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More time to teach
Apr 24, 2008 2:17 PM
District 32 educators use professional conciliation to free themselves from excessive paperwork
Chapter Leader Cynthia Monteleone (left) shows District Representative Kathy Sharko the staff surveys of time spent on collecting and filing data that revealed the staggering numbers of hours the process actually consumes.
Article 24 of the contract — professional conciliation — seems to be the key to success in solving the mounting cry of overburdened classroom teachers: Let teachers teach.
In District 32, for example, teachers regained more control of their classrooms in January 2007 when they won the flexibility they needed to adapt the rigid workshop model to individual classroom needs. They made their gains using districtwide professional conciliation — Article 24.
Now that win is repeating itself. This time teachers in the Brooklyn district’s 19 schools — acting in solidarity again — expect to gain a 25 percent reduction in paperwork by September. Professional conciliation pays off once more.
District Representative Kathy Sharko finds the conciliation process a great problem-solver. While the problem may be the same across the district — mounting paperwork and increasing time spent on retrieving and recording more and more data — remedies can be tailored to each school’s needs.
“Conciliation works because it individualizes the needs of each school,” she explained.
Sharko, who knows her way around after 38 years in the district, saw the signs: teachers weary of the endless paperwork; teachers angry that excessive paperwork is robbing them of teaching and planning time; teachers losing a sense of community as they become more and more isolated from one another during prep and lunch time, working alone on student data instead of conferring and collaborating on professional issues; and a breakdown of morale.
Time for conciliation, she decided. To begin, chapter leaders surveyed staff to find out what kind of relief teachers needed most and how the union can help them get that relief.
At PS 86 in Bushwick, Chapter Leader Cynthia Monteleone created charts for each grade level that, by month, recorded time spent retrieving and recording data mandated by the state and city and required by the school. The results proved clearly and concretely that teachers are spending extraordinary amounts of time on paperwork: Kindergarten teachers recorded 54 hours a year on paperwork, growing to a staggering 160 hours for 5th-grade teachers.
At PS 86 in Brooklyn, teachers (from left) Helen Amsterdam, Damaris Batista, Sunny Kim and Eugene Roche enter evidence in these encyclopedia-size binders they have filled with data mandated by the state, city and school, blaming the overload of paperwork for eroding teaching and planning time.
“This is not just going on here,” Monteleone pointed out. “It’s all over the city. So much distraction from teaching.”
PS/IS 384 Chapter Leader Victor Victoria summed it up: “How much data do you need to know why Johnny can’t read?” He described the pressure on teachers to collect and collate data “in 20 different ways and enter it in binders that are like huge encyclopedias. The only thing missing is Social Security numbers.
“Everything is data,” he said, “but the pressure to collect the data is so overwhelming there is no time to evaluate it.”
The formal statement of his staff survey noted: The teachers at PS 384 feel overwhelmed with all the data that has to be entered in the class binders. There is not enough time during school hours to keep the binders updated.
Once the surveys were in, Sharko moved to step two and helped each school arrange their findings by priority. Finally, a meeting was arranged with each principal that included Sharko and the school’s chapter leader.
“The response has been wonderful,” the union rep said. “Principals have been cooperative and responsive. They’re just as frustrated as our members over this issue.”
Each school had its own statement of the problem and each school agreed to its own set of remedies. Staff and administration at PS 86 agreed to 10 items designed to solve or alleviate their problems. Monteleone credits the ease of the conciliation to “a principal who listens and recognizes that her staff works hard.”
At PS/IS 384, Victoria described the principal as “willing to do everything she can.” In the statement of agreement signed by all parties, she agreed to hire a private company to enter the data and create an easier format for implementing the data and updating it over the course of the school year.
“The beauty of the conciliation process,” Sharko said, “is that it involves everyone in the education community at each school. Each school decides on its own what issues it wants to address and tailors solutions to it own needs.”
UFT President Randi Weingarten repeated what she has said on many occasions: “The contract is a powerful tool if used effectively, but it doesn’t walk and talk by itself.” And she added,“District 32 used it in this regard to help free members of excessive paperwork and in so doing, hopefully helped children. Congratulations are in order for Kathy, our terrific chapter leaders and our members for exercising their rights to help kids.”
The District 32 professional conciliation story will be told at the May Delegate Assembly.
