September Newsflash
In contract talks, SRC calls for diminished teacher role in school management
As teachers’ contract negotiations enter a crucial phase, some education advocates are expressing concern about the School District’s desire to give principals more authority to act unilaterally in school decision-making.
In an effort not to disrupt the start of the new school year, the School Reform Commission (SRC) and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) union have agreed to extend the current contract from August 31 to September 10 while the two parties continue to negotiate over many of the SRC’s 419 proposed contract changes.
Reaffirming the SRC’s support for districtwide site-based hiring of teachers, known as “site selection,” SRC Chairman James Nevels called the proposed overhaul of the seniority-based teacher hiring and assignment system the District’s “top priority” in the contract negotiations during an August 26 interview with the Notebook. But he noted that the assignment process overhaul is just one leg of a “three-legged stool” that includes reducing healthcare costs and revamping school governance.
Principals call the shots
The SRC’s contract
proposals are characterized by a shift away from a collaborative
school management model towards a principal-controlled one where
principals are no longer required to include teachers in certain
school decisions. In several areas where teachers’ elected
representatives at a school now play a role in decision-making –
including teacher hiring – that role would be eliminated.
In the SRC’s contract proposals, PFT-elected building committees – now composed of at least one teacher and other unionized school staff members – would be supplanted by a principal-appointed “Education Leadership Team” at every school. This new team would be composed of the school’s administrative team and “other staff members deemed necessary and appropriate by the principal.”
According to the current teachers’ contract, principals and building committees “work cooperatively on items regarding school operations and questions relating to the implementation of the [contract],” including creating student rosters each spring, and deciding on changes to local school policy and some professional development issues.
Although he defended the move to a principal-controlled model of school operations, Nevels said “wise principals” concerned with increasing student achievement would see it in their “best interest” to include teachers on the proposed school leadership team.
“There has to be some individual who is directly accountable. We see that focal point in the principal,” commented Nevels.
He pointed out that the most recent principals’contract increased the stakes for the system’s principals by doing away with same-day tenure. Under the agreement, all principals are categorized as “acting” for their first two years and must attain a “satisfactory” personnel rating to merit a salary increase.
PFT president Ted Kirsch said the proposed changes to the teachers’ contract “severely limit the functions of PFT Building Committees” in the August edition of the PFT Reporter.
“These proposals have nothing to do with improving quality education for children. It’s all about management prerogative,” Kirsch said. “The SRC wants principals to be able to do what they want, when they want and to whomever they want.”
SRC proposes different site selection
model
The current teachers’ contract enables school staff members
to vote to create school-based personnel committees staffed by teacher,
parent, and in some cases student representatives, and 44 schools
currently use the process to fill teacher vacancies. But the personnel
committee is not the model advanced by the SRC for conducting teacher
selection.
Liza Herzog, director of research at the Philadelphia Education Fund (PEF) said that in expanding site selection, the District should see these site selection schools as a successful pilot program to be replicated districtwide.
“It is better to stick with the current system,” said Herzog. “Other [schools] should scale up that model.”
PEF, Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY), and several other local organizations submitted a group statement to the SRC at their August 18 public meeting urging the Commission to include teachers, parents, and students in “real decision-making roles” by maintaining the current site selection model as the District moves to expand site selection districtwide.
“When applicants interview at a school site with the principal, teachers, parents, and students, they begin to understand the school’s students, mission, and curriculum and are better able to determine if the teaching assignment would be an appropriate match,” the groups’ statement said.
The proposed contract changes advanced by the SRC would give principals sole authority both to hire and to remove teachers in schools deemed “nonperforming” by state No Child Left Behind standards – as well as in new and replacement schools. There would be no personnel committee involved in teacher hiring in these schools. Under the current contract principals must adhere to a PFT-monitored disciplinary process before a teacher can be removed.
At so-called “performing” schools, the SRC’s contract proposals would empower a “staff selection committee” – composed of the school’s administrative team and two teachers – to make hiring decisions. Principals would “consult” with the school’s Educational Leadership Team and Home and School Association in forming the committee. No parent or student participation is required in the language put forth by the SRC, and teacher representatives would not be elected.
PFT spokeswoman Barbara Goodman said the SRC’s move to empower principals at the expense of teachers has “touched a nerve” with its 11,300 teacher members.
“Our teachers feel outraged by the proposal because they don’t feel like they are being treated like professionals,” she said.
Elizabeth Useem, senior researcher with Research for Action, said all principals should be required to work in collaboration with a hiring committee to choose new and transferring staff.
“The committee structure helps professionalize the hiring process so that teachers are selected solely on merit,” said Useem. “Principals acting alone are more vulnerable to pressures to hire friends and relatives.”
Useem also pointed out that “not including teachers in the hiring decisions at their schools is likely to increase animosity rather than fostering the collegiality that is an essential ingredient of school improvement.”
Will principals embrace collaboration?
Nevels said he believes most principals would solicit “the
input of various constituencies” in making personnel decisions,
even if the teachers’ contract does not require it.
But Useem said giving principals unilateral authority over personnel decisions is misguided.
“In some schools, unskilled and unsupportive principals are a major reason why teachers transfer out. It makes little sense to have such principals manage the hiring process alone,” she said.
Clemente Middle School Principal Pat Mazzuca said while she understands “where the SRC is coming from” in moving towards increased principal control, a collaborative site selection model works best. Clemente is one of the 44 schools where teachers have voted to implement site selection.
“My leadership style has always been to solicit input from all stakeholders involved, and that means parents, students, and teachers,” Mazzuca said, who noted that Clemente’s site-based hiring committee has a history of reaching consensus.
Mazzuca added, “Every principal who hasn’t been involved in personnel hiring needs to receive professional development on how to best work in that type of a model.”
Groups push for comprehensive incentives
Site selection was one of the priority issues raised last spring
by a coalition
of 27 local groups known as the Teacher Equity Campaign when they
presented a platform to the SRC to address the inequitable distribution
of qualified teachers across the District.
But as the teachers’ contract talks come to a head, the coalition continues to advocate for a comprehensive approach to remedying teacher quality gaps districtwide by creating a package of “teacher incentive grants” for teachers at “hard-to-staff” schools with chronic teacher vacancies.
“Site selection alone won’t do the job,” said PCCY Executive Director Shelly Yanoff, whose organization was a driving force behind the creation of the campaign. “Schools that struggle the most to attract and keep qualified staff should have extra incentives to make their critical work more achievable.”
Financial incentives, reduced work loads, extra money for classroom supplies, smaller class size, and professional development and training opportunities could go a long way to better staffing struggling schools, she said.
The SRC’s published contract proposals made no mention of such incentives. But Nevels said he supports including a “pre-approved list of resources” for hard-to-staff schools in the contract.
Goodman of the PFT said instead of focusing on how teachers would be moved from school to school, the District should concentrate on increasing the pool of highly qualified teachers working in the District. She noted that 20 percent of Philadelphia’s teachers have emergency teaching certificates from the state.
“If this goal is to have every student have an experienced, qualified teacher, you can’t do that if 20 percent of your teachers are not yet qualified,” she said.
Other sticking points
Other key provisions in the SRC’s proposed changes to the
current teachers’ contract call for:
- Requiring teachers to pay up to 2 percent of their salary for health insurance coverage
- Adding 26 minutes to the school day, while reducing elementary teachers’ lunch periods by 15 minutes
- Eliminating overtime pay for teachers who cover classes during their prep period
- Ending the requirement that middle and high school teachers would not have to teach more than 3 hours consecutively without a break
- Allowing teachers to be assigned without their consent to more than five periods a week of teaching outside the subject area they were hired to teach
- Allowing the use of “electronic devices” to monitor employees without their consent.
The contract changes advanced by the SRC do not address compensation, but District CEO Paul Vallas said pay increases will be included in the final agreement.
“There will be no additional mandated instructional time without the School District paying for it,” Vallas said at an August 25 press conference.
Contact Notebook staff writer Beandrea Davis at 215-951-0330 x156 or beandrea@thenotebook.org.