Changing the current teacher contract was certainly something many of the parents in the room wanted to see.

The representative from the charter schools association said that some charter schools have a “thin” contract, which makes it easier for the school to fire teachers. But none of the teachers in the meeting gave any indication that they were considering that. They remained very noncommittal about all of the contract questions.

One of the slides in the teachers’ presentation give three options to the teachers concerning their union representation and contract. They could stay part of the same union and keep the same contract. They could stay part of the same union and negotiate a separate contract for CVCHS teachers. Or they could form a separate bargaining unit and negotiate a new contract for themselves.

I left that meeting thinking that the teachers were going to regret the charter conversion because the parents would force major concessions in their contract. I assumed the parents would be in control of the governing board. But when the teachers created the governing board, they gave only two out of nine seats to parents. The parents didn’t even get to elect their representatives. They would be appointed by the other governing board members. (That was changed after a fuss was made about it on another blog. The parents now elect their two representatives.) The governing board contains twice as many employee representatives (four) as parent representatives, plus there is a seat for a retired teacher who will be appointed by the other board members. Employee interests are well-represented on the nine-member Board.

The teachers have since announced that they will keep their current contract for the first year of CVCHS operation and all current CV teachers are guaranteed a job at the charter. The charter intself contains several things designed to improve the situation for teachers in addition to salary/benefit issues: more training, more collaboration time, more say in curriculum, more say in hiring fellow teachers.

I’ve been reading about charter schools and school reform efforts in LA, where there are many charter schools, both start-up and conversions, as well as quasi-charter schools run by the school district itself. In many of those schools, teachers have “thin” contracts that allow for easier hiring/firing of teachers as well as making it much easier for the administrators to control the budget, schedules, etc. The typical “thin” teacher contract is only 75 pages versus 300 pages for a traditional contract.

It will be interesting to see if the CVCHS teachers will be willing to give us some of their job protections in the interests of improving the school. I wonder how much research the CV teachers really did before they decided to go charter. I doubt many of them did it with the intention of negotiating a “thin” contract that made it easier to fire them, and I can’t imagine them being willing to accept such a contract.

I’m curious, how would “pay for performance” work? Some students are impossible to teach due to their unwillingness to learn and being the byproduct of their parents or the way they were raised. How do you structure it so teachers do not get penalized for those students? Teaching is a bit different than managing a group of employees. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, the student either cannot or is unwilling to learn.

Thanx for the background.

There are many layers to this onion and I’m coming in late in the game.

The presentation also made clear that the teachers felt they didn’t have enough say at the school. They didn’t like the “top-down” management structure where they had to take orders from the principal and the principal had to take orders from the district. They felt that they had a much bigger say in the past. (I’m sure they did in the days before No Child Left Behind, with its tougher state standards and high stakes testing, and the relentless budget cuts.)

Middendorf seemed to think there would be lots of money: Federal dollars, grants, parent fundraising, in addition to the extra money from the state. She started listing all the things we could do with the money: reinstate summer school, freshman summer program, add a seventh period, build a theater, etc. But the man they’d brought with them from the charter schools association jumped in to say that we needed to be realistic. We didn’t live in NJ or NY where schools were funded at 14K/student. He said it wouldn’t be all that much more money. A parent questioned whether she had a finacial plan prepared to show what was actually possible. She said no, she didn’t have any financial info yet.

Becoming a charter doesn’t automatically alter any work rules. This is one way start-up charters are a bit different from conversion charters. Start-up charters are usually non-union. But when it’s a conversion charter, the teachers remain unionized. They just have to negotiate a contract with the Governing Board. The CV teachers have said that they plan to keep the same contract for the first year of CVCHS operation and that all current CV teachers are guaranteed a job at the charter. Unless it’s been changed since I last looked, it’s written in the charter that the teachers expect to be paid at least what MDUSD teachers are paid, but without the furlough salary cuts. I believe an earlier iteration added that they ultimately expected to be paid more than MDUSD teachers. That line might have been cut, though. I think I remembers seeing in the financial plan that they have increased the amount spent on benefits.

The teachers got to determine the composition of the govering board when they wrote the charter, so they made it “employee friendly”. I don’t think they’re in any danger of losing any of their current job protections. Four out of nine members of the board are employees and a fifth is a retired teacher. Plus the two community members are appointed by the board. Not much chance they’ll see “pay for performance” any time soon.

But charter schools are getting their funding cut, just as school districts are. So the governing board is going to have to start making hard decisions from the get-go. Given the composition of the governing board, I do question whether the needs of the students will be placed above the desires of the teachers. When it comes down to a question of paying more of the health insurance costs for the teachers, or using the money to benefit the students, which way will the Board go?

At the last meeting a teacher stood up and said when they first approaced Lawrence about the Charter he said to them “that can’t happen because it would make me look bad” Well Mr. Lawrence it doesn’t take a charter to make you look bad.