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Ruling on speech teachers proves added 37.5 minutes not a teaching period
Sep 7, 2006 3:27 PM
Principals and other supervisors can no longer order speech teachers in non-District 75 schools to work an additional regular teaching period during the 37.5 minutes.
An arbitrator ruled on Aug. 28 that the Department of Education violated the contract when it assigned speech teachers in those schools during the 37.5 minutes to work with new students who were mandated to receive speech improvement services.
“This decision reinforces that the 37.5 minutes is not a regular teaching period,” said UFT President Randi Weingarten, who testified in the arbitration proceedings. “As arbitrator decisions are decisive interpreters of the contract, it should put the issue to rest once and for all.”
More than 1,000 speech teachers in non-District 75 schools are covered by the ruling.
The UFT brought the matter to arbitration when elementary schools in the Bronx and a smattering elsewhere in the school system began assigning speech teachers to additional therapy sessions with mandated students during the 37.5 minutes.
The dispute turned on the question of whether these teachers were supposed to teach new material during the extended time.
The contract says the 37.5 minutes is for small-group instruction, test preparation or tutorials.
“The speech teachers were the only group of teachers who were asked to provide the same type of services during the extended time that they would have provided during the regular school day,” said Mindy Karten Bornemann, the speech teachers chapter leader.
Scrutinizing the contract language, the arbitrator, Rosemary A. Townley, said, “The words ‘tutorials,’ ‘test preparation’ and small group instruction’ are all included in the same sentence and imply a form of teaching which is something less than what might occur during a regular classroom period.”
The arbitrator concluded that non-District 75 speech teachers should, like other teachers, “focus upon the reinforcement or remediation of work that a student is familiar with.”
The extended time, Townley said, “is to be comprised of ‘supportive’ teaching as opposed to ‘original’ teaching.”
The arbitrator also ruled that the speech teachers should be reimbursed on a pro-rata basis for any “original” work they performed with mandated students between February and June of this year. Submission of mandated reports would be proof of such work, she said.
The union will be pursuing arbitration on similar issues concerning speech teachers, occupational therapists and physical therapists in District 75.
— Deidre McFadyen
Class size goes back to court
Round 2 in a lawsuit brought last spring by the coalition New Yorkers for Smaller Classes was to begin on Sept. 6, when the campaign to get a charter amendment on class size on the ballot was scheduled to go before the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court.
The goal is smaller class sizes, but the city threw every legal argument in the book at the plaintiffs and the case has turned on arcane legal questions from how the City Clerk certifies petitions to what the state Legislature meant by mayoral control of schools.
The matter first landed in court when the city declared legally “invalid” the coalition’s proposed referendum asking voters if 25 percent of any Campaign for Fiscal Equity funds should be dedicated to lowering class sizes throughout the city school system. The coalition, which includes the UFT, had collected a total of 106,718 signatures in support of putting the proposed charter amendment before voters. It was the second time that the city has kept a coalition referendum on class size off the ballot.
This June, lawyers for the coalition argued before State Supreme Court Justice Lewis Stone that city voters should have a voice in how funds from the CFE court case are spent.
Justice Stone rejected the coalition’s case on the narrow grounds that education law is still technically made at the state level and cannot be amended by the New York City Charter. The coalition lawyers have countered that mayoral control shifts the power to the city, and that city residents have a democratic right to help set priorities for CFE spending.
UFT President Randi Weingarten is one of the named plaintiffs in this case, along with parent Dilsia Pena, Hazel Dukes of the NAACP, Leonie Haimson of the parent group Class Size Matters, and Noreen Connell of the Educational Priorities Panel. City Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson and the Hispanic Federation are also named as petitioners. Opposing the ballot amendment are the city clerk, the Board of Elections and Chancellor Joel Klein.
The hearing was set for 2 p.m. on Sept. 6 at the Appellate Court, 27 Madison Ave. at 25th Street in Manhattan. For more information, go to www.NewYorkersforSmallerClasses.org.
— Maisie McAdoo
Yet another CFE hearing … but maybe the last!
Lame duck Gov. George Pataki and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity find themselves back in court — this time in the state’s highest court.
Both are challenging the most recent appellate court ruling in the CFE school funding lawsuit that confirmed the amount of money the lower court had recommended as appropriate and directed the state Legislature and governor to implement the decision.
Pataki is now claiming that the state owes the city far less money than the $4.7 billion to $5.6 billion in operating aid that the Appellate Division ordered it to pay. And besides, he says, he’s already boosted education spending enough. CFE wants a stronger directive from the court that would compel the Legislature to act.
The UFT once again filed an amicus brief in support of the CFE. “Only by holding the state’s proverbial feet to the fire with a directive to expend specified sums will this litigation finally reach its just result,” the union argued.
On Oct. 10, CFE lawyers will face the state attorney general’s office, still headed by Eliot Spitzer, before the Court of Appeals in Albany to argue that the cost estimates approved by the high court are indeed valid and require the state Legislature and governor to greatly increase state aid to city schools. (Spitzer has said city schools should receive between $4 billion and $6 billion in operating funds from CFE, but believes as attorney general he must represent the position of the governor.)
In 1993, the CFE filed suit charging that the state education finance system was depriving New York City schoolchildren of their constitutional right to a “sound, basic education.” Since then, a generation of students has passed through the city schools.
This appeal, however, could mark the final juncture in the case’s 13-year journey through the courts. Since the Appellate Court upheld the order of an expert panel, which determined that the state should pay the city $5.6 billion in increased operating aid, the State Court of Appeals is the last legal step. That court decided in favor of the CFE plaintiffs in the previous round.
— Maisie McAdoo
