence against them. So, in 1994, we increased that time six-fold, to three years.

Freed from that awful constraint, did principals dramatically increase the number of cases brought to 3020-a proceedings, or were they more successful winning them? The answers: No and no. There was absolutely no change in the rate of disciplinary actions.

Then there was the complaint that the process took too long. We shortened it twice, bringing it down to months instead of years. Arbitrators were too hard to get? We fixed that too. And still the myth persists.

Too many teachers out of the classroom? We eliminated those jobs in Circular 6. Now principals say they need teachers to patrol halls and bathrooms.

How about principals who complained they couldn’t hire the teachers they wanted because of seniority transfers. So we devised the School-Based Option Transfer and Staffing Plan in which school personnel committees could hire the person they deemed best qualified. We thought that in five years every school would utilize this option and the seniority transfer plan would be a relic of the past. That has not happened because principals wanted sole control over hiring, not just the 95 percent they have today. So we still get blamed for tying their hands.

We also take the flak for rules that weren’t even our idea: the ‘no transfer with a U rating’ rule; the cap on salary for teachers hired with prior experience that Chancellor Levy boasted of getting removed from the contract so he could attract more experienced teachers. Those were originally management proposals gone wrong.

Yes, the myth about the “obstructions to reform” in the contract is about as factual as the latest favorite charge of NY Post and NY Sun editorials. According to their polemics, the union fought mayoral control and we fought dismantling the community school districts until our last breath — and we lost on both counts. Well, that’s just not true, on either count. Strangely, the same critics can in the next breath claim that the state Legislature, where we allegedly fought and lost those battles, is wholly “owned and operated” by the UFT.

But, as I said, I am tired of fighting these myths one by one. They are a smokescreen to deny schools the resources, kids the support and teachers the respect they need. They provide a handy excuse, as former Commissioner Sobol said, just another of the obstacles the administration can’t do anything about, like “the feds” or “the law” or those other pesky inconveniences, “the courts.”

So here’s my offer: For schools that have the capacity: Throw out the rules. Get rid of them. Out o’ here. They’re history. Kaput! No more. The end. Start from scratch.

Instead, let’s test our two hypotheses.

You believe that schools can work better without a lot of contractual work rules. (Apparently that belief doesn’t extend to your rules about what and how teachers can teach. But, to be fair, rules are rules, and we should scrap those rules too.)

We think schools can work better if the administration and the staff work together in a respectful, collegial, way to make child-centered choices that work best for their students and their schools.

These are not mutually exclusive ideas. In fact, they are complementary.

Let’s create some schools — maybe 50 or more across the city — that would then constitute a new learning zone. Or, if all the schools under a particular Local Instructional Superintendent or region agree, then it could include all those schools in that structure. The key condition would be the voluntary engagement of each school’s administration and staff in this experiment. They must agree that the school’s operating principles and educational plan will be developed collaboratively for the benefit of the children they serve. Other than a few ground rules like base salary and benefits, due process, safety and those required by law, they can start with a blank slate and write their own streamlined contract. A couple of other parameters: It must be resource-neutral and it can’t impinge on the rights of staff in other schools. Finally, the school must have an instructional program for students that meets state standards and offers real promise of a better education for children.

But again, here’s the biggest caveat: They have to agree that the school will be run collaboratively and democratically, in a spirit of mutual respect, for the benefit of their students.

Let’s say they want to change the criteria for grade assignments or comp time jobs. Why not?

Maybe they have a different program or research-backed curriculum that they think would be perfect for their students. Let them try it!

Or perhaps they want to hold small-group instruction at 8 a.m. instead of after normal school hours. No problem!

How about requiring at least some teaching time of every licensed staffer in the school or region, perhaps even including the principal, APs, LIS’s and RIS’s, in order to reduce class sizes? (If Chancellor Matt Goldstein can do it, so can all the pre-K to 12 administrators.)

And I’ll bet a lot of schools would opt for supervisors to model new classroom strategies for them as part of the staff development.

One thing I think will please the management gurus among you. Although it might not be in Jack Welch’s training book, this model of a flat organizational structure and site-based decision-making is based on the most progressive new management theories.

If the experiment works, it can be expanded on a voluntary basis. It would be a win for everybody — you, us, administrators, staff, parents, and most of all, the kids.

If it doesn’t, at least we will know that our theories don’t work, we can stop grousing about how the other side stops us from doing our job, and we can renew the search for better solutions more constructively.

So there you have it: our vision for a school system that is released from its bureaucratic tethers and freed to soar.

But let me be very candid. If your real bargaining agenda is to get the union and its members out of decision-making and ensure absolute managerial control over working conditions in schools, then this proposal is not for you.

Let’s give the streamlined contract a chance. And let’s work together, as our demands suggest, on the new three R’s: retention of staff, respect for teachers, and resources for schools.

That sums up our major themes. We hope that the streamlined contract proposal as well as our negotiating demands that expand these concepts more specifically will be the basis for a new collective bargaining agreement.

As I said at the outset, a lot hangs on our success in the next few weeks or months. I don’t think it’s overly dramatic to say that these talks could mark the beginning of a new beginning for public education in New York City (and maybe elsewhere), or the beginning of the end.

In turn, our success depends on our sincerity, intelligence and flexibility around this table. For our side, I make this commitment now: We will make ourselves available to talk day and night; we will commit every resource we have. We want to reach an equitable agreement in as little time with as little rancor as possible.

We eagerly await your response.