One of My Biggest Regrets

...last week was not having the time to respond to Rod Watson's indictment of charter schools .

But someone else took up the challenge--and did a very fine job. A taste:

He says, "we shouldn't let educational gamblers play with any more of the house's money - or its kids - until we find out what works." Gamblers? No, they're reformers looking beyond the status quo. Gambling would be perpetuating the same failed public school system that has plagued Buffalo and like cities for too long.

Nickel City Journal, the blog of a Buffalonian in spirit if not location is the most recent entry in Buffalo's blogosphere as well as the most recent entry on my "Favorite Bookmarks" bar.
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An Object Lesson In The Importance of Contract Provisions

Too often, we think union contracts are just about wages and benefits. What isn't widely understood is how important other provisions are and how they impact student achievement by restricting the efforts of teachers and administrators who really want to make a difference.

Put simply, certain union contract provisions make it difficult for kids to learn.

This article in the Amsterdam News illustrates the point.

But in New York—unlike some other school districts—Weston doesn’t ultimately have complete autonomy over his school. He, like other New York City administrators, is restricted by a stringent union contract that enables tenured teachers who have been in the system for years to fill a vacancy in a school even if the principal has another candidate in mind.

“It pisses me off that I can’t pick my team,” said Weston, who has hired a crop of young teachers over the past few years who are idealistic but have little teaching experience working in challenging urban settings.

“I can’t say, ‘Let me go out. Let me hire. Let me recruit,’” he said.
School reform advocates have long argued that at schools like Robeson, which has had a long history of underperformance, students could benefit from having more seasoned educators in the classroom...But under the current union contract negotiated by the United Federation of Teachers, once a teacher reaches tenure, he or she has the option of transferring to a high-performing school, leaving many underperforming schools in largely poor, Black and Latino communities—staffed with a batch of first- and second-year teachers.

Another provision of the union contract—a massive document that most city parents don’t know exists nor can fully comprehend—does not require that teachers monitor students in the hallway as they pass to and from classes or that they supervise students on the recess playground.

“You think the union is protecting the interest of the students, but in reality, they are protecting the interests of teachers,” said Courtney Harris, a Harlem resident who recently took her daughter out of public schools and enrolled her in a charter school.

Harris isn’t alone. Each year, dozens of parents crowd into city schools urging principals to provide services for their students that the union contract explicitly prohibits teachers from performing. One teacher at a Manhattan school said that she did not volunteer for certain jobs (such as staying after school to sponsor an art and drama club) because it was frowned upon by other teachers active in the union.
“I feel torn,” said the teacher, who asked that her name not be identified. “When we signed up to be teachers, we pledged to give it our all. But some of my colleagues are in this thing for a paycheck."

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Seniority v. Merit

Currently under arbitration in NYC is a very interesting case that pits seniority against merit. It's a dispute about summer school hiring. The Klein Administration wants to hire based on merit. The teacher's union wants summer school hiring done on seniority.

The fact that there's a dispute is a disgrace as program quality is demonstrably better under a merit-based arrangement. But if Klein loses the case, the district will incur HUGE costs from back pay.

From the NY Daily News, this is a story worth following.
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Where Does All The Money Go?

Landing a superintendent and other board issues have kept me from blogging as regularly as I'd like, but this letter I received late last night has made me find the time for an entry.

Here's the letter:

I just got finished watching the evening news and was enraged to see the headline "Buffalo School System short 16 Million $$"

They received more money from the state than they where expecting and the population is allegedly in decline. So with more money and less kids why is the cost going up by millions every year?

Our teachers are paid on average or better than there peers. The system spends a comparable amount of money per student. Yet here we are again at the bottom of the barrel with the same lame excuses. If I see another one of those "board members" on TV talking about Buffalo's schools "unique" problems I think I'm going to break the TV. The only thing "unique" about our school system is how much of a money hole it has become. My child is no dumber than a child in orchard park nor is any of my nieghbors. Board members portraying residents as some type of under class is not only insulting it is self defeating. Do you think by them making those comments you will get more people to enroll in our school system? Im sure those comments where good for another 50 parents to start looking for a charter to put there kids in. Wake these people up.

Its time for tough questions and hard answers and an end to business as usual. Stop the excuse we are all tired of them.

Let me begin by saying I share the writers' frustration. Our district needs to begin demonstrating more value for the money we spend on education. I sincerely believe that a solid first step will be hiring a progressive Superintendent with a track record of improving schools and school districts and who has the highest regard for student achievement and teacer accountability.

Now about the money. I too wondered how we can be spending more money when fewer kids are enrolled in schools. Here's what I found. I offer them not as excuses, but as bare economic facts that explain the financial position we find ourselves in.

• Buffalo is one of two districts in Western New York with the highest number of senior teachers. That doesn't mean that we have lots of effective teachers. It means we have a lot of older teachers making, comparatively, a lot of money. Entry level teachers start with an average salary of $35K. Veteran teacers base pay ranges from $65K to $85K.


• Largely because of those senior teachers and the BTF's refusal to subscribe to a single-carrier health coverage, health insurance costs for the district have increased nearly 10% in three years (or $14.8M).


• While I support school choice and charter schools, they cost money. In three years, there has been more than a 22% increase in the amount of money we spend on charters or $24.3M.

In other words, while enrollment has declined, so have the number of the district's full time employees (from 6,308 in 2001-02 to 5,340 in 2005-06). But the cost of those employees, the single largest line item oin our budget constituting 59% ($313.8M) has increased. And while some of our enrollment has shifted to charter schools, we still fund those students' education.

But there's good news. Though we have little room to move, we've decreased the projected deficit for next year. While there is still a projected increase in our major costs moving forward, we've trimmed that increase from FY 05 to FY 06 by $12.1M, possibly more if BTF will agree to single-carrier health insurance.

I hope this helps explain the budget landscape. And again, I am committed to doing much more with what we have--to start to show value and be more accountable. But it's complicated and the Board can't do it alone. All players sitting at the table need to deliberate and negotiate with our children's interests as our top priority.
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Teacher Union's Obstruction Backfires in Boston

A portent? Is this the beginning of the backlash--another Boston revolt? From The Boston Globe:

The Boston Teachers Union, through its obstruction, may just succeed in doing something the charter schools haven't done with their successes: Make a charter supporter of Mayor Thomas Menino.

Despite their impressive record, Menino has opposed charters, preferring to nudge the existing system toward reform rather than to let dozens of experimental academies bloom. But last week, efforts to resolve an impasse over pilot schools -- the Boston public school system's answer to charters -- broke down because of the teachers union's refusal to honor a previous deal giving pilots the flexibility to decide for themselves on overtime pay.

''It is outrageous," Menino said of the union stand. ''We have put in place a pilot school system that works, that the teachers union agreed to in negotiations with us in 1994."

That flexibility didn't come free. ''We paid for it with the teachers contract," Menino noted. As the mayor sees it, the only real change since then is that, with 14 Boston charters slated for the fall, charters are bumping up against the cap in state law, thus removing the threat that more can open in Boston. But if the union doesn't change its stance, Menino said he may support lifting the charter cap.

''If they want to go to extremes, I will have to go to extremes," he said in an interview.

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Charter Schools Make Strange Bedfellows: School Choice In Milwaukee

I thought this piece in the Post was quite interesting...and heartening. It mentions the seemingly odd partnership forged between conservative Gov. Tommy Thompson and liberal Democrat Rep. Polly Williams for the cause of school choice in Milwaukee. It affirms what I've held for some time: When it comes to public education, there is no right or left.

There's no room for political ideology. The polarities are not left and right, conservative and liberal. The polarities are simply, progress and the status quo. They understand that in Miluakee. And I think we are, slowly but surely, beginning to understand that here.
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