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Coalition reaches agreement with city on planned reorganization
Apr 26, 2007 11:20 AM
New school budget formula among major changes
Here’s how the city’s daily newspapers covered the news of the agreement.
With the public outcry against the planned reorganization of New York City public schools not going away, the mayor and the chancellor reached an agreement with the UFT and its coalition partners on April 19 that addressed some of the group’s core concerns about the reorganization.
Most notably, the mayor agreed to changes in the new school budget formula that will ensure that schools with stable teaching forces do not lose money while providing an infusion of new resources for schools with large numbers of students who are poor or have special needs.
Answering the coalition’s complaints that parents and teachers had been shut out of the decision-making process, the Department of Education also agreed to establish a formal consultative process that will give the union, parents and other stakeholders input on class-size reduction, school funding and other critical education policy decisions.
The agreement also featured a pilot middle school initiative, a new parent engagement committee to strengthen School Leadership Teams and Chancellor Joel Klein’s commitment to maintain tenure standards for this year and not to make any unilateral changes to the criteria for granting tenure to new teachers in the future. [See “Fact sheet” below for a full description of the agreement.]
“We still have qualms about the reorganization, but this is a significant improvement,” said UFT President Randi Weingarten, who stood with parent, political and community leaders at a City Hall press conference called by Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Nobody disagrees that kids with special needs deserve more funds, but we also wanted to ensure that schools that work would not be destabilized by budget cuts.”
Bronx parent leader Ocynthia Williams, a member of the Coalition for Educational Justice, said the agreement brought parents and teachers back into the conversation about what needs to happen in the schools.
“We will be at the table going forward,” said Williams. “I’m still concerned about whether the mayor and the chancellor will hold up their end of the bargain, so as a community, we will have to hold them accountable. But it’s a step in the right direction. We were complaining that we were left out. Finally, they listened.”
Chung-Wha Hong, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, lauded the additional targeted resources for students with limited English proficiency.
“We need the money to follow them so it translates into real support and programs for them,” Hong said. “This agreement is going to help raise the floor of the entire school system without penalizing our high-achieving schools.”
The agreement was not without dissenters. One was Tim Johnson, the president of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council.
“Not one elected parent leader stood with the mayor today,” Johnson said. “This agreement provides no relief for disenfranchised parents, who were once again denied a seat at the table.”
But leaders of some of the coalition groups pointed out that their members included many public school parents. In addition, all groups in the coalition were consulted about the terms of the agreement and the decision to go forward.
The accord was the product of intense negotiations between city officials and representatives of the Coalition to Put the Public Back in Education, which includes the UFT, ACORN, the Coalition for Educational Justice, the New York Immigration Coalition, the Working Families Party and the Urban Youth Collaborative.
The coalition emerged on the scene as a force to be reckoned with on Feb. 28 when more than 1,500 parents, teachers and students packed St. Varten’s Cathedral to call on the city to stop the reorganization until the public’s concerns received a genuine airing.
Mayor Bloomberg struck a conciliatory note at the press conference.
“Over the last few days, we have realized that we are a lot closer together on many of the issues surrounding school initiatives than some might have thought,” the mayor said. “Now we are ready to move forward to achieve some of our common goals.”
Under the agreement, the DOE will modify its new school budgeting system, which will finance schools based on numbers of students and their needs, to protect schools with stable, experienced faculties. The DOE agreed to continue to fund the full salaries of teachers in a school for the next two school years. Furthermore, when a teacher leaves a school, that teacher’s salary will now stay in the school’s budget, enabling the principal to hire another teacher at the same salary level as the departing teacher. The school system will also provide additional funding as teachers move up the salary scale in a school.
“There is no more perverse incentive to squeeze people who have a higher salary out of a school,” said Weingarten. “It was wrong when Circuit City did it and it was wrong when the chancellor attempted it. That has been changed.”
However, the UFT will retain its right to grieve the Department of Education’s unilateral change in the negotiated open-market transfer plan. The union filed that grievance several weeks ago on the grounds that the funding formula announced in January creates a disincentive to hire senior teachers. If the transfers this spring show evidence of such bias even with all the new changes, the union will proceed to arbitration using the data from this year’s transfers and the DOE has agreed to honor whatever decision the arbitrator makes.
“The grievance is our insurance policy in case the operation of the open-market transfer plan this year turns out not to be seniority-neutral,” Weingarten said.
Last year, an unprecedented 2,700 UFT members in all titles, including many experienced teachers, transferred to different schools.
“We will be scrutinizing the activity this spring very carefully to see what happens,” said Weingarten. “If we see a chilling effect, we will arbitrate to protect people’s right to transfer.”
The DOE also agreed not to make any unilateral changes to existing tenure criteria and pledged to include the UFT in any review of tenure that it undertakes for the 2008-09 school year. The new state law stipulates that tenure decisions should be based on principal evaluation, peer review and teachers’ use of student data. According to state and union officials, this precludes using student test scores as a basis for awarding tenure, a direct slap at Chancellor Klein’s expressed desire to do so.
Finally, the DOE agreed to a pilot program to turn around middle schools and a parental engagement committee. It also agreed to consider building on a student-run college and career preparedness program.
