When teachers cast ballots Tuesday, they’ll be voting not just on a new contract, but on the opportunity to shake the federal money tree for school reform.
That was Mayor John DeStefano’s analysis in a candid discussion about school reform at a public forum. He spoke a few days after the city reached a tentative agreement with its teachers union on a new labor contract. Teachers are set to vote on the proposal Tuesday from 4 to 7 p.m. at Career High School.
If approved, the contract will likely lead to money from Washington, DeStefano told a crowd of Westville neighbors at the Edgewood School Thursday night. He said he’s counting on the labor pact to help the city snag federal grants that will finance ambitious plans for school reforms.
“I expect to be rewarded” by the Obama administration, the mayor said, for succeeding in working with unions — in a way that, for instance, the city of Washington, D.C. has not.
A national teachers union official, too, praised the tentative contract will “show other places” how to work together to improve schools.
What’s In The Contract
The four-year contract, which would take effect July 1, 2010, would allow the district to close failing schools and reopen them as charters; tie teacher evaluations to student performance; and give schools more autonomy in how they operate, according to a person familiar with the agreement.
Those changes would pave the way for DeStefano’s school reform drive, which aims to close the city’s achievement gap by 2015 and ensure every student has the opportunity to go to college. The initiative has four planks: grading schools; differentiated management of schools, including closing failing schools and reopening them as charters; attracting and recruiting talented staff; and a “Promise” college scholarship program.
DeStefano and teachers union President Dave Cicarella declined to comment on the details of the pact: They’ve agreed not to do so until Tuesday’s vote.
A person familiar with the accord gave the following rundown.
The contract covers 1,700 public school teachers in the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 933.
The contract includes an average 3 percent annual raise, with steeper raises for new and mid-level teachers. Future hires would have to join a new health plan with higher co-pays. Existing members would keep their health plan. Their medical contributions would increase by half a percent each year.
Teachers would be evaluated based on student performance. The teacher evaluations will be based not just on test scores, but other factors like student attendance, parental involvement, and participation in class. A committee of administrators and teachers will work this year to come up with a metric for evaluations. The committee will evaluate administrators, too.
Individual schools would be allowed to adopt new work rules, such as extending the school day, as long as teachers at the school approve the changes by a three-quarters majority vote. Suggestions for how to change the school rules could come from administrators or from the teachers themselves.
The school reform drive calls for schools to be graded, and placed into three “tiers” based on student performance. The contract would allow for the lowest-performing schools to be closed and reopened as charter schools, under new leadership. These so-called “turnaround” schools would still be unionized. Teachers who wanted to keep working there would have to reapply to the school.
Teachers who apply to work at a reconstituted school would have to agree to a new set of work rules. If the school day is extended, they would get a pro-rated salary hike.
One change the union fought hard for, and won, concerns how low-performing teachers are evaluated. As it stands, low-performing teachers are graded and audited only by administrators. The contract would establish a new peer review committee to introduce teachers’ perspective into the process. The committee would establish new guidelines so that veteran teachers who are trained in best practices can review the low-performing teachers and mentor them.
Mayor: Reward Awaits
The mayor (pictured) said he hopes the contract gets overwhelming approval Tuesday — because it would not only bring about changes in the classroom, but will likely help finance them.
The teacher’s contract didn’t have to be the “be-all and end-all” to school reform, DeStefano said. “There’s a lot of this the school board could do on its own” and with other partners, the mayor told about 60 Westville parents and neighbors.
But the prospect of federal funding spurred the mayor to make the labor contract a priority.
His analysis: Having an early agreement with teachers on major reform plans would make the city stand out as it competes for national grants.
The city is angling for several new education-themed federal stimulus programs introduced by President Obama. New programs include the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund, which Obama unveiled (in video) in July. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called “the largest pot of discretionary funding for K‑12 education reform in the history of the United States.”
The program has four goals, which line up well with New Haven’s: prepare students for college; close the achievement gap; reward and retain talented staff; and be willing to change.
“To turn around the lowest-performing schools, states and districts must be ready to institute far-reaching reforms, from replacing staff and leadership to changing the school culture,” Duncan wrote in an Op-Ed on the subject.
The program rewards districts where teachers are on board with school reform plans.
Given that fact, “we made a political choice to work really, really hard to agree with the AFT,” DeStefano said.
DeStefano announced his plans in a private meeting with Duncan in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 10. It was his first-ever trip to the U.S. Department of Education: He said he never had reason to visit there before these federal grants emerged. He took schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo and Assistant Superintendent Garth Harries with him. They gave Duncan a general outline of what they hoped to accomplish in New Haven’s schools.
When he got home, DeStefano said he worked hard to follow through, he said.
At first, “I didn’t think the [American] Federation of Teachers in New Haven was going to come to an agreement with us at the outset of this process. Dead honest with you,” he said.
“I pretended not to be the smartest person in the room sometimes, which is very hard for me to be like that,” he said in a good-humored tone, eliciting laughter from the room.
The national AFT made a political choice to focus on the New Haven contract, too, DeStefano said. Joan Devlin (pictured), a national AFT representative, flew up to New Haven many times to help guide New Haven’s school reform talks. Both sides “stepped up to the plate” and invested a lot of time, and came to an agreement that would enable sweeping reforms.
He’s counting on the new accord to pay off.
“Frankly I expect to be rewarded by the U.S. Department of Education for this, for having done this together as a team down here, as opposed to” to has happened in the city of Washington, D.C., DeStefano said.
“Michelle Rhee is a great school chancellor, has a lot of great ideas, and has been in a two-year blood bath with the teacher’s union in Washington, D.C.,” DeStefano said. He spoke days after D.C. teachers and students took to the streets to protest 229 teacher layoffs by district chief Rhee.
The discord in D.C. “may have enabled the national AFT’s interest in seeing an agreement, which they have, in New Haven,” DeStefano surmised.
Devlin, the senior associate director for educational issues for the national AFT, replied that the national union was already interested in New Haven, independently of its failure to come to an agreement with Rhee. But she agreed that the scope of New Haven’s reforms will make it stand out on the national landscape.
“They’re really going to show other places the way to do it,” she said.
Garth Harries (pictured), New Haven’s school reform czar, heralded the tentative pact as a sign of the school district’s “strength.”
“Part of what the fact of that tentative agreement represents is the coming together of the teachers union and of the administration, two camps that typically are duking it out, to say, lets do reform together. Let’s make sure we improve this school district together,” he said at Thursday’s meeting.
“That’s a powerful statement, and I don’t know a lot of other places around the country that are able to say that right now. That’s part of the strength of New Haven,” he said. It “makes me confident in our long-term success.”
Cicarella joined them in applauding the agreement and urging its ratification Tuesday night. He said he agrees that the pact would strengthen New Haven’s case in D.C.
When the mayor and top school officials went to see Duncan in August, Cicarella said he was offended that they didn’t think to bring a teacher’s union representative. That was one of the issues the two sides worked through in negotiations — making teachers a “partner” instead of just informing them about decisions, according to Cicarella.
When the mayor showed up for an event at the Lawn Club two weeks ago, it appeared he had learned the lesson: Cicarella sat beside him, Mayo and Harries as they pitched the reforms to philanthropists.
DeStefano said he has no current plans to return to the U.S. Department of Education. But if he does, he “could envision circumstances warranting [AFT officials’] involvement and participation in DOE meeting — as appropriate.”
Some previous stories about New Haven’s school reform drive:
• What About The Parents?
• Teachers, City Reach Tentative Pact
• Philanthropists Join School Reform Drive
• Wanted: Great Teachers
• “Class of 2026” Gets Started
• Principal Keeps School On The Move
• With National Push, Reform Talks Advance
• Nice New School! Now Do Your Homework
• Mayo Unveils Discipline Plan
• Mayor Launches “School Change” Campaign
• Reform Drive Snags “New Teacher” Team
• Can He Work School Reform Magic?
• Some Parental Non-Involvement Is OK, Too
• Mayor: Close Failing Schools
• Union Chief: Don’t Blame The Teachers
• 3‑Tiered School Reform Comes Into Focus
• At NAACP, Mayo Outlines School Reform
• Post Created To Bring In School Reform
• Board of Ed Assembles Legal Team
Some of that federal money is MY money,,,and NO you cant have anymore,,, try me....