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On the Madison School District’s 2011-2012 Budget

First, we need to adopt a preliminary budget so that we can get any necessary layoff notices issued before our deadline. This requires us to resolve the OT/COTA issue, since the superintendent has recommended issuing layoff notices to our COTAs. But no other layoff notices are in the works for the Board to consider. (There could be some layoffs attributable to shifting enrollment levels among our schools, but the Board tends not to get involved in these.) This lessens the urgency and reduces the scope of our budget deliberations.
Second, it seems likely that we will spend less time on individual Board member’s proposed budget amendments this year. In the past, Board members have generally had two primary motives for offering amendments. The first was to find alternatives for unappealing budget recommendations. We don’t have a slew of unappealing recommendations this year. The second motive has been to reduce what a Board member considered to be an unacceptably large increase in our property tax levy. That shouldn’t be an issue this year.
Individual Board members may come up with some sound and beneficial budget recommendations this year, of course. At this point, I don’t expect to offer much in the way of amendments myself, since I’m aware of no low-hanging fruit and I’m not much in favor of trying to effect policy changes through the budget amendment process.
Third, our budget deliberations (and our recent extension of our collective bargaining agreements) have been shaped primarily in response to the Governor’s budget recommendations. The budget bill is unlikely to pass before the end of June. Our budget choices are affected by the final form the budget bill takes. What happens with our underlevy authority is the most obvious example.
Under the circumstances, if we pass a preliminary budget before final action on the budget bill, our budget will be really, really preliminary. A lot of the heavy lifting budget-wise – like what to do with our underlevy authority, if it survives – can’t take place until after June.
There are some other reasons as well why it makes sense to defer substantive budget deliberations to later in the year. For example, it would be helpful to know how our fund balance will look at the end of the fiscal year on June 30 and how it’s changed from last year. We’d also be in a better position to make smart choices for next year if we have a clearer idea of how our 2012-2013 budget is looking and the more time passes, the clearer those numbers will come into focus.

On Quickly Extending Madison Teacher Contracts; Board to Meet Tomorrow @ 2:00p.m.

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

Thursday, March 10 was an eventful day. With the approval by the state Assembly of legislation stripping public employees of nearly all collective bargaining rights, it appears that our school district has about a day to negotiate with our teachers and other bargaining units represented by MTI about an extension of our current collective bargaining agreement, which expires at the end of June. (We have already agreed to extensions for our two bargaining units represented by AFSCME and for our trades workers.)
Board members have received hundreds of emails from our teachers and others requesting that we extend their contracts and that we do it quickly. Here is the response I sent to as many of the emails as I could on Thursday night. I apologize to those to whose messages I simply didn’t have time to respond.

Thanks for contacting me to urge the School Board to extend the contract for our teachers and other represented employees.
This is a difficult situation for all of us and one that all of us would have preferred to have avoided. However, it is here now and we have to deal with it.
Like all our Board members, I respect, value and like our teachers. I want to do whatever I can to ease the stress and uncertainty that we’re all feeling, but I’m also required to act in the best interest of the school district and all of our students.
The situation before us is that if we do not extend the contract with our teachers, then, once the legislation approved today goes into effect, collective bargaining will effectively come to an end.
The School Board met tonight to discuss the terms of a contract that we could responsibly enter into for the next two years, given the uncertainty we face. We agreed on a proposal, which we submitted to MTI this evening. Like our previous settlements with other bargaining units, the proposed contract gives us the flexibility we need to adapt to the requirements imposed on us by the new state law, as well as the reduced spending limits and reduction in state aid that are parts of the proposed budget bill.
The proposed contract is written so that it gives the District discretion over changes in salary and in contributions to retirement accounts and to the cost of health insurance. I recognize that you can feel uncomfortable about the extent of the discretion that our proposal reserves for the school district. We have to write the contract this way, because any change in the contract – like re-opening the contract to adjust its terms – triggers application of the new state law that abolishes nearly all collective bargaining. So we have to draft the contract in a way that any adjustment in its economic terms does not amount to an amendment or change to the contract, and providing the school district with discretion to make such changes seems like the only way to do this.

The Madison School Board apparently is going to meet tomorrow @ 2:00p.m. to discuss extending the teacher contracts, though I don’t see notice on their website.
Matthew DeFour:

The Madison School Board scheduled a meeting for 2 p.m. Saturday to approve a deal with its unions before a Republican law to strip collective bargaining takes effect.
The vote is scheduled less than 48 hours after the School District and Madison Teachers Inc. exchanged initial proposals Thursday night at a hastily called School Board meeting.
The two proposals, released by the district Friday afternoon, called for extending contracts until June 30, 2013, and freezing wages, but differed on benefit concessions and other details.
MTI asked that teachers be granted amnesty and given full pay for four days missed last month. Hundreds of teachers called in sick on Feb. 16, 17, 18 and 21 to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to limit collective bargaining. Walker signed the bill Friday after the Legislature approve it Wednesday and Thursday.
MTI also asked for the missed days to be made up by adding 8 to 15 minutes to the end of every school day through the rest of the year. That would fulfill a state requirement for instructional time.
The MTI proposal did not include any employee contributions to pension and health insurance premiums over the next two years, something other unions around the state seeking contract extensions proposed to their school boards.
The district’s proposal called for allowing it to set pension contributions, change its health insurance carrier and employees’ share of premiums, set class sizes, and increase or decrease wages at its discretion, among other things. The district faces a $16 million reduction in funding under Walker’s 2011-13 budget proposal.

Don Severson: Considerations Proposed for the Madison School District 2011-2012 Budget 300K PDF, via email:

The legislative passage of the bill to limit collective bargaining for public employees provides significant opportunities for Wisconsin school districts to make major improvements in how they deliver instructional, business and other services. Instead of playing the “ain’t it awful’ game the districts can make ‘systemic’ changes to address such challenges as evaluating programs, services and personnel; setting priorities for the allocation and re-allocation of available resources; closing “the achievement gap”; and reading and mathematics proficiency, to name a ‘short list’. The Madison Metropolitan School District can and should conduct their responsibilities in different ways to attain more effective and efficient results–and, they can do this without cutting teacher positions and without raising taxes. Following are some actions the District must take to accomplish desirable, attainable, sustainable, cost effective and accountable results.

Madison Teachers, Inc. 2011 Candidate Questionnaire

1MB PDF, via a kind reader’s email:. Mayoral Candidate Paul Soglin participated and I found this question and response interesting:

What strategies will you introduce to reduce the 6000+ families who move in and out of Madison Public School classrooms each year?
In the last three years more children opted out of the district than all previous years in the history of the district. That contributed to the increase of children from households below the poverty line rising to over 48% of the kids enrolled.
To stabilize our enrollment we need stable families and stable neighborhoods. This will require a collaborate effort between governments, like the city, the county and the school district, as well as the private sector and the non-profits. It means opening Madison’s economy to all families, providing stable housing, and building on the assets of our neighborhoods.
One decades old problem is the significant poverty in the Town of Madison. I would work with town officials, and city of Fitchburg officials to see if we could accelerate the annexation of the town so we could provide better services to area residents.

Ed Hughes and Marj Passman, both running unopposed responded to MTI’s questions via this pdf document.

MTIVOTERS 2011 School Board Election Questionnaire
Please respond to each ofthe following questions. If you wish to add/clarifY your response, please attach a separate sheet and designate your responses with the same number which appears in the questionnaire. Please deliver your responses to MTI Headquarters (821 Williamson Street) by, February 17, 2011.
General:
If the School Board finds it necessary to change school boundaries due to enrollment, what criteria would you, as a Board member, use to make such a judgement?
Ifthe School Board finds it necessary to close a school/schools due to economic reasons, what criteria would you, as a Board member, use to make such a judgement?
If the School Board finds it necessary, due to the State-imposed revenue controls, to make further budget cuts to the 2011-12 budget, what criteria would you, as a Board member, use to make such a judgement?
IdentifY specific MMSD programs and/or policies which you believe should to be modified, re-prioritized, or eliminated, and explain why.
What should the District do to reduce violence/assure that proper discipline and safety (of the learning and working environment) is maintained in our schools?
Do you agree that the health insurance provided to District employees should be mutually selected through collective bargaining?
_ _ YES _ _ NO Explain your concerns/proposed solutions relative to the District’s efforts to reduce the “achievement gap”.
Should planning time for teachers be increased? If yes, how could this be accomplished?
Given that the Wisconsin Association of School Boards rarely supports the interests of the Madison Metropolitan School District, do you support the District withdrawing from the W ASB? Please explain your rationale.
From what sources do you believe that public schools should be funded?
a. Do you support further increasing student fees? _ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Do you support the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools’ (WAES) initiative to raise sales tax by 1% to help fund schools?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you support class sizes of 15 or less for all primary grades? _ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you support:
a. The use of public funds (vouchers) to enable parents to pay tuition with tax payers’ money for religious and private schools?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
b. The expansion of Charter schools within the Madison Metropolitan School District? _ _ YES _ _ NO
c. The Urban League’s proposed “Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men” as a charter school which would not be an instrumentality of the District?
_ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Do you agree that the usual and customary work ofteachers, i.e. work ofthose in MTI’s teacher bargaining unit, should not be performed by others (sub-contracted)?
_ _ YES _ _ NO List MMSD staff and Board member(s) from whom you do or would seek advice.
Is your candidacy being promoted by any organization? _ _ YES _ _ NO
If yes, please name such organization(s). Have you ever been employed as a teacher? If yes, please describe why you left the teaching profession.
Do you support the inclusion model for including Title 1, EEN and ESL students in the regular education classroom? Why/why not?
What grouping practices do you advocate for talented and gifted (TAG) students?
Aside from limitations from lack ofadequate financial resources, what problems to you feel exist in meeting TAG students’ needs at present, and how would you propose to solve these problems?
The Board ofEducation has moved from the development ofpolicy to becoming involved in implementation of policy; i.e. matters usually reserved to administration. Some examples are when it:
a. Decided to hear parents’ complaints about a teacher’s tests and grading. b. Decided to modifY the administration’s decision about how a State Statute should be implemented.
Do you believe that the Board should delegate to administrators the implementation of policy which the Board has created?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you believe that the Board should delegate to administrators the implementation of State Statutes? _ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you support the Board exploring further means to make their meetings more efficient? _ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Do you support a merit pay scheme being added to the Collective Bargaining Agreement _ _ YES _ _ _ NO
If yes, based on which performance indicators?
Do/did/will your children attend private or parochial schools during their K-12 years? Ifno, and ifyou have children, what schools have/will they attend(ed)?
_ _ YES _ _ NO If you responded “yes”, please explain why your child/children attended private parochial schools.
Legislation
Will you introduce and vote for a motion which would direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage oflegislation to eliminate the revenue controls on public schools and return full budgeting authority to the School Board?
_ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage oflegislation to prohibit the privatization ofpublic schools via the use oftuition tax credits (vouchers) to pay tuition with taxpayers’ money to private or religious schools?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage of legislation which will maintain or expand the benefit level of the Wisconsin Family and Medical Leave Act?
_ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage oflegislation which will increase the retirement formula multiplier from 1.6% to 2% for teachers and general employees, i.e. equal that of protective employees?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage of legislation which will forbid restrictions to free and open collective bargaining for the selection ofinsurance for public employees (under Wis. Stat. 111.70), including the naming ofthe insurance carrier?
_ _ YES
_ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage of legislation which will guarantee free and open collective bargaining regarding the establishment of the school calendar/school year, including when the school year begins?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsiu Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage of legislation to forbid the work of employees organized under Wis. Stat. 111.70 (collective bargaining statute) to be subcontracted?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to seek passage of legislation which will require full State funding of any State-mandated program?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to seek passage oflegislation which will provide adequate State funding of public education?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you support a specific school finance reform plan (e.g., School Finance Network (SFN), Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES), Andrews/Matthews Plan)?
Why/why not? Your Campaign:
Are you, or any of your campaign committee members, active in or supportive (past or present) of the “Get Real”, “ACE”, “Vote No for Change” or similar organizations?
Name ofCampaign Committee/Address/Phone #/Treasurer. List the members ofyour campaign committee.

On teachers unions, the devil is in the details

Robert Maranto
:

Here are the fiscal facts. Unlike most employees, few Wisconsin teachers have to contribute more than marginally to their retirement and health care costs. My colleague Bob Costrell, who has done substantial work in Milwaukee, calculates that the city’s public school teachers get a remarkable package of benefits equal to 74% of salary, roughly double the normal benefits for workers calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics but in line with other Wisconsin teachers.
And that’s not all. By collective bargaining agreement, the Wisconsin Education Association Council has a lock on health insurance coverage for members, not necessarily a great service for teachers but a wonderful profit center for the union.
What explains this? As one who has served in government and taught public personnel management, the answers are three-fold, and in combination explain why allowing a broad scope for collective bargaining undermines transparency and, ultimately, democracy.
First, teachers unions play a big role in politics, meaning that, as Terry Moe writes in “Teacher Unions and School Board Elections” (published in a Brookings Institution book on school boards), “the fact that school boards are elected means that the teacher unions can actually participate in choosing – or even literally choose – the management they will be bargaining with.”
In the California school districts Moe studies, unions fund candidates and mobilize voters in (low-turnout) school board elections and often recruit the candidates. Unions thus control both sides of the collective bargaining table. Surveys of school board members suggest that business interests, in contrast, have little power.
I have not seen comparable research on Wisconsin, but I suspect similar dynamics.

Providence plans to pink slip all teachers Due to Budget Deficit

Linda Borg:

The school district plans to send out dismissal notices to every one of its 1,926 teachers, an unprecedented move that has union leaders up in arms.
In a letter sent to all teachers Tuesday, Supt. Tom Brady wrote that the Providence School Board on Thursday will vote on a resolution to dismiss every teacher, effective the last day of school.
In an e-mail sent to all teachers and School Department staff, Brady said, “We are forced to take this precautionary action by the March 1 deadline given the dire budget outline for the 2011-2012 school year in which we are projecting a near $40 million deficit for the district,” Brady wrote. “Since the full extent of the potential cuts to the school budget have yet to be determined, issuing a dismissal letter to all teachers was necessary to give the mayor, the School Board and the district maximum flexibility to consider every cost savings option, including reductions in staff.” State law requires that teachers be notified about potential changes to their employment status by March 1.
“To be clear about what this means,” Brady wrote, “this action gives the School Board the right to dismiss teachers as necessary, but not all teachers will actually be dismissed at the end of the school year.”

Providence’s 2010-2011 budget is $405,838,878 for 23,715 students ($17,113.17 per student). Locally, Madison’s per student spending this year is 15,490.13.
The Wisconsin Association of School Boards PDF:

The layoff clauses and the later deadlines for issuing layoff notices that are established by many of the layoff provisions in teacher collective bargaining agreements may be unavailable to districts if the budget repair bill passes in its current form. If this happens, the only way to reduce staff size for 2011-12 in some districts may be through the nonrenewal provisions of Wisconsin Statute 118.22. The absolute latest deadline for giving preliminary notice of nonrenewal to teachers for 2011-2012 would be February 28, 2011, but it would be preferable to have such notices issued by the 25th. Further, school districts that have always adhered to the section 118.22 nonrenewal deadlines to enact staff reductions must consider whether there is a need to issue additional preliminary notices of nonrenewal/staff reduction by the statutory deadline.
ACTION: WASB’s Employment and Labor Law Staff encourages all school districts to give public notice of a special school board meeting for Thursday February 25, 2011 (or Friday February 26th if meeting on the 25th is not possible).

WASB website.

Ed Hughes on Madison Teacher Absences & Protest

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes, via email:

It’s been a non-quiet week here in Madison. Everyone has his or her own take on the events. Since I’m a member of the Madison School Board, mine is necessarily a management perspective. Here’s what the week’s been like for me.
Nearly as soon as the governor’s budget repair bill was released last Friday, I had a chance to look at a summary and saw what it did to collective bargaining rights. Basically, the bill is designed to gut public employee unions, including teacher unions. While it does not outlaw such unions outright, it eliminates just about all their functions.
Our collective bargaining agreement with MTI is currently about 165 pages, which I think is way too long. If the bill passes, our next collective bargaining agreement can be one paragraph — way, way, way too short.
On Monday, Board members collaborated on a statement condemning the legislation and the rush to push it through. All Board members signed the statement on Monday evening and it was distributed to all MMSD staff on Tuesday.

Average Milwaukee Public Schools Teacher Salary Plus Benefits Tops $100,000; Ramifications

MacIver Institute:

For the first time in history, the average annual compensation for a teacher in the Milwaukee Public School system will exceed $100,000.
That staggering figure was revealed last night at a meeting of the MPS School Board.
The average salary for an MPS teacher is $56,500. When fringe benefits are factored in, the annual compensation will be $100,005 in 2011.
MacIver’s Bill Osmulski has more in this video report.

On Wisconsin

Mike Antonucci:

A lot of people have a lot to say about the union protests in Wisconsin and the governor’s plan to curtail collective bargaining for teachers. Those on the ground are best qualified to hash out the big issues, so I’ll just add three morsels to the conversation.
1) Sickouts. The Madison school district and others were closed yesterday due to teacher sickouts. There has been some debate about whether this constitutes an illegal strike, but for a protest that centers on public employee collective bargaining, it’s ironic that whatever you want to call it, yesterday’s protest was a violation of the Madison teachers’ collective bargaining agreement.
Madison teachers are allowed five personal leave days per year, but are required by contract to notify the principal at least three working days in advance. Since the teachers themselves didn’t have that much notice of the protest, they had to use sick leave. The contract spells out in exacting detail the purposes for which sick leave can be used. Union rallies are not among them.
Some may consider the protest a matter of principle or civil disobedience, That’s all well and good. But remember, the only reason to call in sick is so you still get paid for the day. So go ahead and yell. Just remember who’s paying for the microphone.
The Madison contract also contains this provision:

Therefore, MTI agrees that there will not be any strikes, work stoppages or slow downs during the life of this Agreement, i.e., for the period commencing July 1, 2009 and ending June 30, 2011. Upon the notification of the President and Executive Director of MTI by the President of the Board of Education of the Madison Metropolitan School District of any unauthorized concerted activity, as noted above, MTI shall notify those in the collective bargaining unit that it does not endorse such activity. Having given such notification, MTI shall be freed of all liability in relation thereto.

Whatever you call it, it was certainly an “unauthorized concerted activity.”

Much more here and here.

Q & A: Charter School Proposal for Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men

570K PDF:

APPENDIX MMM-7-21 January 31, 2011
Urban League of Greater Madison
SUMMARY
On December 6, 2010, the Urban League of Greater Madison presented an initial proposal for the establishment of Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men (a non-instrumentality all-boys secondary charter school) to the Planning and Development Committee of the MMSD Board of Education. During the discussion that followed, Board members agreed to submit follow-up questions to the Urban Leagne, to which the Urban Leagne would respond before the next meeting of the Planning and Development Committee. Questions were submitted by Ed Hughes and Lucy Mathiak. Furthermore, Arlene Silveira submitted questions presented to her by several connnunity members. Below each numbered Board member question, you will find the ULGM response.
1. Ed Hughes: Do you have a response to the suggestion that your proposal may violate Wis. Stat. sec. 118.40(4)(c) other than that you also intend sometime in the future to develop and operate a school for girls? If so, what is the response?
ULGM: Please refer to our letter to MMSD Board of Education members that responded to the ACLU’s opposition to Madison Prep. The answer to your question is contained in that letter. We have attached the letter to this document for your review.
2. Ed Hughes: To the extent the information is available to you, please list the 37 or so non instrumentality charter schools currently operating in Wisconsin.
ULGM: The following list of non-instrumentality charter schools currently operating in Wisconsin was compiled from the 20 I 0-20 II Charter Schools Yearbook published by the Department of Public Instruction. You can find the complete Yearbook online at: http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/pdf/2010.llyearbook.pdf
1. Barron, North Star Academy
2. Cambridge, JEDI Virtual High School
3. City of Milwaukee, Central City Cyberschool
4. City of Milwaukee, Darrell Lynn Hines (DLH) Academy
5. City of Milwaukee, Downtown Montessori Academy
6. City of Milwaukee, King’s Academy
7. City of Milwaukee, Milwaukee Academy of Science
8. Grantsburg, Insight School of Wisconsin
9. Hayward, Hayward Center for Individualized Learning
10. Hayward, Waadookodaading Charter School
11. McFarland, Wisconsin Virtual Academy
12. Milwaukee, Carmen High School of Science and Technology
13. Milwaukee, Highland Community School
14. Milwaukee, Hmong American Peace Academy (HAPA)
15. Milwaukee, International Peace Academy
16. Milwaukee, La Causa Charter School
17. Milwaukee, Milwaukee Community Cyber (MC2) High School
18. Milwaukee, Next Door Charter School
19. Milwaukee, Wings Academy
20. Milwaukee, Wisconsin Career Academy
21. Nekoosa, Niikuusra Community School
22. New Lisbon, Juneau County Charter School
23. New Richmond, NR4Kids Charter School
24. Sheboygan, Lake Country Academy
25. UW-Milwaukee, Bruce Guadalupe Community School
26. UW-Milwaukee, Business & Economics Academy of Milwaukee (BEAM)
27. UW-Milwaukee, Capitol West Academy
28. UW-Milwaukee, Milwaukee College Preparatory School
29. UW-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Renaissance Academy
30. UW-Milwaukee, School for Early Development & Achievement (SEDA)
31. UW-Milwaukee, Seeds of Health Elementary School
32. UW-Milwaukee, Tenor High School
33. UW-Milwaukee, Urban Day Charter School, Inc
34. UW-Milwaukee, Veritas High School
35. UW-Milwaukee, Woodlands School
36. UW -Milwaukee, YMCA Young Leaders Academy
37. UW-Parkside, 21st Century Preparatory School
38. Weyauwega-Fremont, Waupaca County Charter School
3. Ed Hughes: Do you have copies of any of the contracts Wisconsin non-instrumentality charter schools have entered into with their school districts? If so, please list the contracts and provide a copy of at least one of them.
ULGM: See attached contracts for Lake Country Academy in Sheboygan and the Wisconsin Virtual Academy in McFarland, which are both non-instrumentality charter schools.
4. Ed Hughes: To the extent the information is available to you, please list the amount ofper.student payment each non-instrumentality charter school in Wisconsin is contractually entitled to receive from its sponsoring school district.
ULGM: We have requested information from the DPI on the current per-student payments to each non-instrumentality charter school in Wisconsin, but we understand that DPI does not now have the information consolidated in one database. We expect that the per-student payment information will be available from DPI by January 17, and we will submit that information to the board and administration as soon as it becomes available from the DPI. The per-pupil payment to each district.authorized charter school in Wisconsin, including instrumentality and non-instrumentality charter schools, is determined through negotiations and mutual agreement between the school district, as the charter school authorizer, and the charter school developer/operator.
5. Ed Hughes: Please identify the minimum per-student payment from the school district that would be required for Madison Prep to be financially feasible from your perspective. If you don’t have a specific figure, provide your best estimate of the range in which that figure is likely to fall.
ULGM: The MMSD Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent-Business in agreement with us that more time is needed to present a projected minimum payment from the school district. DPI’s School Finance Data Warehouse indicates that MMSD reported $14,432 in revenue per student and spent $13,881 per student iu 2008-09. We are certain that we will not request more per student than what MMSD spends annually.
6. Lucy Mathiak: Do you know what Madison Prep will cost the district? And do you know where the money will come from?
ULGM: We have an idea ofwhat our school will cost but as stated in the answer to question number 5, we are working through several costs and line items with MMSD’s Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent-Business. In Wisconsin, public charter schools are funded primarily by school districts or the state legislature (non-school district authorized schools). Generally, private funding is limited to 5% of costs during the budgeting process. However we will raise significantly more in private funding during the pre-implementation and implementation years of the school than we will in out years.
7. Lucy Mathiak: How the financial commitment asked of the district compares to the financial commitment to its existing schools?
ULGM: Assuming you mean existing traditional public schools, we will require more information from MMSD’s administration to make this comparison. Given that Madison Prep will be a new school and a non-instrumentality, there will be costs that Madison Prep has that the school system does not, and vice versa. However, we are firmly committed to ensuring our school is operated within the annual per pupil cost MMSD now spends to educate students in middle and high schools.
8. Community Member, via Arlene Silveira: First of all, has the funding that is indicated as part of the proposal actually been acquired or promised? The proposal indicates $100,000/ year from the Madison Community Foundation, but I can’t find any information from MCF itself about funding Madison Prep. All I can see is that they donated to the Urban League’s capital and Workforce campaigns. Will you check into this? Also, the proposal indicates $250,000/ year for 3 years from Partners for Developing Futures. Last year, despite having received 25 applications for funding from “education entrepreneurs,” this organization did not fund any of them due to the quality of the applications. How is the Madison Prep planning team able to claim this as a source of funding? Have promises been made?
ULGM: The Madison Community Foundation and Partners for Developing Futures were listed as potential revenue sources; these dollars were not committed. Our business plan followed the same approach as most business plans for start-up initiatives: listing prospective revenue sources. However, we do intend to pursue funding through these and other sources. Our private fundraising goals and needs in our five-year budget plan are reasonable.
9. Lucy Mathiak: What additional resources are needed to make the Madison Prep model work?
ULGM: Our school is designed as a demonstration school to be replicable, in whole or in part, by MMSD and other school systems. Therefore, we will not request more than the district’s own annual costs per pupil at the middle and high school levels.
10. Lucy Mathiak: What resources are in hand and what resources will you need to raise?
ULGM: We presently have $50,000 to support the planning of the school, with the offer of additional support. However, we will secure additional private and public funding once the Board of Education formally approves the DPI planning grant application/detailed proposal for Madison Prep.
11. Lucy Mathiak: Ifthere is a proposed endowment, what is the amount of the endowment in hand, the estimated annual rate of return, and the estimated income available for use?
ULGM: New charter schools generally do not budget for endowment in their first few years of operation. We intend to build an endowment at some point and have line items for this in Madison Prep’s budget, but these issues will be decided by the Board ofDirectors ofthe school, for which we will not begin recruiting until the Board of Education approves our DPI plauning grant application/detailed proposal.
12. Ed Hughes: Which parts of your proposal do you require non-instrumentality status to implement?
ULGM: Non-instrumentality status will be vital to Madison Prep’s ability to offer an extended school day, extended school year, as well as the expectations we have of teachers to serve as mentors and coaches to students. The collective bargaining contract between the Board of Education and Madison Teachers, Inc. would not allow for this added instructional time. Yet this added instructional time will be necessary in order for students to meet Madison Prep’s ambitious achievement goals. In addition, our professional development program will also require more hours of training. We also intend to implement other special activities for students and faculty that would not be allowed under MMSD and MTI’s collective bargaining agreement.
13. Ed Hughes: What will be the school’s admission policy? Please describe any preferences that the admission policy will include. To what extent will students who live outside ofthe Madison school district be considered for admission?
ULGM: Madison Prep will comply with all federal and state regulations relating to charter school admissions. In its inaugural school year (20 12-20 13), Madison Prep will be open to any 61h and 7’h grade male student residing within the boundaries of MMSD.
All interested families will complete an Enrollment Form at the Urban League’s offices, online, during community meetings and outreach activities, through local partners, or during a visit to the school (after it opens). If Madison Prep receives less than 45 enrollment forms for either grade (6 and 7) in the tirst year, all students’ who applied will be admitted. If the school receives more than 45 enrollment forms for either grade level in the first year, or enrollment forms exceed the seats available in subsequent years, Madison Prep will hold a public random lottery at a location that provides enough space for applicant students and families. The lottery will be held in accordance with DPI guidelines for random lotteries. If Madison Prep does not fill all available seats, it will continue its grassroots recruitment efforts until it reaches its enrollment goal.
14. Community Member, via Arlene Silveira: We know that Madison Prep won’t accept girls. Will it except boys with Autism or Aspergers? If a boy has a learning disability, will he be allowed to attend? What ifthis learning disability makes it not possible for him to perform above grade level on a standardized test? Will he be allowed in? And can they kick him out if his test scores aren’t advanced/proficient?
ULGM: Please see our answer to question #13. To be clear, Madison Prep will accept students with special learning needs, including students who speak English as a second language. As always, IEP teams will determine on a case-by-case basis if Madison Prep is an appropriate placement for special education students. No Madison Prep student will ever be expelled for academic performance.
15. Ed Hughes: An attraction ofthe proposed school is that it could provide the kind ofiutense academic and other sorts of support that could change the trajectories of its students from failure to success. How will you ensure that your school serves primarily students who require the sort of approach the school will offer in order to be successful?
ULGM: Please see our answer to question #13 and question #16 below. We will go to great lengths to inform parents about Madison Prep as an option for their child, and to recruit students and families to our school. We will over-market our efforts in low-income communities and through media, sports clubs, community centers, churches, employers, and other vehicles that reach these students and their parents. We are also exploring the legality of our ability to set an income goal or threshold for student admissions. Nonetheless, we believe that any young man, regardless of their family background, would be well served by Madison Prep.
16. Ed Hughes: To the extent yon know them, describe what the school’s stndent recruitment and marketing strategies will be.
ULGM: Madison Prep’s marketing plan will support three priorities and goals:
1. Enrollment: Recruiting, retaining, and expanding student enrollment annually -share Madison Prep with as many parents and students as possible and establish a wait-list of at least 20 students at each grade level by June I each year (with the exception of year one).
2. Staffing: Recruiting and retaining a talented, effective, and committed faculty and staff -field qualified applicants for each position in a timeframe that enables us to hire by June 30 each year.
3. Public Image and Support: Building, maintaining, and solidifying a base of support among local leaders, financial contributors, key partners, the media, and the general public.
To ensure the public is well acquainted with the school, Madison Prep, with the support of the Urban League of Greater Madison, will make use of a variety of marketing strategies to accomplish its enrollment, staffing, fundraising, and publicity goals. Each strategy will be phased in, from pre.launch of the school through the first three years of operation. These marketing strategies are less expensive and more sustainable with the budget of a new charter school than television, radio, and popular print advertisements. They also deliver a great return on investment if executed effectively. Each strategy will enable Madison Prep, with its limited staff, to promote itself to the general public and hard-to-reach communities, build relationships, sustain communications and achieve its goals.
A. Image Management: Madison Prep’s logo and images of young men projecting the Madison Prep brand will be featured on the school’.s website, in informational and print materials, and on inexpensive paraphernalia (lapel pins, emblems, ink pens, etc). Students will be required to wear uniforms that include a red or black blazer featuring the Madison Prep emblem, a sweater, a red or black tie, white shirt, black or khaki pants, and black or brown dress shoes. They will also have a gym uniform and athletic team wear that features the Madison Prep emblem. Additionally, Madison Prep will ensure that its school grounds, educational facility, and learning spaces are clean, orderly and well-maintained at all times, and that these physical spaces reflect positive images of Madison Prep students, positive adult males, community leaders, families, and supporters. Madison Prep’s Core Values will be visible through the school as well, and its students, faculty, staff, and Board of Directors will reflect an image in school and in public that is consistent with the school’s Core Values and Leadership Dimensions.
B. Grassroots Engagement: Madison Prep’s founders, Board members, volunteers, and its key staff (once hired) will go door-to-door in target neighborhoods, and other areas within MMSD boundaries where prospective candidates can be found, to build relationships with young men, families, and local community resource persons and advocates to recruit young men to attend Madison Prep. Recruiters will be dressed in the Madison Prep uniform (either a polo shirt, sweater or suit jacket/tie, each showing the Madison emblem, and dress slacks or skirt) and will visit homes in two person teams.
Madison Prep will also partner with City Council members, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners, and local libraries to host community meetings year-round to promote the school in target neighborhoods and military bases. It will also promote the school to citizens in high traffic residential areas of the city, including metro stops, restaurants, community centers, community health agencies, and at public events. Madison Prep will engage the religious community as well, promoting the school to church leaders and requesting to speak before their congregations or have the church publicize the school during their announcements on Sundays and ministry activities during the week. Area businesses, hospitals, government agencies, foster care agencies, and mentorship programs will be asked to make information available to their patrons, clients, and families. Madison Prep will also seek to form partnerships with the Police Department and Court System to ensure judges, attorneys, neighborhood police officers, and family advocates know about the school and can make referrals of young men they believe will benefit from joining Madison Prep’s school community.
C. Online Presence & Partnerships: Madison Prep will launch a website and update its current Facebook and Twitter pages prior ·to the school opening to expand its public presence. The Facebook page for Madison Prep presently has more than 100 members, has been operational for less than 2 months, and has not yet been widely marketed. The page is used to raise awareness, expand support, communicate progress, announce activities and events, and promote small-donor fundraising campaigns. The website will be used to recruit students, staff, and eventually serve as an entry-point to a member only section on the Internet for faculty, students, and parents. Madison Prep will also seek to establish strategic alliance partnerships with service associations (100 Black Men, Sororities and Fraternities, Civic Clubs or Organizations, etc.), enlisting their participation in the school’s annual events. In addition, Madison Prep will establish partnerships with other public and private schools in the Madison area to recruit students, particularly elementary schools.
D. Viral Marketing: Madison Prep will use email announcements and social networking sites to share its mission, activities, employment opportunities, and successes with its base of supporters and will inspire and encourage them to share the information with their friends, colleagues, parents and young men they know who might be interested in the school. Madison Prep will add to its base of supporters through its other marketing strategies, collecting names and contact information when and where appropriate.
E. Buzz Marketing: Madison Prep will use subtle forms of marketing to recruit students and faculty, increase its donor and support base, and develop a positive public image. The school will maintain an influential board of directors and advisors, will engage notable people and organizations in the school, and will publicize these assets to the general public. The school will also prepare key messages and strategically involve its students, staff, and parents in key events and activities to market its brand -high achieving, thoughtful, forward thinking, confident and empowered young men who are being groomed for leadership and success by equally talented, passionate and committed adults. The messages, images, and quality of interactions that the broader community has with members of the greater Madison community will create a positive buzz about the school, its impact, and the success of its students.
F. School Visits & Activity Participation: Each year, from the week after Thanksgiving through the end of the school year, Madison Prep will invite prospective students and parents, funders, and members of the community to visit the school. A visit program and weekly schedule will be established to ensure that the school day and learning is not interrupted by visitors. Madison Prep will also establish an open visit policy for parents, and will create opportunities for them to leverage their ongoing involvement with the school and their young men. Through nurturing positive relationships with parents, and establishing an enviromnent where they are wanted and respected, Madison Prep will create spokespersons in the community who help grow its student body and community support. Finally, Madison Prep will host an annual community event that engages its school community with the greater Madison community in a day of fun, competitive events for families, and will serve as a resource to parents whose children do not attend Madison Prep by inviting them to participate in its Destination Planning workshops.
G. Popular Media: Madison Prep will allocate resources to market itself on Urban and News Radio during the peak student recruitment season in two phases. Phase I will take place in November 2011 and Phase 2 advertising will take place between Jannary and May 2012. To defray costs, Madison Prep will enlist the support of local and national celebrities for feature interviews, spotlights, and PSAs with Madison Prep’s Leadership to promote the school.
17. Community Member, via Arlene Silveira: It looks like the Charter school is aiming for 50% of its population to be low-income. The middle school my children will go to, Sherman, is 71% low income. Blackhawk is at 62%. Wright is 83%. Sennett is 65%. Cherokee is at 63%. Toki is at 51%. Can we, in good conscious, start a new school-designed to help low income students -that has a lower percentage oflow-income students than six of our existing middle schools?
ULGM: The Urban League has set the 50% low-income target as a floor, not as a ceiling. In fact, we expect that more than 50% of Madison Prep students will qualifY for free or reduced lunch.
Furthermore, we have chosen to use the 50% figure to allow us to be conservative in our budgeting process. No matter what the level of low income students at Madison Prep -50% or higher-the student achievement goals and overall program quality will remain unchanged.
18. Ed Hughes: Have you considered limiting admission to students who have scored minimal or basic on their WKCE tests?
ULGM: No. Madison Prep will be open to any male student who wishes to attend, regardless of past academic performance.
19. Ed Hughes: Some have suggested that Madison Prep could skim offthe most academically.motivated African-American students from the District’s middle and high schools, leaving fewer role models and academic peers for the African-American boys who remain in our existing schools. What is your response to that concern?
ULGM: The notion that charter schools skim off the most motivated students is a common misconception. First, this argument is not logical. Parents/caregivers ofchildren who are academically motivated and doing well in traditional public schools have little incentive to change their students’ educational environment. Those kids will likely stay put. When a parent, teacher, social worker, or school counselor recognizes that a child isn’t doing well in the traditional school and seeks an alternative, the charter school that is sought as an alternative does not in this process gain some advantage. In fact, research suggests the opposite. A 2009 study by researchers at Michigan State University, the University of Wisconsin, and Mathematic Policy Research examined charter schools from across the country to test the “skimming” theory. The researchers found no evidence of skimming. In fact, they found students who go to charter schools typically have LOWER test scores than their counterparts in traditional public schools. (Read the full paper at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/schoolchoice/conference/papers/Zimmer_COMPLETE.pdf)
20. Ed Hughes: Have you extended preliminary or informal offers of employment at Madison Prep to anyone? If so, identify to whom the preliminary or informal offers were made and for which positions.
ULGM:No.
21. Ed Hughes: What will he your strategy for recruiting teachers? What qualifications will you establish for teachers? Please describe the general range of salary and benefits you expect to offer to teachers.
ULGM: Teacher Recruitment -The overarching goal of teacher recruitment will be to hire a highly qualified, passionate, hard-working, diverse staff. The recruitment effort will include casting a wide net that allows Madison Prep to draw from the pool oflocal teachers as well as teachers statewide and nationwide who will embrace the opportunity to help build a school from the ground up. We will recruit though typical both typical means (postings on our website, WECAN, charter school association job pages) as well as through recruitment fairs outside of the state. Our hiring process will take place in early and mid spring rather than late spring and summer so that we may have a competitive edge in recruiting the teachers that are the best fit for Madison Prep. While the Head of School will be responsible for the hiring of teachers, he/she will engage a committee of teachers, community members, parents, and students in the process ofselecting teachers and other staff. In addition to a thorough interview, teacher candidates will be required to teach a sample lesson to a group of students, as well as other interview committee members. Teacher Qualifications-All teachers at Madison Prep will be licensed by the Department of Public Instruction.
General Salary Range and Benefits*-For the 2012-2013 school year, the salary for Master Teachers (of which there will be two) is currently projected to be $61,406 with a signing bonus of $2,000 and a maximum performance bonus of $2,750. The salary for general education teachers is currently projected to be $50,055 for the 2012-2013 school year, with a signing bonus of$2,000 and a maximum performance bonus of$1,750. Madison Prep intends to provide a full range of benefits to its teachers. *Salary and bonus figures are subject to change
22. Ed Hughes: MMSD already has a charter middle school with a very diverse student population -James C. Wright Middle School. If the school district chose to continue James C. Wright as an instrumentality charter school but modeled on your Madison Prep proposal, which components of your proposal do yon think could be implemented at the school and which components of your proposal could not?
ULGM: The Urban League is not in a position to determine how the fundamental elements ofthe Madison Prep proposal could or could not be implemented at James C. Wright Middle School. That determination would have to be made by the district administration and c01mnunity at Wright.
23. Community Member, via Arlene Silveira: Here is the annual report from one of the Urban League charter schools that the proposal cites as a model for Madison Prep:
http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/reports/2009/annual/0471.doc This is a report from the school’s lO'” year in existence. Please note the test achievement goals and scores on page 4 and compare them with the extremely overconfident goals of the Madison Prep proposal. IfMadison Prep is serious about attaining the goal of 75% oftheir students scoring 22 or higher on the ACT or 1100 or higher on the SAT, how do they plan to achieve this and what will happen with those students who fail to meet this standard? What will happen to the teachers who don’t meet their quota ofstudent test scores above this level? Please investigate these questions in detail and within the framework of Madison Prep processes from admissions through expulsion.
ULGM: The reference to the New Leadership Charter School in Springfield, Massachusetts in the Madison Prep initial proposal was meant to show the precedent for the establishment of charter schools by Urban League affiliates; the New Leadership Charter School is NOT a model for Madison Prep, nor was this ever stated in the initial proposal. That said, Madison Prep IS serious about our student achievement goals related to the ACT and SAT. We plan to meet these goals through-as the proposal states-an all-male student body, the International Baccalaureate Curriculum, college preparatory educational program, Harkness Teaching, an extended school day and year,mentoring and coll1111unity support, and a prep year. Students will be carefully assessed for years leading up to these tests to ensure their preparedness. When formative assessments indicate re-teaching is needed in order to meet the goal, students will receive further individualized instruction. Madison Prep teachers will not have student test score “quotas.”
24. Lucy Mathiak: What would a timeline for the counterpart girls’ school look like?
ULGM: We would like to initiate the process for the girls’ school in the fall of 2012, with an opening aimed at 2014-2015.

I continue to believe that the fate of this initiative will be a defining moment for the Madison School District. If approved and implemented, it will, over time, affect other traditional schools within the District. If it is rejected, a neighboring District will likely step in.
Finally, I found the Urban League’s response to Ed Hughes’ question #5 interesting:

DPI’s School Finance Data Warehouse indicates that MMSD reported $14,432 in revenue per student and spent $13,881 per student iu 2008-09. We are certain that we will not request more per student than what MMSD spends annually.

An Interview with Kaleem Caire

Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz:

Caire believes the Madison community must first address its at-risk population in a radically different way to level the playing field before fundamental change can come.
“Madison schools don’t know how to educate African Americans,” says Caire. “It’s not that they can’t. Most of the teachers could, and some do, valiantly. But the system is not designed for that to happen.”
The system is also not designed for the 215 annual school days and 5 p.m. end times that Madison Prep proposes. That, and the fact that he wants the school to choose teachers based on their specific skill sets and cultural backgrounds, is why Caire is seeking to proceed without teachers union involvement.
“Ultimately,” he says, “the collective bargaining agreement dictates the operations of schools and teaching and learning in [the Madison school district]. Madison Prep will require much more autonomy.”
Many aspects of Caire’s proposed school seem rooted in his own life experience. Small class sizes, just like at St. James. Uniforms, just like the Navy. Majority African American and Latino kids, eliminating the isolation he grew up with. Meals at school and co-curricular activities rather than extracurricular, so that poor students are not singled out or left out.
Teachers the students can identify with. Boys only, in the hopes of fostering the sensitive, supportive male peer groups so critical to Caire’s evolving sense of self over the years.

Much more on Kaleem, here.

Rhee still a factor in teacher elections

Bill Turque

Michelle A. Rhee is no longer chancellor of D.C. schools, but her presence still looms large over a Washington Teachers’ Union election that is entering its final contentious days.
President George Parker faces a stiff reelection challenge from Nathan Saunders, the union’s general vice president, who contends that Parker was too pliant in his dealings with Rhee. He cites the collective bargaining agreement Parker negotiated with Rhee, one that weakens traditional seniority and other job protections for teachers. Union members approved the contract in June.
Saunders also pledges to pursue legal, legislative and lobbying efforts to undo Rhee’s signature initiative, the new IMPACT evaluation system that links some teacher appraisals to student test scores and can trigger dismissals for educators who don’t meet certain classroom performance criteria.

“We need entirely different schools to fit the needs of students, not the teachers and administrators,” – Kaleem Caire

David Blaska on the recent Community Conversation on Education:

Caire was one of four main presenters, the others being Madison schools superintendent Dan Nerad, the dean of the UW-Madison School of Education, and — sure enough — Madison Teachers Inc. union president Mike Lipp.
Nerad was o.k. He got off a good line: “Children are the future but we are our children’s future.” He even quoted Sitting Bull but on first reference made certain to use his actual Native American name. This IS Madison, after all.
UW Education Dean Julie Underwood was atrocious — a firm defender of the status quo denouncing the “slashing” of school budgets, “negative ads,” and demanding that the community become “public school advocates.” I.E., the whole liberal litany.
Say, Dean Julie, how about the community become advocates for teaching children — in other words, the goal — instead of a one-size-fits-all, government-ordained delivery mechanism? Isn’t competition the American way?
Union apologist Mike Lipp reminded me of Welcome Back Kotter — looks and mien. He could be humorous (I am certain he is a good teacher) but he spent his allotted time on the glories of that holy grail of education: the union’s collective bargaining agreement. I expected an ethereal light beam to shine down on this holy writ, which Lipp lamented that he did not bring with him. His other purpose was to defuse the powerhouse documentary, “Waiting for Superman.”
Indeed, it was that indictment of public education’s “failure factories” and the hidebound me-first teachers unions that prompted Tuesday evening’s “conversation.” I wrote about it, and Kaleem Caire, here.
When Lipp was finished he returned to his table next to union hired gun John Matthews. No sense in sitting with parents and taxpayers.
When it came time for the participants to respond, one parent said of the four presenters that only Kaleem Caire took to heart the evening’s admonition to “keep students as the focus.” I think that was a little unfair to Nerad, who deserves credit for opening this can of worms, but otherwise right on target.
Caire reported that only 7% of African-American students tested as college-ready on the ACT test. For Latinos, the percentage is 14. Those are 2010 statistics — for Madison schools. In these schools, 2,800 suspensions were handed down to black students — of a total black enrollment of 5,300 students!

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

An interview with Kaleem Caire.

School’s Out for Summer but Education Reform Talk is In

Alberta Darling:

School may be out for the summer, but the topic of education reform has certainly not gone on vacation. Both nationwide and right here at home there are several different ideas on the table that, if implemented, could go a long way tdsoward improving educational outcomes for our students.
Under the guidance of Governor Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin was once a nationwide leader in educational innovation. Unfortunately, bold, reform-minded leadership has been absent from the Governor’s office for the last eight years. The most recent failures of Governor Jim Doyle and legislative Democrats were their unsuccessful efforts to grab federal Race to the Top dollars and their blundering attempt at a mayoral takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools.
Usually we look to our nation’s capital for examples of how not to do business, but the new collective bargaining agreement Washington D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee struck with her teachers’ union is just the sort of thing we need here in Milwaukee. The contract includes teacher pay for performance, lessens the weight of seniority if layoffs become necessary and ends “job for life” tenure for ineffective teachers.
Another reform MPS sorely needs is the elimination of the teacher residency requirement, a completely arbitrary barrier that discourages quality educators from teaching at MPS. Only two of the nation’s fifty largest school systems, Milwaukee and Chicago, still require its teachers to live within the city limits. No other school district in Wisconsin has a residency requirement.
As always, there will be some who maintain the cure for all that ails K-12 public education is just to keep throwing more money at it. There are some holes in that logic. First, one need look no further than MPS for an example of high spending and low results. Second, aid to public schools is already the biggest chunk of the state budget by far and spending per pupil is over $11,000. Even if simply putting a lot more money into the system were the answer, the state doesn’t have it and taxpayers are already stretched to the limit.

Clusty search: Alberta Darling.

School’s out, but education reform talk is in

Alberta Darling:

School may be out for the summer, but the topic of education reform certainly has not gone on vacation. Both nationwide and here at home, there are several different ideas on the table that, if implemented, could go a long way toward improving educational outcomes for our students.
Under the guidance of Gov. Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin was once a nationwide leader in educational innovation. Unfortunately, bold, reform-minded leadership has been absent from the governor’s office for the past eight years. The most recent failures of Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative Democrats were their unsuccessful efforts to grab federal Race to the Top dollars and their blundering attempt at a mayoral takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools.
Usually, we look to our nation’s capital for examples of how not to do business, but the new collective bargaining agreement Washington, D.C., School Chancellor Michelle Rhee struck with her teachers union is just the sort of thing we need in Milwaukee. The contract includes pay for performance, lessens the weight of seniority if layoffs become necessary and ends “job for life” tenure for ineffective teachers.
Another reform MPS sorely needs is the elimination of the teacher residency requirement, an arbitrary barrier that discourages some quality educators from teaching at MPS. Only two of the nation’s 50 largest school systems, Milwaukee and Chicago, still require its teachers to live within the city limits. No other school district in Wisconsin has a residency requirement.

“The key impediment to improving public education is not lack of money, but the organizational structure of public schools”

Liv Finne:

As an education policy analyst, I am very concerned about the quality of education our children are receiving. My research has led me to conclude that the key impediment to improving public education is not lack of money, but the organizational structure of public schools. Private schools in Washington and public charter schools in other states are given the advantage of operating free of public education’s centralized and highly regulated superstructure. As a result, private and public charter schools can better direct resources to the classroom, more reliably place effective teachers in every classroom, and offer better life prospects to children through higher-quality education. Cutting central bureaucracies and putting qualified principals in charge of their schools would help make sure that education dollars actually reach the classroom.
Recently, I turned my attention to a restrictive policy that applies to public schools but not to private or public charter schools: mandatory collective bargaining agreements. Here is a link to our full study of Seattle’s current collective bargaining agreement [563K PDF], and below is a summary of our findings.
School district salaries and benefits

Teachers in Seattle receive an average of $70,850 in total salary (base pay and other pay), plus average insurance benefits of $9,855. These figures apply to a ten-month work year.
Teachers in Seattle public schools can earn up to $88,463 in total base and other pay for a ten-month work year, or $98,318 including benefits.
Seattle Schools employ 371 people as “educational staff associates,” who receive an average of $76,339 for a ten-month year, or $86,194 including benefits.
Seattle Schools employs 193 non-teachers, mostly senior administrators, who each receive more than $100,000 in total pay.

Education status quo unacceptable

Arne Duncan:

If education reform was easy, we would have done it long ago and, like the mythical Lake Wobegon, all of our children would be performing above average. In the real world, reform happens when adults put aside differences, embrace the challenge of educating all children, and work together toward a common vision of success.
The theory behind the Race to the Top competition is that with the right financial incentives and sensible goals, states, districts and other stakeholders will forge new partnerships, revise outmoded laws and practices, and fashion far-reaching reforms. Despite the fact that the $4 billion Race to the Top program represents less than 1 percent of overall K-12 funding in America, it has been working.
Since the competition was announced last summer, more than a dozen states changed laws around issues like teacher evaluation, use of student data and charter schools. Meanwhile, 48 governors and chief state school officers raised learning standards, and a number of school districts announced progressive, new collective bargaining agreements that are shaking up the labor-management status quo.

Los Angeles’ Markham Becomes Flashpoint for Teacher Seniority Reform Debate

Rob Manwaring:

We recently highlighted Markham middle school, a low performing schools in Los Angeles, in a report on low performing school improvement. Now Markham has become the flashpoint of the debate in California to overhaul teacher seniority policies. Governor Schwarzenegger recently visited Markham to highlight the problems at this school which unfortunately became a victim of seniority staffing policies (See related story). As part of a fresh start restructuring of the school, a non-profit organization established by the Mayor let all of the teachers at Markham go, rehired some of them, but mainly hired new young teachers to staff the school. The goals was to model the school after successful charter schools in the district like Green Dot. Unfortunately the school was still subject to the district’s collective bargaining agreement. So when the LA Unified faced a budget problem, it laid off over half of the staff at Markham in the summer of 2009, and has yet to be able to backfill those positions. The school is also part of a lawsuit by the ACLU to stop LAUSD from doing further harm at Markham and school like it.
Earlier this spring, the a task force created by LA’s superintendent, Ramon Cortines and chaired by Ted Mitchell, CEO of New Schools and chair of the State Board of Education (and my old boss), developed a set of recommendations to overhaul the district’s teacher and administrator policies including evaluation, seniority, tenure, differentiated compensation and career pathways. The report is worth a look. But, part of what this group determined was that there needed to be several changes in state law to allow them to implement the changes proposed.

More Pay for Teachers Reform bills will pay off for teachers, House sponsor says

Kenric Ward:

Florida’s education reform bills would mean more money — not less — for public-school teachers, says Rep. John Legg, R-Port Richey.
“This bill (HB7189) does not affect retirement, it does not cut salaries, it does not eliminate tenure for current teachers,” Legg told a packed meeting of the House Education Policy Council on Monday.
Instead, Legg said, a new performance-based pay program would bring “value-added” components to setting salaries.
Effective July 1, 2014, school districts would be required to reward “effective” or “highly effective” teachers “on top of base pay,” Legg said. Half of those ratings would be based on student learning gains, with the remaining 50 percent tied to other factors, subject to collective bargaining agreements.
Since 1999, districts have been under orders from the state Department of Education to implement pay scales “primarily” linked to academic performance. The reform bills define “primarily” as 50 percent and order districts to earmark 5 percent of funding for performance pay. Statewide, that 5 percent share currently amounts to $900 million annually.

Fixing No Child Left Behind

Wall Street Journal:

The Obama Administration wants to revise the No Child Left Behind education law, which is understandable because the law has flaws. But it’s too bad many of the proposed fixes would weaken the statute and undermine the Administration’s twin goal of raising state education standards.
Some of the White House proposals make sense, such as the push for more charter schools that can focus on the specific needs of their student populations by operating outside of collective bargaining agreements. We also like using student test scores to measure an instructor’s effectiveness and influence teacher pay. Both reforms are strongly opposed by the teachers unions, and Team Obama deserves credit for putting children ahead of the National Education Association.
Other parts of its proposal leave us scratching our heads. The Administration wants to junk NCLB’s requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014 and replace it with an equally unrealistic goal of making all kids “college ready” by 2020. By this thinking, it’s impossible to teach every kid to read at grade level within the next three years, but getting all of them ready for higher education six years later is doable.

Teacher Union Contracts and High School Reform

Mitch Price:

Are teachers unions and collective bargaining agreements barriers to high school reform and redesign efforts in Washington, California, and Ohio? The short answer: sometimes, but not as often as many educators seem to think.
On one hand, collective bargaining agreements (CBAs)–long, complex, and unwieldy documents which can be difficult for an overworked principal to navigate–are often perceived as obstacles by many principals and other educators, and to a certain extent this perception becomes reality. And, while these perceptions can limit school-level flexibility and autonomy, there are also restrictive provisions within CBAs that do so as well.
On the other hand, CBAs tend to have waiver provisions. In many cases, districts and teachers unions can also negotiate side agreements on individual issues (e.g., memoranda of understanding, or MOUs) to provide desired flexibility. And, in perhaps our most significant finding, many of the CBA provisions that we analyzed were more flexible than educators and reform advocates often suggest.
Finally, many CBA provisions that we studied were simply ambiguous. This ambiguity could potentially allow for greater latitude for an aggressive principal who is looking for greater flexibility and willing to push the envelope, while serving to limit a more cautious or timid principal who looks to the CBA for explicit authority or permission first before acting.

On Detroit’s Union Work Rules

Logan Robinson:

The collective bargaining agreement with the UAW is a heavily negotiated document the size of a small telephone book. It is virtually identical for each of the Detroit Three, owing to “pattern” bargaining, but it doesn’t exist at all in their U.S. competition, the nonunionized transplants. Not only work rules, but fundamental business decisions to sell, close or spin-off plants are forbidden without permission. That permission may come, but only at a price, since everything that affects the workplace must be negotiated.
Both the UAW and the Detroit Three maintain large staffs of lawyers, contract administrators, and financial and human-resources representatives whose principal job is to negotiate with the other side. These staffs are at all levels, from the factory floor to corporate headquarters and the UAW’s “Solidarity House” in downtown Detroit.
The collective bargaining agreements are now renegotiated every four years; in each negotiation the power and penetration of the union grows. If the company asks to change the flow of work for any reason, from cost-savings to vehicle improvements, the local union president will listen politely, and then say something like, “We can help you with this, but what’s in it for my guys?”
Typically, he will have a list of things he wants, some understandable (better cafeterias) some questionable (hire my nephew), but there is always a quid pro quo. These mutually sustaining bureaucracies exist to negotiate with each other.
In an environment of downsizing, the problem is exacerbated, as the entrenched bargaining structure causes innumerable inefficiencies. Typically each plant or warehouse is a “bargaining unit” and has a union president, who has a staff. If the company consolidates facilities, there will be no need for two presidents and two staffs. Since neither president wants to play musical chairs, they will both point to the bargaining agreement and resist consolidation. As a result, unnecessary facilities are not sold, but kept open, lit and heated, just to preserve a redundant bargaining-unit president and his team.

Many teacher union agreements are patterned after the United Auto Workers. Here’s a look at several agreements:

Teacher Union’s “Exposed” looks at work rules and reform, among other topics.

Stop Cheering on Charter Schools

Matthew Taylor (the south area chairman for United Teachers Los Angeles, has taught English in Los Angeles schools for 23 years.) :

It’s apparent from The Times editorial, “Hope for Locke High,” and two previous articles why this newspaper deserves its poor reputation among local educators and informed community members when it comes to public education. A runaway bureaucracy, top-down authoritarian school administrations and a decided lack of collaboration are the real issues. It’s too bad that they remain hidden behind The Times’ blame-the-bad-teacher cries and charter-school cheerleading.
Can we at least talk about the real problem, the state budget, for a moment? Because California is one of the largest economies in the world, it’s a crime that the state ranks among the lowest in per-pupil spending and has such large teacher-student ratios. It would make sense to give a much greater financial priority to public education. What we don’t spend on now, we will have to spend much more on later. Incarceration, healthcare and welfare already cost our society too much.
Senior Deputy Supt. Ramon C. Cortines (who really should be called the superintendent in light of the vacant leadership of David L. Brewer) was clear and correct in taking responsibility for the latest outburst of violence at Locke High School. The Los Angeles Unified School District has “abdicated [its] responsibility” for too many years at a host of schools in inner-city Los Angeles. Years of inexperienced or despotic administrators have helped drive excellent, experienced teachers away. A lack of true collaboration with teachers and parents, turning a blind eye to the collective bargaining agreement and ignoring student-centered reforms lowered morale. When teachers aren’t valued, they try to find places where they are.

Colorado’s Innovation Schools Act of 2008

Colorado State Senate President Peter Groff (D-Denver) submitted a bill that:

Allows hiring decisions outside Union Labor Contracts
Gives schools control over:budgets, hiring decisions, and length of school days
Allows schools to dictate teacher qualifications and how much time to spend in class
Allows public schools to sidestep restrictions for the purpose of creating wide-ranging innovation in Colorado schools.

First big change
The original bill required only “a statement of the level of support” for the plan by school employees, students and parents, and the community. The amended bill requires a four-part test of support among various constituencies: “a majority of administrators,” “a majority of teachers” and a “majority of the school advisory council,” plus “a statement of the level of support” among other school employees, students and parents, and the surrounding community.
The amendments add a requirement to the application process – a description of the elements of any collective bargaining agreement that would need to be waived for an innovation plan to work.
Second (really) big change
The original bill gave innovation schools blanket exemption from laws and rules on: performance evaluations, authority of principals, employment of teachers, transfer of teachers, dismissal of teachers, salary schedules, teacher licensing and teacher salary payment.
All of that was struck by the amendments and replaced with language allowing a school board to waive any requirements deemed necessary to an innovation plan, except provisions of the school finance law, the exceptional children’s educational act, data requirements necessary for School Accountability Reports, laws requiring criminal background checks of employees and the children’s Internet protection act. (The original language barred any waivers of CSAP and No Child Left Behind requirements, and those remain in the bill.)
Third (really) big change
The original bill allowed innovation schools to be removed from a district’s entire collective bargaining agreement by a vote of a majority of the personnel at the affected school or schools.
The amendments require “waiver of one or more of the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement” (italics added) to be approved by vote of “at least sixty percent of the members of the collective bargain unit who are employed at the innovation school.”

On Teacher Unions: Educators or Kingmakers?

David White:

IF the Democratic race is settled at the party’s convention this summer — not unlikely, given Hillary Clinton’s victories over Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas — certain delegate constituencies are going to be the object of much affection from the candidates. Most prominent among these is the delegate and superdelegate bloc affiliated with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions. In 2004, more than 400 regular delegates to the convention were members of the two unions, making up a group bigger than every state delegation except California’s.
Good news for the unions, however, might not be good news for education. The union agenda has often run counter to the interests of students and teachers alike.
Take those collective bargaining agreements that the unions have negotiated in school districts across the nation. As Terry Moe, a professor of political science at Stanford, demonstrated, these agreements have hampered student performance in California. Why? Because they protect ineffective teachers — at the expense of everyone else.
Or consider performance-based pay. Forty percent of teachers leave the classroom within their first five years on the job — in some measure because they don’t stand to gain the same performance-based pay raises available to their private-sector counterparts. Merit pay would help public schools retain good teachers by paying them more. But the unions have fought against such measures.

The Leadership Limbo

Frederick Hess & Coby Loup:

In the era of No Child Left Behind, principals are increasingly held accountable for student performance. But are teacher labor agreements giving them enough flexibility to manage effectively? The Leadership Limbo: Teacher Labor Agreements in America’s Fifty Largest School Districts, answers this question and others.
The main findings:

Thirty, or more than half, of the 50 districts have labor agreements that are ambiguous. The collective bargaining agreements and the formal board policies in these districts appear to grant leaders substantial leeway to manage assertively, should they so choose.
Fifteen of the 50 districts are home to Restrictive or Highly Restrictive labor agreements. Nearly 10 percent of the nation’s African-American K-12 students population attend school in the 15 lowest-scoring districts-making these contracts major barriers to more equal educational opportunity.
The study also found that districts with high concentrations of poor and minority students tend to have more restrictive contracts than other districts-another alarming indication of inequity along racial and class lines.

Madison’s collective bargaining agreement can be found here.teachercba07-09.pdf

“the same teacher could earn up to $68,000 in Appleton, and only between $39,000 and $43,000 in Oshkosh”

Alex Tabarrok:

In my 2011 book, Launching the Innovation Renaissance, I wrote:

At times, teacher pay in the United States seems more like something from Soviet-era Russia than 21st-century America. Wages for teachers are
low, egalitarian and not based on performance. We pay physical education teachers about the same as math teachers despite the fact that math teachers
have greater opportunities elsewhere in the economy. As a result, we have lots of excellent physical education teachers but not nearly enough excellent
math teachers. The teachers unions oppose even the most modest proposals to add measures of teacher quality to selection and pay decisions.

As I wrote, however, Wisconsin passed Act 10, a bill that discontinued collective bargaining over teachers’ salary schedules. Act 10 took power away from the labor unions and gave districts full autonomy to negotiate salaries with individual teachers. In a paper that just won the Best Paper published in AEJ: Policy in the last three years, Barbara Biasi studies the effect of Act 10 on salaries, effort and student achievement.

Compensation of most US public school teachers is rigid and solely based on seniority. This paper studies the effects of a reform that gave school districts in Wisconsin full autonomy to redesign teacher pay schemes. Following the reform some districts switched to flexible compensation. Using the expiration of preexisting collective bargaining agreements as a source of exogenous variation in the timing of changes in pay, I show that the introduction of flexible pay raised salaries of high-quality teachers, increased teacher quality (due to the arrival of high-quality teachers from other districts and increased effort), and improved student achievement.

We still have a long way to go but COVID, homeschooling and open-access voucher programs have put a huge dent in the power of the teacher’s unions. There is now a chance to bring teacher pay into the American model. Moreover, such a model is pro-teacher! Not every district in Wisconsin grasped the opportunity to reform teacher pay but those districts that did raised pay considerably. Appleton district, for example, instituted pay for performance, Oshkosh did not. Prior to the Act salaries were about the same in the two districts:

After the expiration of the CBAs, the same teacher could earn up to $68,000 in Appleton, and only between $39,000 and $43,000 in Oshkosh.

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Wisconsin’s Act 10, Flexible Pay, and the Impact on Teacher Labor Markets: Student test scores rise in flexible-pay districts. So does a gender gap for teacher compensation.

If not to teacher salaries, where is this money going?

More on Act 10 and the related Milwaukee pension scandal.

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More. “Important insights into the impact of flexibility in teacher pay schemes on student outcomes.”

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The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Wisconsin’s Act 10, Flexible Pay, and the Impact on Teacher Labor Markets: Student test scores rise in flexible-pay districts. So does a gender gap for teacher compensation.

Barbara Biasi

Using employment records on all public-school teachers in Wisconsin linked to individual student information on achievement and demographics from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, I first document how teacher salaries changed in flexible-pay and seniority-pay districts in the aftermath of the reform. After the expiration of districts’ collective bargaining agreements, salary differences among teachers with similar seniority and credentials emerged in flexible-pay districts, but not in seniority-pay districts. Before the passage of Act 10, such teachers would have been paid the same. These newly emerging differences are related to teachers’ effectiveness: Teachers with higher value-added (individual contributions to the growth in student achievement, as measured by standardized test scores) started earning more in flexible-pay districts. This finding is striking considering that school districts in Wisconsin neither calculate value-added nor use it to make any human-resources decisions. School and district administrators appear to be able to identify an effective teacher when they see one.

Does Flexible Pay Attract Better Teachers?

Changes in teachers’ pay arrangements after the expiration of the collective bargaining agreements changed teachers’ incentives to stay in their district or to move, depending on the teachers’ effectiveness and the pay plan in place in their district of origin. Because flexible-pay districts compensate teachers for their effectiveness and seniority-pay districts only reward them for seniority and academic credentials, teachers with higher effectiveness should want to move to flexible-pay districts, whereas teachers with lower effectiveness and higher seniority should want to move to seniority-pay districts.

The data confirm these hypotheses. The rate of cross-district movement more than doubled after Act 10, with most moves occurring across districts of different type (flexible-pay vs. seniority-pay). Teachers who moved to a flexible-pay district after a collective bargaining agreement expired were more than a standard deviation more effective, on average, than teachers who moved to the same districts before the expiration; these teachers also had lower seniority and academic credentials and enjoyed a significant pay increase upon moving. The effectiveness of teachers moving to seniority-pay districts, on the other hand, did not change. and these teachers did not experience any change in pay.

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WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

——

The late 1990’s Milwaukee pension scandal is worth a deep dive as well.

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More.

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Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

History (revisionist…?), Governance and Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results

David Blaska:

Here in Madison, the proponents of one-size-fits-all government monopoly schooling are rewriting history to cover their misdeeds. The occasion was the recent passing of barely remembered Daniel Nerad, superintendent of Madison public schools between 2008 and 2012.

Capital Times publisher Paul Fanlund marvels that the same problems that beset Nerad a dozen years ago plague the city’s public schools today — those being a yawning racial achievement gap and disparate disciplinary problems. Indeed, the numbers have not budged. Only 8% of the district’s black students can read and write at grade, compared to 64% of white students.

Back in 2011, nationally renowned education reformer Kaleem Caire offered Madison an escape hatch — a charter school called Madison Prep that would hold longer school days on an almost year-round calendar and suffer no race-shaming excuses. But the school board sent him packing.

Today, former school board president Ed Hughes, incredibly, blames Scott Walker’s Act 10 for supposedly tying the district’s hands because, Fanlund quotes Hughes to say:

“The district could not as a practical matter alter the collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union.”

We’re still paying for MTI’s self interest

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2011: On the 5-2 Madison School Board No (Cole, Hughes, Moss, Passman, Silveira) Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School Vote (Howard, Mathiak voted Yes)

——

Meanwhile, decades go by….

——

Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

A proposal to reduce choice in the taxpayer supported Denver schools

Boardhawk:

The Denver school board last week introduced a draft policy that could limit the autonomy of innovation schools and zones — district-run schools that under state law have some charter-school-like autonomy.

The policy has been given the official title of Standard Teacher Rights and Protections. If passed, the rights and protections provided would be the same as those provided by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the local teachers’ union, to teachers in non-innovations schools.

According to the draft, those protections include but aren’t limited to a workload consistent with 40 hours per week, minimal duties outside of classroom teaching, a uniform school calendar and compensation ranking in the top three for neighboring school districts.

Since innovation schools operate under specifically designed waivers from both the collective bargaining agreement and district rules and regulations, removing the contract waivers could limit the schools’ ability to operate as they have in the past. The waivers have long been a sore point for the DCTA.

In some cases, the waivers allow innovation schools to offer students longer school days if needed and allow teachers to be resources to students outside regular class time.

Parents sue to end illegal Chicago Teachers Union Strike

Liberty Justice Center:

– A group of Chicago parents have filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Teachers Union, calling this week’s school closures an “illegal strike” and demanding that teachers return to school for in-person learning. The lawsuit was filed late Thursday by attorneys at the Liberty Justice Center, a national nonprofit law firm that fights for students’ educational rights.

More than 300,000 students were locked out of Chicago Public Schools starting Wednesday after unionized teachers refused to teach in-person. Not only is the strike illegal under Illinois law, it also violates the union’s own contract.

“CTU’s resolution calling members to not show up for work in-person is a strike regardless of what CTU calls it and violates both the collective bargaining agreement with CPS and Illinois law,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center. “CTU cannot unilaterally decide what actions should be taken to keep public schools safe, completely silencing parents’ input about what is best for the health, safety, and well-being of their children.”

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

“qualifications and not seniority will decide who gets let go”

Scott Girard:

Among the changes is one that would allow the district to choose who is laid off and designated as surplus staff based on qualifications rather than seniority. That is among a slate of administrator-proposed “preliminary recommendations” the board discussed Monday night during an Instruction Work Group meeting, with a vote anticipated at the full June 29 meeting.

According to a memo from staff, a review committee of eight administrators and eight staff representatives reached consensus on three items but did not do so on a host of others, including the layoffs. MMSD chief of human resources Deirdre Hargrove-Krieghoff said they plan to continue discussing the recommendations with Madison Teachers Inc. throughout the month.

“We understand that we still have about a month to meet and continue to work through coming to some consensus,” Hargrove said. “Our team is committed to doing that.”

MTI President Andy Waity wrote in an email to interim superintendent Jane Belmore and School Board members that MTI leaders were “shocked” to see the recommendations on the agenda Monday and hadn’t received any notice that the board would be discussing the handbook changes at the meeting.

“In fact, due to the pandemic and the lack of a Superintendent, we were under the impression that all Employee Handbook review work was suspended for the time being,” Waity wrote. “Then, last week, (Director of Labor Relations) Heidi Tepp scheduled a meeting with us on May 26 to share these ideas.”

Logan Wroge:

An employee can be designated “surplus” when the staffing allocation for a school no longer includes enough positions for them to stay, resulting in the employee being transferred to another school.

According to a memo detailing the recommendations, “surplus” designations based on seniority could hamper the district’s push in recent years to hire more teachers of color, because newer teachers are more likely to be shuffled from school to school every year.

But the district and MTI meet annually to see if they can reach consensus on changes to the employee handbook, which replaced collective bargaining agreements.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

The Looming Chicago Teacher Strike May Be As Much About Membership As It Is About Money

Mike Antonucci:

The Chicago Teachers Union seems to be marching inexorably toward a strike beginning Oct. 17. The union struck for a single day in 2016 and for seven days in 2012, which many credit as being the launching point for a later wave of teacher strikes across the country.

While CTU continues to be lauded within the labor movement for its militancy, the actual collective bargaining agreements that came out of its strikes are not exactly celebrated. CTU President Jesse Sharkey himself stated that the years since the 2012 strike resulted in “nearly a decade of austerity and cuts for Chicago’s teachers and other school staff.”

Well, he’s half right.

That there have been staff cuts in the Chicago Public Schools since 2012 is undeniable. The district is exemplary in publishing monthly statistics on finances, staffing and enrollment.

An Unlikely Bargain: Why Charter School Teachers Unionize and What Happens When They Do

Ashley Jochim and Lesley Lavery:

For nearly two decades teachers unions and charter schools have formed an “us vs. them” narrative that pits one against the other. Unionization efforts by charter school teachers could scramble that narrative. With this report we set out to understand trends in charter school unionization, document teachers’ motivations for unionizing, and assess whether collective bargaining agreements in charter schools differ from those in traditional school districts.

We spoke to sixteen teachers at nine schools where teachers had either recently unionized or were undergoing campaigns to decertify their unions. We also compared the content of their collective bargaining agreements with those in local school districts and analyzed national data on charter school unionization. We learned:

Nationally, charter schools are no more likely to be unionized today than they were a decade ago. However, unionization is gaining traction in some localities and states like Illinois, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania

Unionized Charter Schools 2016-17

Public Charters:

In 2010, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (National Alliance) collected data to determine the teachers’ union status of every charter school nationwide. Prior to the release of the 2010 report, the number of unionized charter schools was largely unknown. In 2009-10, the National Alliance reported that roughly 12 percent of charter schools participated in collective bargaining agreements with teachers’ unions. In the years since the 2010 report, union votes at several charter schools in Illinois, Louisiana, and Washington, DC received signiﬁcant media attention, raising questions about whether a growing number of charter schools were unionizing. To examine whether there has been a growth in unionized charter schools, the National Alliance collected data from the 2016-17 school year. The national data from 2009-10 and 2016-17 are presented in Table 1. The state data from 2009-10 and 2016-17 are presented in Table 2. D

Portland Teachers Union Wants To Restrict Access To Public Records

Peter Cook:

Over the past few years, a series of troubling scandals have shaken Portlanders’ trust in their public school system.

In 2016, it was revealed that district officials had withheld lab test results showing that most of the city’s public schools had elevated levels of lead in their drinking water. Last year, in-depth investigations by The Oregonian found that the district had helped conceal allegations of sexual misconduct against two teachers – Mitch Whitehurst and Norm Scott – who later went on to assault at least a dozen female students. A subsequent investigation in the Portland Tribune uncovered that Andrew Oshea, a special education teacher who had been placed on administrative leave in 2015 after he was charged with drunk driving and assault, was still on the district’s payroll. In fact, Oshea continued to collect paychecks while serving time in jail for a violating a restraining order filed by his ex-girlfriend.

These scandals make clear that Portland Public Schools has a serious transparency problem. Yet the Portland Association of Teachers is now trying to limit access to public records in the district and they’re using their new collective bargaining agreement to do it.

Scandal threatens UAW solidarity

Michael Wayland:

The UAW’s cornerstone principle of solidarity among its membership is under growing pressure as a federal corruption investigation widens and more details emerge about the luxuries purchased with millions of dollars intended to train workers.

Three rank-and-file members sued the union in January, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars for what they claim was collusion with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Separately, former UAW Vice President Norwood Jewell, who oversaw 2015 contract negotiations, became implicated in the scandal.

The latest revelations come with Monica Morgan, the widow of former UAW Vice President General Holiefield, expected to plead guilty this week to reduced charges in Detroit federal court. That could allow authorities to move forward with actions against more players in the $4.5 million scheme.

Jewell, who abruptly retired at the end of last year, has not been formally named or charged with any crimes.

A plea deal released Jan. 22 between the U.S. Attorney’s Office and former FCA US labor relations chief Alphons Iacobelli alludes to Jewell but does not name him directly. It also identifies a charity run by Jewell as one of several to receive restricted funds.

Traditional K-12 teacher union “Collective Bargaining Agreements” are often based on the UAW model.

Analysis: Teachers Unions Will Argue in Court That ‘Agency Fees’ Don’t Fund Political Activities. But They’re Saying Something Different to Members

Mike Antonucci:

Last week Union Report reported on a directive sent by the National Education Association listing “8 essentials” that should shape local collective bargaining agreements if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns agency fee laws in the coming Janus case. Such laws allow unions to collect payments from non-members, ostensibly to cover the costs of contract negotiation.

Oral arguments in the case may occur as early as January. Plaintiffs will argue that agency fees levied by public-sector unions are unconstitutional because bargaining with the government is a form of political advocacy with which they may not agree.

The unions will argue that engagements with the government as an employer are fundamentally different from those with the government as sovereign, and that workplace “coherence” makes it necessary for non-members to subsidize the majority position. They will claim that fee-payers are not supporting unions’ political speech in any meaningful way.

Related: Rachel Cohen:

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten met one-on-one with then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon back in March, following the announcement of President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts and plan to craft a $1 trillion infrastructure package. The Intercept learned of the meeting, which has not been previously reported, independent of Weingarten or Bannon. It was instigated through a mutual friend and appeared to be part of Bannon’s effort to realign the parties, according to Weingarten.

“Look, I will meet with virtually anyone to make our case, and particularly in that moment, I was very, very concerned about the budget that would decimate public education,” Weingarten said. “I wanted it to be a real meeting, I didn’t want it to be a photo-op, so I insisted that the meeting didn’t happen at the White House.”

Weingarten didn’t take notes at the meeting, which was held at a Washington restaurant, but told The Intercept she and Bannon talked about “education, infrastructure, immigrants, bigotry and hate, budget cuts … [and] about a lot of different things.”

She came away a bit shook. “I came out of that conversation saying that this was a formidable adversary,” she said.

The Quiet Exodus From Mass Schooling

Kerry McDonald:

Parents are fed up. As mass schooling becomes more restrictive, more standardized and more far-reaching into a child’s young life, many parents are choosing alternatives. Increasingly, these parents are reclaiming their child’s education and are refocusing learning around children, family, and community in several different ways.

With back-to-school time upon us, more than two million U.S. children will be avoiding the school bus altogether in favor of homeschooling, an educational choice that has accelerated in recent years among both liberal and conservative families. While homeschooling for religious freedom remains an important driver for many families, 2012 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reveal that a main reason for homeschooling is “concern about the environment of other schools.”

Beyond homeschooling, an additional two million children will be educated this fall in charter schools. According to recent U.S. Department of Education data, the number of students currently enrolled in charter schools increased from 0.9 million in 2004 to 2.7 million in 2014, while the number of children enrolled in traditional public schools declined by 0.4 million during that same period. Taxpayer-funded but administered by predominantly private educational organizations, charter schools allow parents flexibility in choosing a school that is better aligned with their expectations and their child’s needs. Charter schools are often exempt from district policies and collective bargaining agreements that can halt innovation and experimentation, allowing them more instructional and organizational freedom. Demand for charter schools often outweighs current supply, with statewide charter caps, admissions lotteries, and long waiting lists leaving many parents discouraged and angry.

2016-17 Summary of Results and 2017 Employee Handbook Member Survey

Madison Teachers, Inc::

As we prepare for the start of this summer’s Employee Handbook review discussions which will lead into the 2017-18 school year, we are sharing with you:

Our MTI Summary of Results from 2016-17. Last year was a significant one for MTI as we transitioned from Collective Bargaining Agreements to an Employee Handbook, and from payroll deduction of dues to direct payment of dues. Our successes this past year would not have been possible without a committed and engaged membership who supports the work of their union. Please take a few moments to review this summary. We think that you’ll agree that we have collectively made some significant progress.

Our 2017 MTI Employee Handbook Survey. Each summer, the MMSD and MTI get together to review the Employee Handbook and discuss potential revisions. This summer we will discuss potential changes which will take effect for the 2018-19 school year. Agreed upon revisions are then forwarded to the Board of Education for action. This link provides a summary of those items we plan to discuss and offers you the opportunity to provide your input on other issues that you would like us to address. Please review this summary and provide any feedback you would like us to consider by July 28, 2017.

Thank you for all you do for Madison’s students, and thank you for your continued support of MTI.

much more on Madison Teachers, Inc.

Teachers Unions Get A Free Lunch, Taxpayers Foot The Bill

Truth in public education:

Teachers unions loudly insist that collective bargaining agreements are necessary to ensure that teachers receive fair wages and benefits for the important work they do educating children. However, they fail to mention that many unions use those legally-binding contracts to compel school districts to underwrite the salaries and benefits of their own employees — i.e., tax dollars meant for the classroom are instead being used to pay full-time union officials.

For obvious reasons, school districts and teachers unions don’t advertise these arrangements, but there are efforts underway in several states to end the practice. Below are three recent examples…

Syracuse, New York

Syracuse resident Michael Hunter filed a lawsuit last month over a clause in the Syracuse Teachers Association’s current contract that requires the school district to pay the salary of the union president. Hunter and his lawyers estimate the arrangement has cost the Syracuse City School District approximately $1.1 million over the past nine years.

What’s at Stake in the Ongoing Fight About School Spending Comparability?

Paul Hill:

On the surface, the current dispute about Title I comparability (the requirement that schools within a district must receive comparable resources from state and local sources for education of disadvantaged children before federal funds are added on) is all about money. On one side, Secretary of Education John King is pressing for regulations that would require districts to demonstrate real-dollar equality of state and local spending. On the other, Senate Education Committee Chair Lamar Alexander is insisting that the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) does not allow such a sharp definition of comparability, leaving states and localities free to interpret the comparability principle in various ways.

But the underlying issues go much deeper. They are about whether schools serving the most disadvantaged children will get a fair chance to improve, or will always be at a disadvantage in attracting and retaining good teachers and principals. Here’s why:

Driven by their collective bargaining agreements, the vast majority of big school districts ignore between-school differences in teacher salaries. This is so senior teachers can choose the schools they believe are the best workplaces—most often schools in nicer neighborhoods with students from higher-income families—while newer teachers with no seniority rights and fewer choices tend to work in more disadvantaged schools serving poorer students.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Budget Reductions

Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

On March 7, MTI Executive Director Doug Keillor and MTI Office Manager Yvonne Knoche presented the recommended 2016-17 MTI Budget to MTI’s Finance Committee. The Committee unanimously approved the recommendation. In acknowledgment of the financial uncertainties ahead, the Budget recommends a 20% reduction in MTI expenditures for the 2016-17 school year, achieved primarily via staff salary and benefit savings. The Budget also recommends no dues increases, and the compression of teacher unit dues from twenty (20) levels to only four (4).

Pursuant to MTI Bylaws, the Budget will next be presented at the March 15 MTI Faculty Representative Council meeting. The meeting will commence at 4:15 p.m., at the Madison Labor Temple (Room 201B). All MTI members, from all bargaining units, are welcome to attend. In addition to an explanation of the Budget, we will also discuss the upcoming MTI membership campaign, as we transition from payroll deduction of Union dues to “direct dues” payment via electronic funds transfer.

Following the presentation at the Faculty Representative Council meeting, the Bylaws require that the Budget next be presented for approval at a meeting of MTI’s Joint Fiscal Group (JFG). The JFG is comprised of representatives of all five MTI bargaining units. That meeting will take place at the April 19 Faculty Representative Council meeting.

7 March 2016 Issue (PDF):

When the Collective Bargaining Agreements expire on June 30, 2016, additional Act 10 prohibitions will apply to MTI, including the elimination of fair-share payments and the prohibition of payroll deduction for Union dues. To prepare for these changes, MTI will be engaging in a membership campaign this spring to transition from “payroll deduction” of Union dues to “direct dues” payment (i.e., payment via electronic funds transfer/automatic bank draft).

MTI has contracted with a vendor to develop a “direct-dues” platform (webpage) that will allow Union members to simply log-on to a website and enter their checking/savings account information to have their monthly union dues deducted automatically from their account (rather than deducted from their paycheck). MTI is also working on establishing the MTI budget for 2016- 17, including the dues amounts. After the draft budget is approved by the MTI Finance Committee, an overview of the budget will be shared at the March 15 MTI Faculty Representative Council meeting. MTI members from all units are welcome to attend this meeting to learn more about the budget and the membership campaign.

Once the “direct-dues” platform is operational and the MTI budget is established we will commence a membership campaign to convert MTI members from payroll deduction to direct dues payments. Those who complete this process and continue their membership will continue to benefit from MTI representation and assistance. Those who elect to discontinue their membership will no longer receive MTI representation or assistance.

29 February 2016 Issue (PDF).

Parent-Teacher Conferences: Contract Language

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The terms and conditions of the 2015-16 MTI/MMSD Collective Bargaining Agreement relative to Parent-Teacher Conferences provides the following:

“All teachers are required to attend up to two (2) evenings for parent teacher conferences per contract year as directed by the teacher’s building administrator. Teachers participating in evening parent‐teacher conferences will be provided a compensatory day off as designated on the School Calendar in Section V‐L. In recognition of 4K, non‐ SAGE 2nd grade, non‐SAGE 3rd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade teachers having more parent‐teacher conferences due to increased class size, such teachers shall be released from the early release SIP‐aligned activities Monday during the months of November and March. At the elementary level conferences will be held in lieu of the report cards for the reporting periods in which they are held.”

Madison’s Schwerpunkt: Government School District Power Play: The New Handbook Process is worth a look

Wisconsin’s stürm and drang over “Act 10” is somewhat manifested in Madison. Madison’s government schools are the only Wisconsin District, via extensive litigation, to still have a collective bargaining agreement with a teacher union, in this case, Madison Teachers, Inc.

The Madison School Board and Administration are working with the local teachers union on a new “Handbook”. The handbook will replace the collective bargaining agreement. Maneuvering over the terms of this very large document illuminates posturing and power structure(s) in our local government schools.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham wrote recently (September 17, 2015 PDF):

The Oversight group was able to come to agreement on all of the handbook language with the exception of one item, job transfer in the support units. Pursuant to the handbook development process, this item was presented to me for review and recommendation to the Board. My preliminary recommendation is as follows:

Job Transfer for all support units
(See Pages 151, 181, 197, 240, 261)

Superintendent Recommendation
That the language in the Handbook with regard to transfer state as follows: Vacancies shall first be filled by employees in surplus. The District has the right to determine and select the most qualified applicant for any position. The term applicant refers to both internal and external candidates for the position.

The District retains the right to determine the job qualifications needed for any vacant position. Minimum qualifications shall be established by the District and equally applied to all persons.

Rationale/Employee Concern

Rationale:
It is essential that the District has the ability to hire the most qualified candidate for any vacant position—whether an internal candidate or an external candidate. This language is currently used for transfers in the teacher unit. Thus, it creates consistency across employee groups.
By providing the District with the flexibility of considering both internal and external candidates simultaneously the District can ensure that it is hiring the most qualified individual for any vacant position. It also gives the District opportunities to diversify the workforce by expanding the pool of applicants under consideration. This change would come with a commitment to provide stronger development opportunities for internal candidates who seek pathways to promotion.

Employee Concern:
The existing promotional system already grants a high degree of latitude in selecting candidates, including hiring from the outside where there are not qualified or interested internal applicants. It also helps to develop a cadre of dedicated, career-focused employees.

September 24, 2015 Memo to the Madison government schools board of education from Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham:

To: Board of Education
From: Jennifer Cheatham, Superintendent of Schools
RE: Update to Handbook following Operations Work Group

The Operations Work Group met on Monday September 21, 2015. Members of the Oversight Group for development of the Employee Handbook presented the draft Employee Handbook to the Board. There was one item on which the Oversight Group was unable to reach agreement, the hiring process for the support units. Pursuant to the handbook development process, this item was presented to me for review and recommendation to the Board. There was discussion around this item during the meeting and, the Board requested that members of the Oversight Group meet again in an attempt to reach consensus.

Per the Board’s direction, District and employee representatives on the Oversight Group came together to work on coming to consensus on the one remaining item in the Handbook. The group had a productive dialog and concluded that with more time, the group would be able to work together to resolve this issue. Given that the Handbook does not go into effect until July1, 2016, the group agreed to leave the issue regarding the hiring process for the support units unresolved at this point and to include in the Handbook the phrase “To Be Determined” in the applicable sections. As such, there is no longer an open item. When you vote on the Handbook on Monday, the section on the “Selection Process” in the various addenda for the applicable support units will state “To Be Determined” with an agreement on the part of the Oversight Group to continue to meet and develop final language that the Board will approve before the Handbook takes effect in the 2016-17 school year.

Current Collective Bargaining Agreement (160 page PDF) Wordcloud:

Madison government school district 2015-2016 Collective Bargaining Agreement with Madison Teachers, Inc. (160 page PDF) Wordcloud

Proposed Employee Handbook (304 Page PDF – 9.21.2015 slide presentation) Wordcloud:

Madison government school district

Background:

1. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has filed suit to vacate the Madison government schools collective bargaining agreement with Madison Teachers, Inc.

2. Attorney Lester Pines has spent considerable time litigating Act 10 on behalf of Madison Teachers, Inc. – with some success.

3. The collective bargaining agreement has been used to prevent the development of non-Madison Government school models, such as independent charter, virtual and voucher organizations. This one size fits all approach was manifested by the rejection [Kaleem Caire letter] of the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

4. Yet, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending more than $15,000 per student annually. See also “What’s different, this time?”

5. Comparing Madison, Long Beach and Boston government school teacher union contracts. Current Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham has cited Boston and Long Beach government schools as Districts that have narrowed the achievement gap. Both government districts offer a variety of school governance models, which is quite different than Madison’s long-time “one size fits all approach”.

6. Nearby Oconomowoc is paying fewer teachers more.

7. Minneapolis teacher union approved to authorize charter schools.

8. Madison Teachers, Inc. commentary on the proposed handbook (Notes and links). Wordcloud:

9. A rather astonishing quote:

“The notion that parents inherently know what school is best for their kids is an example of conservative magical thinking.”; “For whatever reason, parents as a group tend to undervalue the benefits of diversity in the public schools….”

– Madison School Board member Ed Hughes.

10. 1,570,000 for four senators – WEAC.

11. Then Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Schwerpunkt via wikipedia.

MTI-MMSD Joint Safety Committee Releases Report on Behavior Education Plan (BEP)

Madison Teachers, Inc.

The Joint MTI/MMSD Safety Committee is charged with evaluating the “implementation of and compliance with the District’s Behavior Education Plan(s) (BEP)” and periodically reporting to the Superintendent and MTI Board of Directors. Over the course of the 2014-15 school year, the Committee met multiple times and designed, conducted and analyzed a Survey of all school-based District staff. 1,589 employees (42% of District employees) completed the Survey, and over 600 took the time to add personal comments. A summary of the Survey findings, as well as policy recommendations (not comments), are included in the Joint Committee’s Report which can be reviewed on MTI’s website (www.madisonteachers.org).
In summary, the Report highlights significant challenges with the BEP.

While a majority of respondents (78%) understand the approach to behavior set forth in the BEP, only 18% agreed that the practices aligned with it have had a positive impact on student behavior. These results are even more pronounced among teachers at the secondary level where only 10% of middle school teachers and 9% of high school teachers agree that it has had a positive impact on student behavior. Also of major concern is that only 17% of respondents agreed that “when a student is returned to class following a behavior incident, he or she is ready to re-engage in learning”. Only 40% of respondents agreed that their school has a clear behavior support system when a student is struggling. The Survey findings reinforce employee concerns that there is insufficient staffing to support students with significant behavioral needs, and there is insufficient behavioral consequences, and insufficient training to ensure that ALL staff provide a consistent and coherent application of the BEP. Survey results also indicate that District staff believe safety in school and student behavior is at a critical stage.

Madison Teachers, Inc.

It’s that time of year when Administrators send emails, memos and letters outlining “required” trainings, professional development, and other meetings during the summer months. Often, staff are encouraged to attend meetings and trainings wherein administrators use language that does not clearly indicate that any attendance during the summer or the voluntary days for returning staff is entirely voluntary.

Addendum G of the Collective Bargaining Agreement is clear and provides that attendance at any District offered staff development opportunities during the summer recess be compensated, either with Professional Advancement Credit (PAC), extended employment salary, or payment for graduate credits (if such is offered). Addendum G also requires that such communications “clearly convey the fact that teachers will not be penalized or suffer harm for choosing not to volunteer .”

Anyone with concerns about a memo or notice from administration that seems to indicate your attendance is compulsory on a non-contract or voluntary day should contact Jeff Knight (knightj@madisonteachers.org) at MTI. MTI does not discourage voluntary participation; however, it is out of respect for MTI-represented individuals that the Collective Bargaining Agreement is clear and direct regarding one’s participation or lack thereof.
For the 20

Madison Teachers, Inc.

MTI’s Election Committee has tallied the ballots cast in last week’s MTI teacher bargaining unit general election and has certified the election of MTI officers: Andrew Waity (Crestwood) as President Elect; and the re-election of incumbents Art Camosy (Memorial) as Vice-President; Greg Vallee (Thoreau) as Treasurer; and Elizabeth Donnelly (Elvehjem) as Secretary. Officers will be installed at the May 19 meeting of the MTI Faculty Representative Council. The MTI Board of Directors consists of ten members – six officers who are elected by the general membership and four at-large representatives elected by the MTI Faculty Representative Council.

Elected to the MTI Bargaining Committee are: High School Representative – Larry Iles (West); Middle School Representative – incumbent Michael Hay-Chapman (Spring Harbor); Elementary School Representative – incumbent Emily Pease-Clem (Schenk); At-Large Representative – incumbent Susan Covarrubias (Stephens); and Educational Services Representative-High School – Karyn Chacon (East). The MTI Bargaining Committee consists of 15 members. One from each of the referenced areas is elected each year.

Madison Schools’ Employee Handbook Update

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Work continues on the creation of an Employee Handbook to take effect once the Collective Bargaining Agreements expire in June, 2016. MTI-represented employees continue to be covered by Collective Bargaining Agreements through June 30, 2016. The Board of Education has approved a process for the development of the Employee Handbook which includes a joint Oversight Group composed of five (5) appointees by MTI, two (2) by AFSCME, one (1) by the Building Trades Council, three (3) building principals and up to five (5) other administrators. It was agreed in negotiations for the 2015-16 Contracts that the Collective Bargaining Agreements will serve as the foundation of the Handbook.

Commentary and Charts on Madison’s $413,703,424 Planned 2015-2016 Budget

Notes and charts from the Districts’ most recent 2015-2016 budget document (5MB PDF):

Our 25,364 students are served by 4,076 Teachers & Staff (6.22 students per District employee).

Salaries and Wages
For 2015-16, MMSD has collective bargaining agreements in place with its represented employee groups, including teachers, aides, clerical, and custodial staff. The teachers’ collective bargaining agreement is based on a traditional salary schedule, including compensation components for additional years of service (step movement) and additional professional development (lane movement). In addition,

the Board approved an increase of 0.25% per cell for all teachers (cell increase). Together, the additional compensation for step movement and cell increases provides an average increase of 1.75% to employees, plus a reserve for lane changes of $400,000, for a combined budgetary impact of $4.5 million on district salaries. This budget proposal includes funding for these wage and salary commitments. MMSD’s other employee groups will experience similar increases in compensation.
Health Insurance

MMSD offers an attractive employee benefits plan to its employees. The district spends over $61 million per year on health insurance premiums, which is approximately 15% of the total district budget. Each year, the risk of rising health care costs creates significant budget uncertainty for the district: each one percent increase in health insurance rates costs MMSD about $610,000. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act brings additional fees and responsibilities for employers, including the requirement to offer affordable and valuable coverage to all employees who work 30 or more hours per week, starting July 1, 2015. Although the exact impact of this requirement is not yet known, MMSD could be required to provide coverage to approximately 120 employees not currently eligible for health insurance benefits.
The district contracts for health insurance with three Madison area HMOs. Group Health Cooperative (GHC) has covers approximately 60% of MMSD employees, while Dean and Unity each cover approximately 20%. Negotiations are continuing for July 1, 2015 rate renewals. The district, in collaboration with employee representatives, are working to minimize the budget impact for 2015-16. An update on the current status of health insurance rate renewals will be presented to the Board in May.

This year, MMSD launched its employee wellness program, which was developed with the input of the employee unions. A team representing a broad spectrum of employees has been selected to design the program activities and support district wellness. In addition, employees are asked to sign up for biometric screenings and health risk assessments, which will provide information that can be used to develop programs that meet the needs of MMSD employees and help curb long-term health care cost increases.

Mitch Henck Comments on Madison’s Spending and Tax Practices:

Madison Teachers, Inc. “Employee Handbook” Planning Meetings

Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Plan now to attend one of the MTI ALL-MEMBER meetings scheduled for the week of March 23. Because of the importance of the Employee Handbook, MTI has scheduled meetings, hopefully one convenient to all members, on March 23, 24 and 26.

Governor Walker’s 2011 Act 10 eliminated all public employee collective bargaining agreements (except for police and firefighters) and mandated that terms and conditions of employment be placed in an “employee handbook.” Of 424 Wisconsin school districts, MTI members have the benefit of the only Contracts which run through the 2015-16 school year. It has been agreed that the various current Collective Bargaining Agreements will be the foundation of the handbook. A joint Union/District committee is now in the process of developing the handbook. Union committee members include five MTI appointees; two from AFSCME and one from the Building Trades Council. Three building principals and five other administrators round out the joint committee.

The handbook will replace the Collective Bargaining Agreements when they expire at the end of the 2015-16 school year. Come and learn about the handbook development process, and share your thoughts about what you believe the Union’s priorities should be.

Much more on the “employee handbook“, here.

Parent – Teacher Conferences & The Madison Schools

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

As a result of a joint MTI-MMSD committee on parent- teacher conferences, several changes were agreed upon. For the first time, teachers participating in evening parent-teacher conferences were provided a compensatory day off, which occurred last November 26. In exchange for the comp day, teachers must have conferences on two (2) evenings. For elementary teachers, the fall conferences occurred on November 19. The spring conference will occur on March 19. Conferences are in lieu of report cards, and staff are not required to do additional record-keeping beyond normal data collection and logging parent attendance at conferences. Conferences are recommended to be 15 minutes.

The joint MTI/MMSD committee agreed that the best use of time is to distribute any forms and information at other times and through other means, so teachers can spend all conference time reviewing student progress. The joint committee also agreed that conferences may occur at other than the scheduled times, if agreed between the parent and teacher.

Pursuant to Section V-M of the MTI/MMSD Collective Bargaining Agreement, in recognition of 4K, non-Sage 2nd grade, non-Sage 3rd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade teachers having more parent-teacher conferences due to increased class size shall be excused from the early release SIP-aligned activities on Mondays during the month of November and March.

Complete language regarding parent-teacher conferences can be found on MTI’s website (www.madisonteachers.org). Teachers who have further questions can call or email Eve Degen (degene@madisonteachers.org) at MTI headquarters.

What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? Just Cause

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

JUST CAUSE does not mean “just because.” It establishes standards and procedures that must be met before an employee can be disciplined or discharged. Fortunately for members of MTI’s bargaining units, all have protection under the JUST CAUSE STANDARDS. They were negotiated by MTI to protect union members.

There are seven just cause tests, and an employer must meet all seven in order to sustain the discipline or discharge of an employee. They are: notice; reasonableness of the rule; a thorough and fair investigation; proof; equal treatment; and whether the penalty reasonably meets the alleged offense by the employee.

MTI’s various Contracts enable a review and binding decision by a neutral arbitrator, as to whether such an action by a District administrator/principal is justified. The burden of proof is on the District in such cases.

The provisions of just cause are steps every employer should be obligated to follow. Unfortunately, all administrators do not have a conscience that leads them to follow these principles. However, an MMSD administrator must follow them, because of the rights MTI members have under the Union’s Collective Bargaining Agreements.

Divide and Conquer Part II: “Right to Work” is Dead Wrong

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Buoyed by the election which provided Republican majorities in both the Assembly (+27 majority) and the Senate (+5 majority), conservative anti-worker/anti-union legislators have announced that they will introduce Right to Work legislation when the January session begins. Right to Work laws limit collective bargaining, make it easier to outsource jobs and cut wages and benefits. Their plan was to do this in 2012, but legislators were worried that it was too soon after the 2011 protests against Act 10, and would cause public backlash. On average, workers in Right to Work states earn $7,030 a year less, according to the Congressional Research Service (6/20/12), and the rate of workplace deaths is 52.9% higher. Workers in Right to Work states are even more likely to be uninsured (16.8%, compared with 13.1% overall).

Governor Walker’s Act 10 has already done great damage to Wisconsin’s public sector workers and the economy. Act 10 has been described as “Right to Work on Steroids.” But now, the far-right is coming after the 13% of Wisconsin’s private sector workers who have the benefit of union representation. And it is because CEOs and company owners care more about big business and profits than they do about workers who create them. And, middle class families become struggling families. Right to Work will surely shrink the middle class.

Despite its misleading name, such a law does not guarantee anyone a job and it does not protect against unfair firing, i.e. it provides NO “right to work”. Rather, a Right to Work law prohibits employers and employees from negotiating an agreement – also known as a union security clause – that requires all workers who receive the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement to pay their share of the costs of the Union in representing them. A Right to Work law mandates that unions represent every employee, whether or not he or she pays Union dues. In other words, such laws enable workers to pay nothing and still get the benefits of union membership. Imagine if a Madison resident, who sends their children to MMSD schools, but can opt out of paying property taxes to finance the schools.

A Right to Work law compels dues-paying members to subsidize the cost of representation for those who opt not to pay. If a worker who is represented by a union and doesn’t pay dues is fired illegally, the Union must use resources from dues-paying members to defend the non-member even if that requires going through a costly, time-consuming litigation.

Divide and Conquer Part II: “Right to Work” is Dead Wrong

Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Buoyed by the election which provided Republican majorities in both the Assembly (+27 majority) and the Senate (+5 majority), conservative anti-worker/anti-union legislators have announced that they will introduce Right to Work legislation when the January session begins. Right to Work laws limit collective bargaining, make it easier to outsource jobs and cut wages and benefits. Their plan was to do this in 2012, but legislators were worried that it was too soon after the 2011 protests against Act 10, and would cause public backlash. On average, workers in Right to Work states earn $7,030 a year less, according to the Congressional Research Service (6/20/12), and the rate of workplace deaths is 52.9% higher. Workers in Right to Work states are even more likely to be uninsured (16.8%, compared with 13.1% overall).

Governor Walker’s Act 10 has already done great damage to Wisconsin’s public sector workers and the economy. Act 10 has been described as “Right to Work on Steroids.” But now, the far-right is coming after the 13% of Wisconsin’s private sector workers who have the benefit of union representation. And it is because CEOs and company owners care more about big business and profits than they do about workers who create them. And, middle class families become struggling families. Right to Work will surely shrink the middle class.

Despite its misleading name, such a law does not guarantee anyone a job and it does not protect against unfair firing, i.e. it provides NO “right to work”.

Rather, a Right to Work law prohibits employers and employees from negotiating an agreement – also known as a union security clause – that requires all workers who receive the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement to pay their share of the costs of the Union in representing them. A Right to Work law mandates that unions represent every employee, whether or not he or she pays Union dues. In other words, such laws enable workers to pay nothing and still get the benefits of union membership. Imagine if a Madison resident, who sends their children to MMSD schools, but can opt out of paying property taxes to finance the schools.

MTI Achievement of Equal Rights for Women

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Among the many things MTI has accomplished for its members is the advancement of rights for females.

Early in the Union’s history was MTI’s achievement of equal pay. MTI negotiated a salary schedule which recognized that the value of the work of an elementary teacher, where almost all were female in the 1960s & 1970s, is as valuable as that of a high school teacher of advanced placement physics.

The salary schedule negotiated by MTI recognizes that the task each teacher faces is about the same and the economic reward should be as well. Given this, MTI’s negotiations did away with the School Board’s created “head of household” additive pay – which went to male teachers in those days; and MTI negotiated a salary schedule which treats all teachers equally. That salary schedule proposed by MTI in the late 1960s, while periodically improved, remains in the Collective Bargaining Agreement today. The right to equal pay for equal work was extended to those in all MTI bargaining units through negotiations.

Also, in the 1960’s and early 1970s, School Board policy stated that a female employee had to “immediately notify her supervisor upon becoming pregnant” and resign when the “pregnancy began showing.” This meant a loss of income until the individual was rehired – which did not always occur – as well as a reduction in Social Security and Wisconsin Retirement System benefits, due to the lost wages.

What’s at Risk Without MTI?

Madison Teachers, Inc. PDF Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Over the past few weeks, discussions have been occurring throughout the District about MTI’s upcoming MTI Recertification Elections. One of the most frequently asked questions by newer staff, those who are not aware of MTI’s many accomplishments over the years is, “what is at risk if we lose the Union?” To answer that question, one only needs to look around the State of Wisconsin to see what has happened in other school districts where employees no longer have a collective voice in the workplace.

In many school districts, employers have increased employee health insurance premium
contributions to 12%. Such an increase would decrease an employee’s pay between $61 and $212 per month, depending on the plan the individual has selected. Your Union is currently working with the District to collaboratively identify potential sources for health insurance savings rather than implementing a premium co-pay. The five Contracts for MTI represented employees do not now mandate any employee contribution toward health insurance.

For teachers who are new parents, MTI’s Contract provides paid time off during maternity leave via a combination of personal sick leave and Sick Leave Bank benefits. Non-probationary teachers also have the Contract right to take unpaid child rearing leaves of absence for a semester, a full school year, or up to two school years should they need or desire to stay home with their child(ren) for a period of time regardless of the child’s age. Those rights could disappear or erode without a Union to advocate for them.

For longtime teachers, educational assistants, clerical-technical staff and security assistants approaching retirement, MTI’s Contracts provide retiring employees with 100% of the value of their accumulated sick leave for the payment of post-retirement insurances. Many school districts have capped or reduced such benefits, forcing longtime employees to work longer in order to afford post- retirement insurance premiums.

Other school districts have added classes to the workday (without additional pay); extended the work year (without additional pay); required mandatory evening obligations (without additional pay); reduced benefits for disabled employees; eliminated planning time; pro-rated insurance benefits based on part-time status; eliminated just cause and due process protections against unfair discipline or dismissal; and destroyed salary schedules.

MTI encourages all represented employees to spend a few moments to page through their Collective Bargaining Agreement to see the entirety of the issues that the Union has negotiated for them over the past decades. Any or all of those negotiated items would be subject to employer discretion or whim without a Union as your collective voice. Standing together, we can continue to advocate for working conditions/learning conditions that educational employees and students need. Voting to recertify is the first step towards maintaining your collective voice at work.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Recertification Campaign

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

As previously reported, Governor Walker’s Act 10 requires public sector unions, except police & fire, to participate in an annual recertification election to enable Union members to retain representation by their Union. The election by all MTI-represented District employees will be conducted between November 5 and November 25, via telephone or on-line balloting (details forthcoming when received from the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission).

MTI Faculty Representatives and EA Building Representatives at every school/work location have been asked to recruit colleagues to assist in building awareness of the importance of the recertification election, and to make sure that staff at their school/work location VOTE in the recertification elections.

These individuals are being referred to as MTI Member Organizers and will be essential to successful recertification elections. The Union needs Member Organizers from every bargaining unit (MTI, SEE-MTI, EA-MTI, SSA-MTI & USO-MTI). Retired union members are also encouraged to assist in organizing. Assuring that each and every person vote is of great importance, because Act 10 requires that to win recertification, the Union must win 51% of all eligible voters.

If you are willing to support your Union by serving as a Member Organizer, or have additional questions about what this entails, see your MTI Faculty Representative/EA-MTI Building Representative, or contact MTI Assistant Director Doug Keillor (keillord@madisonteachers.org; 257-0491). Additional information will also be available at a MTI Member Organizer Q & A Session on Saturday, October 4, from 10:00-11:30 a.m., at MTI Headquarters.

Reasons for Recertification #2: Preserving and Protecting Your Collective Bargaining Agreements – MTI has successfully negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreements which preserve the vast majority of Contract rights and benefits for both the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years and provide the Union the means to enforce those rights and benefits.

Advocating Madison Teachers, Inc. Recertification

Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Governor Walker’s Act 10 requires MTI to engage in a recertification election to retain its status as the representative of those covered by MTI’s collective bargaining units. This year’s election will be conducted between noon November 5 and noon November 25. Voting will be via telephone or on-line (detailed information will follow).

When you vote to recertify MTI, you are voting to “stand together” with your colleagues to support your profession and Union. A YES vote sends a message to policymakers that educators stand together on important issues that affect our profession, schools and students – such as reasonable class size, sufficient planning time, fair compensation and a host of other professional and economic issues.

To make recertification difficult, a union needs 51% of ALL ELIGIBLE VOTERS to win recertification. This election is unique from others in that failure to cast a well-intentioned vote due to busy schedules and personal conflicts constitutes a “no” vote, diminishing members’ efforts to remain united, and to speak with one voice. We urge you to vote YES. Please watch for additional communications on how to cast this very important vote between November 5-25, 2014.

WHY IS RECERTIFICATION IMPORTANT?
Preserving the negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreements – MTI has successfully negotiated Collective Bargaining Agreements which preserve the vast majority of contractual rights and benefits for both the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years and provide the means to enforce those rights and benefits. The continuation of these contract rights and benefits, as well as the means to enforce them, may be jeopardized by one not voting.
Advocating for the inclusion of such rights and benefits in an Employee Handbook – MTI has gained the District’s agreement to work in a collaborative manner to develop an employee handbook which will guide workplace rights and benefits once the Collective Bargaining Agreements expire. Recertification confirms that employees desire to continue to have MTI as their collective voice in this process.

Standing United – It’s about supporting one another. When you and your colleagues vote to recertify MTI, policymakers know the educators stand together in solidarity on important issues that impact our profession, our schools and our students.

Representation – It’s about fairness and how you are treated. Employees in certified bargaining units have the right to representation – also called Weingarten rights – allowing a member who is being investigated for potential discipline to be accompanied and advised by a union representative.

While MTI will continue to exist whether or not we recertify, a YES vote sends a message to the governor and school administration that MTI members are united – and that MTI is not going away, despite Governor Walker’s attempt to silence our voices.
Your colleagues appreciate your support. Show your support by voting YES to recertify MTI. Thank you

Much more on Wisconsin’s Act 10, here.

Vote YES to RECERTIFY MTI – November 5-25, 2014

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Governor Walker’s Act 10 requires public sector unions, except police & fire, to engage in annual recertification elections, in order to retain their status as the representative of the employees in their bargaining unit. Even though MTI’s certification goes back to 1964, and it has represented MMSD employees and negotiated Contracts for them beginning with the 1964 Collective Bargaining Agreement for teachers, Walker’s signature legislation Act 10 mandates that MTI participate in a recertification election. The election by all MTI represented District employees will be conducted between November 5 and November 25 via telephone or on-line balloting (more detailed information will be forthcoming).

Why is recertification important? The recertification election will determine whether MTI will continue to be the legally recognized “certified representative” for the following year. While there were processes available in prior law for a Union’s certification to be challenged by dissatisfied employees, Walker’s Act 10 forces such elections annually. And to make recertification more difficult, unlike political elections where the candidate with the most votes wins, Act 10 requires that to win recertification, the union must win 51% of all eligible voters. Between now and November 25 we will use this space to highlight a number of reasons why recertification, and your participation in it, is important.

Reason #1- Standing Together – When one votes to recertify MTI, that individual is voting to “stand together” to support one’s profession and colleagues. A YES vote sends a message to policymakers that employee groups stand together on important issues that affect their profession, schools and students – such as reasonable class size, sufficient planning time, effective professional development, fair compensation and a host of other work-related, professional and economic issues. Standing together provides a stronger voice than one has individually.

Commentary on Madison Teacher Evaluation Concepts

Chris Rickert

District spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson acknowledged that some teachers had been evaluated “inconsistently” but noted that the new evaluations, while time-consuming, will be limited to once every three years.

School Board President Arlene Silveira also said the board has made it clear to Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham that evaluations are a priority and “the hope is that they will be more of a focus.”

The Department of Public Instruction says the new Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System can be used “as one piece of data” when making “high-stakes human resource decisions,” such as termination and giving pay raises.

That’s not going to happen anytime soon in Madison, the only district in the state that, according to Lipp, still has a collective bargaining agreement three years after the union-killing Act 10.

“As long as we have a union contract, it won’t,” he said.

Strauch-Nelson said “the new system won’t change how the district makes employment decisions or compensation,” but it “will be used to tailor support for teachers and inform professional development.”

Madison Teachers, Inc. Greets New Hires

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Members of MTI’s Board of Directors, Bargaining Committee and Union staff greeted the District’s 200+ newly hired teachers at New Teacher Orientation last Monday. Sixty- five have already joined the union.

MTI Executive Director John Matthews addressed the District’s new teachers during Monday’s gathering. In doing so, Matthews provided a brief history of the Union, its reputation of negotiating outstanding Collective Bargaining Agreements which provide both employment security and economic security, and in explaining the threat to both, given Act 10, said all MTI members would need to pull together to preserve the Madison Metropolitan School District as a quality place to teach.

Adjuncts Outsourced in Michigan

Colleen Flaherty:

Colleges and universities have outsourced lots of services in the past several decades, from food preparation and delivery to bookstores to sanitation. But to many academics it is taboo to even consider outsourcing the faculty.
Not in Michigan. In recent years, a handful of community colleges in that state have outsourced the recruitment and hiring of adjunct instructors – who make up the overwhelming majority of the community college teaching force – to an educational staffing company. Just last week, the faculty union at a sixth institution, Jackson College, signed a collective bargaining agreement allowing EDUStaff to take over adjunct hiring and payroll duties.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/07/21/colleges-assign-adjunct-hiring-third-party#ixzz386Z0jm3Q
Inside Higher Ed

MTI Preserves, Gains Contracts Through June, 2016

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Last fall, MTI asked the District to bargain Contracts for multiple years. They refused, and a Contract was negotiated for the 2014-15 school year.

After hundreds of MTI members, sporting their MTI red shirts, attended two school board meetings in late May, the Board had a change of heart – and also a change in leadership with Arlene Silveira replacing Ed Hughes. Several MTI members addressed the Board at its meetings on May 26 and 29. The Board agreed to bargain. After five days of bargaining, terms were reached for Contracts for MTI’s five bargaining units, AFSCME’s two bargaining units, and that of the Building Trades Council.

In the new Contracts, MTI was successful in retaining members’ employment security and economic security provided by Contract salary schedules and fringe benefits.

MTI’s Contracts for 2014-15 and 2015-16 are the only contracts with Wisconsin school districts, for those years. A synopsis of the new Contracts is available on MTI’s webpage www.madisonteachers.org.
MTI members ratified the Contracts last Tuesday evening

Madison Teachers, Inc. Synopsis (PDF):

HANDBOOK: Among the topics addressed in our 2013 negotiations was how the Act 10 mandated “Employee Handbook” would be developed. In last year’s negotiations MTI gained agreement with the District, that while most school boards acted unilaterally to develop the Handbook, MTI has 5 appointees to the Committee which will develop the Handbook. That agreement also provides that MTI’s 2014- 15 Collective Bargaining Agreements serve as the foundation for the Handbook. That has now been amended to provide that the 2015-16 Contracts will serve as the foundation for the Handbook. Some school boards have rolled back employee rights to the 1950’s or 1960’s, when unilaterally creating the Handbook for their school districts. For example, teachers in some districts cannot wear sandals, open-toed

shoes and women must wear skirts or dresses at least to the knee. The Janesville School Board just eliminated wages for any credits or
degrees beyond the BA.

Kenosha School Board settles lawsuit over Act 10 dispute

Erin Richards:

Kenosha schools and the teachers union were at odds over the issue of automatic dues deduction for non-union members. Supporters of the contract argued the agreement and terms within it, such as the provision for automatic dues deduction, were legal because of the Colás decision.

Kenosha Unified spokeswoman Tanya Ruder explained the School Board negotiated with the unions and signed the agreement on Nov. 12 only after receiving notice from the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission in October that the unions were still the certified collective bargaining representative of the teachers.

Legal rulings after that agreement resulted in WERC then informing Kenosha that the unions were not, in fact, certified collective bargaining representatives at the time, Ruder said.

That meant the union didn’t actually represent the employees in November when the collective bargaining agreements were reached, Ruder said.

Much more on Act 10 here.

Locally, Madison continues to automatically deduct union dues from teacher paychecks.

Madison school board’s Ed Hughes: Don’t extend Teacher Union contract without rethinking hiring process

Pat Schneider:

It’s not a good idea for the Madison School District to extend its labor contract with teachers through the 2015-2016 school year without renegotiating it, says school board member Ed Hughes.

Hughes wants Madison School District administrators — especially school principals — to have the ability to offer jobs to the best teacher candidates before they are snapped up by other districts.

One way to accomplish that would be to drop a labor contract provision giving Madison teachers the opportunity to transfer into open positions before external candidates can be offered those jobs, Hughes says.

“To take the collective bargaining agreement in its current form and just change the date without any discussion, to my mind, is creating a potential impediment to our important efforts to attract a highly qualified and diverse workforce,” Hughes said Tuesday.

Hughes said that a labor contract that includes a “last hired, first fired” provision also hampers efforts to hire teachers with experience in racially and ethnically diverse classrooms.

“Why would someone with 15 years experience in Janesville come to Madison and be the first one on the chopping block if there are layoffs?” he asked. “I’m not proposing a specific solution, but we need to address these issues in a collaborative way so we’re not handcuffing ourselves from bringing in the best teachers.”

Related: Act 10, Madison Teachers, Inc and Ed Hughes.

Emphasizing adult employment: Newark School Reform and retired Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman.

Mr Hughes wrote one of the more forthright quotes on local school matters in 2005:

This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker – and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member – believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.

Tea leaves: Mr. Hughes was just replaced as President of the Madison School Board. Interestingly, he ran unopposed in three (!) elections. The candor is appreciated, but were there similar comments during the past few years?

Madison Teachers, Inc: Teacher Contracts to be Issued in May

Madison Teachers, Inc., Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Pursuant to changes in MTI’s Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement, teacher contracts for the 2014-15 school year will now be issued in MAY instead of March. Signed contracts of all teachers returning for the 2014-15 school year must be received in the MMSD Human Resources Office no later than June 16. MTI strongly recommends that teachers return their signed contracts AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, in person, to assure timely delivery. Take a copy with you, ask that it be stamped “received”, and keep it for your personal records. Failure to return a signed contract by June 16 may result in the District accepting such as one’s resignation.

What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? Worker’s Compensation

Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Among the many excellent benefits available to MTI members, guaranteed by MTI’s various Collective Bargaining Agreements, is the additional worker’s compensation benefit, i.e., benefits greater than those provided by Wisconsin Statutes.

Wisconsin Statutes provide a worker’s compensation benefit for absence caused by a work-related injury or illness, but the benefit does not begin until the 4th day of absence, and has a maximum weekly financial benefit.
MTI’s Collective Bargaining Agreements provide that one absent from work because of a work- related injury or illness will receive his/her full wage, and that it begins on day one of the absence. Further, MTI’s negotiated benefits for worker’s compensation are not limited by Wisconsin Statutes, i.e., there is no maximum. MTI’s Contracts also provide that one’s earned sick leave is not consumed by absence caused by a work-related illness or injury.

Although MTI is working to preserve this benefit, it is at risk due to Governor Walker’s Act 10.

What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? School Calendar

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Linda Doeseckle email (PDF):

Does it matter to you when school begins in the fall? How about when and how long winter or spring break is? And, how about when the school year ends? Have you thought about how many days you work for your annual salary, or how many hours make up your school day? In members’ responses to many years of MTI bargaining surveys, all of these factors are “very important” to those in MTI’s various bargaining units.

It was MTI’s case in 1966 which gave teacher unions an equal voice in establishing all of the above. Ruling for MTI, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the school calendar is a mandatory subject of bargaining, meaning that a school district in Wisconsin must negotiate with the union to determine each of the factors described above. However, Governor Walker’s Act 10 reversed the Supreme Court’s ruling, because Act 10 removed workers’ rights to collectively bargain. And now to make it worse, there is a legislative proposal to enable school boards to unilaterally increase the number of hours in a school day.

Walker’s Act 10 enables a school board without a good conscience to abuse staff, especially teachers, because teachers are paid an annual salary not on an hourly basis. MTI’s victory before Judge Colas found Act 10, in great part, to be unconstitutional, which in turn enabled MTI to negotiate Collective Bargaining Agreements for MTI’s five bargaining units for 2014-15. Walker’s appeal of Judge Colas’ decision to the Supreme Court is pending decision. District management meantime, has refused to bargain over the calendar for the 2015-16 school year. This negativity not only impacts teachers’ planning for the 2015-16 school year, but is also causing families not to be able to plan ahead. Many families often plan vacations, weddings and other family and religious events years in advance.

Use It or Lose It – Class Covering Pay

Madison Teachers, Inc Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:

Section III-R of MTI’s Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement ensures that teachers are compensated for covering another teacher’s class, when a substitute is unavailable. Nearly all members of MTI’s teacher collective bargaining unit are entitled to class coverage pay whether one volunteers or are assigned by a building administrator. This is also true whether one loses planning or not. The only exceptions are the following positions: learning coordinator, instructional resource teacher, PBS coaches, literacy coaches or dean of students, team teachers when the co-teacher is absent (unless coverage results in lost planning time). Follow up with the building administrator or administrative clerk to verify that this additional time is recorded for compensation purposes. Class coverage pay is $22 per hour. Contact MTI for additional details.

Board of Education Activity in 2006-07

A few weeks ago, the Madison BOE received a summary of what the board and its committees had done in its meetings during the past year. I am posting the entire document as an extended entry as community information. It provides a lot more detail, a good overview, and a glimpse at the pieces that didn’t make it into the print and broadcast media.

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Madison Schools MTI Teacher Contract Roundup

Conversation regarding the recent MMSD / MTI collective bargaining agreement continues:

Andy Hall wrote a useful summary, along with some budget numbers (this agreementi s56% of the MMSD’s $339.6M budget):

District negotiators headed by Superintendent Art Rainwater had sought to free up money for starting teachers’ salaries by persuading the union to drop Wisconsin Physicians Service, a health-care provider that offers open access to medical treatment with no need for referrals.
The district wanted MTI members to choose from among three health-maintenance organizations that limit coverage to specific providers in return for lower costs.
But the union kept the current mix — WPS plus one HMO, Group Health Cooperative — after members in a survey indicated support for maintaining those options.
Matthews is a paid member of the Wisconsin Physicians Service board of directors — an arrangement he defends as a means of advocating for members and the district. Critics contend it represents a conflict of interest.
“Our plan is cheaper than almost any in town,” said Matthews, referring to a union comparison of Wisconsin Physicians Service coverage, used by half of the members, to coverage offered to employees of state and local governments.
“The teachers were willing to pay more, they were willing to move money from wages to health insurance, in order to preserve those kinds of rights.”
Among the new costs facing teachers: A $75 co-pay for emergency room visits and a $10 co-pay for office visits.
Premiums for WPS, which is favored by many members with a serious illness in the family, will cost 10.4 percent more beginning July 1. But the premiums will decrease slightly beginning Jan. 1 as the co-pays take effect. For example, the WPS family premium will cost the district $1,711 per month while the employee’s share will be $190, falling to $187 on Jan. 1.
The GHC premium will increase by 5.7 percent — to $974 monthly for family coverage, paid entirely by the district — beginning July 1. That amount will decrease to $955 on Jan. 1.
Don Severson & Brian Schimming discuss the agreement and the school board: 5MB mp3 audio file.
2005 / 2007 Agreement 528K PDF.
The Madison School Board will vote on the Agreement Monday evening, June 18, 2007.
Additional links and notes.
Don Severson: 3 Simple Things.
MMSD / MTI contract negotations begin Carol Carstensen: An alt view on Concessions Before Negotiations.
Going to the Mat for WPS
What’s the MTI Political Endorsement About?
Some MMSD unions have addressed health care costs.

Education Sector Study: Cutting Provisions In Union Contracts Could Free Funds

Jay Matthews:

U.S. public schools could have as much as $77 billion more a year to improve teaching if they reduced spending on seniority pay increases, teacher’s aides, class size limits and other measures often found in teacher union contracts, a new study contends.
he provisions include salary increases based on years of experience or educational credentials; professional development days; sick and personal days; class size limits; use of teacher’s aides; and generous health and retirement benefits.
Teachers union officials sharply disputed the report’s findings. School administrators and school board representatives said that although they would like more flexibility in the use of funds, there was little evidence that cutting such provisions would raise achievement.

250K PDF Report.

Education Sector Press Release by Marguerite Roza:

State and federal accountability systems are putting immense pressure on public schools to improve the performance of low-achieving students. To respond, schools must be able to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, strengthen curricula, and take other steps to provide struggling students with the help they need.
But such efforts are expensive and, as the nation faces the cost of caring for an aging population and other challenges in the years ahead, it is unlikely that education will receive a great deal of new funding. Education leaders, as a result, will increasingly have to scrutinize their existing budgets to find ways to fund their reform initiatives. One potentially valuable source of funds for reform are common provisions in teacher contracts that obligate schools to spend large amounts of money on programs that lack a clear link to student achievement.

Andrew Rotherham has more:

New ES report by school finance guru Marguerite Roza makes the uncomfortable but important point that there is a lot of money in education now that could be repurposed to greater effect within education. WaPo here. Similar to the point made by the recent Skills Commission report. To some this could appear as picking on teachers, and it will be framed that way, but the simple fact is that education is, by it’s nature, pretty labor intensive, and most of the $500 billion spent annually is tied up in labor costs. Consequently, pace our good friend Willie Sutton, that’s one place policymakers are going to have to look for funds. In other words, we need to get serious about financing education, but also about refinancing it as well. And, we have to take on what is a four letter word in many education circles, productivity.

Mike Antonucci:

Education Sector has released an exceptional report by Marguerite Roza that quantifies the costs of various standard provisions in collective bargaining agreements that have little or no connection to improved student achievement or even efficient distribution of resources. Items like automatic raises for experience, university credits, and paid professional development end up totaling almost 19 percent of all education spending, without any indication that they are giving us what we’re after: better schools.
Roza suggests more flexibility is needed:

Searchable Database of Big City School Board Policies and Teacher Contracts

Mike Antonucci:

It was a big job, but the National Council on Teacher Quality has put together a database that will allow you to “easily search the contents of collective bargaining agreements and board policies from the nation’s 50 largest public school districts.”
NCTQ will unveil it in DC on January 4. I’m guessing that somewhere in the halls of Harlem Success Charter School, Eva Moskowitz is smiling.

Madison BOE Progress Report for November 8th

I would like to thank our community for their passage of the referendum on November 7th. This referendum will build a new school in Linden Park, finance the cafeteria and remodeling of Leopold Elementary and refinance existing debt…

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Court Allows District to Pay More Than Union Scale

Mike Antonucci:

The North Dakota Supreme Court let stand a ruling that the Kenmare school district could offer and pay more money to fill a speech-language pathologist position. The district’s action was the subject of a lawsuit by the Kenmare Education Association (KEA).
The union filed suit in July 2005, after a state fact-finding committee recommended the district be allowed to offer an additional $15,000 in salary to find a taker for the hard-to-fill position. The union asserted that paying a pathologist more money than was proscribed by the salary scale violated the collective bargaining agreement.
Last November, a state district court judge upheld the district’s action, prompting KEA President Donna Schmit to say, “For one individual to be allowed to negotiate up to $15,000 additional salary is wrong.”

By Invitation Only: How the MMSD-MTI Health Insurance Task Force Limited Its Options

In June of 2005, when the majority of the Madison School Board approved the two-year collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union, the agreement included a task force to study and make recommendations on possible changes in health insurance coverage for the teachers, the majority of the district’s employees. Task force members would be the superintendent and his appointees and John Matthews, exuective director of Madison Teachers,Inc. (MTI) and his appointees. They were to issue a report no later than February 15, 2006.
From the beginning, the task force provision was a great deal for the teachers union. It was risk-free. If the parties could identify health insurance savings, the savings would go directly to increase teacher wages during 2006-07. The parties would re-open the contract to switch dollars from this important fringe benefit to wages. If not, the teachers would keep the current coverage and current wages.
A gain for the district was not so easy to identify. Superintendent Art Rainwater talked about the potential health insurance savings as a benefit in future negotiations. Lowering health insurance costs during 2006-07 would allow the district to continue high quality health insurance coverage for its teachers (as we should) and go into future negotiations with a reduced base for health insurance costs. With health insurance costs for all employees running at about $35M per year, any longterm reduction would help the board redirect significant dollars to school programs and staff.
If the task force had used the year to take a comprehensive, objective look at health insurance alternatives for the teachers, the school board might expect an important report this week. It would tell the board how dollars currently going to health insurance could be used for wage increase at no loss in quality of care for district employees. I don’t expect anything like that because we have not seen a serious effort to seek out alternative insurance proposals and evaluate them and the board has exercised no oversight or direction.
The task force has met twice at MTI headquarters, on January 11 and January 25. It did not solicit a wide range of proposals for health insurance for the teachers.
Instead, the task force invited the current providers, Wisconsin Physicians Services and Group Health Cooperative, plus Dean Care and Unity to make presentations. They did not invite Alliant (whose insurance is good enough for MMSD administrators and the custodial union), Physicians Plus (a very competitive local provider with a doctors’ network that overlaps the current providers), the State Health Plan (open to school districts) or WEA-IT (a company associated with the Wisconsin Education Associations Council). John Matthews, who continues to serve on the Board of Directors for WPS, did most of the questioning of the insurance companies at the task force meetings. The gist of his questions for Dean Care and Unity were whether they could provide what WPS currently provides, according to him.

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Very disappointing start for MTI-MMSD health insurance task force

On Wednesday, January 11, representatives of Madison Teachers, Inc. (MTI) and the Madison school district met at the union’s headquarters for three hours. MTI Executive Director John Matthews chaired the meeting. It was the first of two meetings at which MTI and MMSD will supposedly explore the potential for savings on health insurance costs for the teachers. Those expecting a serious effort by union and district representatives to compare costs and services from a range of health insurance providers and press the companies for savings will be seriously disappointed.
There were two presentations at the meeting: one from representatives of Wisconsin Physicians Services (WPS) and one from Group Health Cooperative (GHC). Despite a promise from the board president and superintendent that the meeting would be videotaped, the district did not tape the meeting. So far only the text for the WPS presentation (with accompanying PowerPoint) is available for public review.
At the meeting on January 25, 2006—also at MTI’s headquarters at 821 Williamson Street beginning at 1 p.m.—the task force will hear presentations from representatives of Dean Care and Unity. There has been no explanation of why there will not be presentations from Physicians Plus or the State Group Health Plan. Both offer services comparable to those that teachers currently receive under the collective bargaining agreement between the parties at competitive rates.

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Public Not Welcome at MMSD Talks about Future Health Insurance Costs

Last August, MMSD parent KJ Jakobson asked “whether the new joint district-union task force for investigating health insurance costs be a truly collaborative effort to solve a very costly problem? Or will it instead end up being a collusion to maintain the status quo?” Collaboration or collusion: What should the public expect from MMSD-MTI Task Force on Health Insurance Costs?
Her question remains an important one. If the task force of representatives of the school district and Madison Teachers , Inc. identifies future cost savings from changes in health insurance providers, the district could save million of dollars per year after 2007. Although the savings would go to higher wages for teachers during the 2005-07 collective bargaining agreement, there would be possible savings for the district budget in future years. The district now pays about $37 M per year for health insurance for its employees.
Unfortunately, the history of the task force to date suggests that Ms. Jakobson’s fears were well-grounded.

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Board of Education in No Rush to Explore Health Insurance Savings

Last June, the Madison Board of Education ratified the 2005-07 collective bargaining agreement with Madison Teachers, Inc. The agreement commits the district and the teachers union to form a task force to identify potential cost savings from changes in health insurance coverage. If the task force finds savings, the parties may renegotiate the health care provisions. The deadline for this work is February of 2006.
Months ago, both sides named their representatives to the task force. Months ago, the Board’s attorney declared that the task force meetings—–prior to possible renegotiation—–would be public meetings. Five months have passed without a public meeting of the task force. The Human Resources Committee, which has oversight of this process, has not mentioned the topic or called for a report from administration. In fact, the board has received more updates from the administraton about discussions on the future of guinea pigs in classrooms than it has on possible savings in health care costs. Now only a few months remain to collect information on this complex topic, analyze the options and, if possible, renegotiate the health insurance provisions in the two-year agreement.

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Teacher Health Insurance Costs: Why They Matter

Madison Teachers, Inc., the Madison teachers’ union, has recently ratified its collective bargaining agreement with the Madison school district for 2005-06 and 2006-07. Later this month, the Board of Education will have its chance to ratify the agreement, although the board gave preliminary assent on June 6.
On June 10, Isthmus writer Jason Shepard provided an excellent analysis of the ways that providing Wisconsin Physicians Service (WPS) to the teachers drives up the cost of each contract. The article also questions the relative quality of the WPS coverage. See “District ties to WPS prove costly”, available at many locations in Dane County.
The following graphs, based on data from MMSD, illustrate the impact of high cost WPS coverage on the cost of the two-year contract and the extent to which access to WPS coverage for roughly half of the teachers receiving health insurance through MMSD erodes wage gains.

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Bersin & School Reform in San Diego

Frederick Hess:

Bersin’s departure provides an opportunity to ask what we have learned from his highly visible and often contentious tenure. To explore that question, and with the district’s full cooperation, last year I assembled a team of analysts to examine the San Diego reform push. For me, five key lessons emerged from their appraisal.
First, the centralized, “managed instruction” model of improvement depends critically on the presence of a personnel and managerial infrastructure and on quality curricula. Alvarado gave unstinting attention to his centerpiece “Institute for Learning” training program for principals and faculty, and to building a corps of “peer coaches” to assist teachers. But his single-minded focus on these activities resulted in a lack of attention to infrastructure and curricula. As a result, the coaches, the Institute, and attempts to assign faculty where needed most ran afoul of the collective bargaining agreement’s provisions on professional development, staffing, and teacher transfers. A balky human resources operation reliant on outdated technology inhibited district efforts to speed up hiring or promote more flexible staffing.

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QEO – What State Statute Says

There is some difference of opinion about what state law requires under the QEO statutes, particularly regarding the “required” 3.8% increase. For what it’s worth, this is how the statute is worded:

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School climate: 2022 election edition

“Perhaps the gravest injustice of our time is the imprisonment of minority kids in substandard public schools… The real culprits are union collective-bargaining agreements and state laws that put teachers unions’ interests ahead of students’.”https://t.co/P2Qj2XTUA6

— Betsy DeVos (@BetsyDeVos) November 1, 2022

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

The Government Pension Reckoning Cometh

Wall Street Journal:

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System reported a negative 6.1% return for the year, which includes a 21.3% positive return on private equity and 24.1% return on real estate as reported through the second quarter of 2022. What will happen if real-estate prices start to fall and some leveraged private-equity buyouts go south amid rising interest rates?

Collective-bargaining agreements limit how much workers must contribute to their pensions, so taxpayers are required to make up for investment losses. Employer retirement contributions—that is, taxpayers—make up 20% of government worker compensation. That amount has soared over the past decade as pension funds tried to make up for losses during the 2008-2009 financial panic.

A recent report by the Equable Institute found that state and local pension plans now are only 77.9% funded on average, which is about the same as in 2008. But some like Chicago’s are less than 40%. Advice to taxpayers in Illinois: Run.

Union’s Union About to Be… Deunionized?

Mike Antonucci:

That contract is due to expire on July 31, and it has led to a couple of startling developments.

The first is especially odd. Although the Pinellas Staff Organization is the exclusive bargaining representative of the seven staffers, only two of them are actually members of the union. The other five do not belong, as is their right under Florida law and the Janus ruling.

One of the five, Don Manly, filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to decertify PSO as the exclusive representative. In order to file such a petition, one must have the support of at least 30 percent of the bargaining unit, which in this case is three people — Manly and two others.

If the NLRB approves the petition, an election would be held, and four votes to decertify would cast out PSO.

Decertifying a union’s staff union would be singular enough, but McCall added fuel to the fire by notifying staffers that PCTA would cease abiding by the current contract’s terms when it expires on July 31.

It’s a fundamental principle of collective bargaining that even after a contract expires, its provisions remain in effect — sometimes for years — until a new agreement is reached or until both parties agree to end the relationship.

This move by PCTA caused an uproar within the staff union community. PSO petitioned PCTA to extend the current contract for one year, or until a new agreement can be reached.

Want to Reopen Schools? Better Be Ready to Bargain

Mike Antonucci:

Here in California, state officials have made it clear that they will issue guidelines for school reopenings, but the ultimate decision will be left to the individual districts. In the eyes of the California Teachers Association, that means collective bargaining.

Last week CTA issued its stance on school reopenings, listing those things the union wants to see in place before returning to work. These included precautions with consensus agreement, like face masks, deep cleaning, physical distancing and hand washing.

CTA went beyond those, however, stating, “Schools and colleges cannot reopen safely with the funding level proposed in the revised budget plan.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget revision foresees a $54 billion budget deficit and calls for substantial cuts in spending, including a 10 percent cut to the state’s aid to local school districts.

In the worst case labor scenario, California schools will see a virtual statewide strike, where teachers will refuse to return to work either for safety or budgetary reasons, or both. Recent practice suggests such disputes will be settled with imaginary money, so I suspect any work stoppage would be a relatively short one.

Madison’s K-12 Governance: “the assembly line seems like an odd way to go”

Chris Rickert:

Teachers who reach goals in the new compensation plan can also move up the pay scale faster than they were able to move up the old salary schedule, Busler said, while those not interested in reaching goals can expect nothing more than annual cost-of-living salary increases.

But overall, the amount the district would put into teacher compensation is greater than the amount it would have had to put in under the old salary schedule, he said.

I was curious about why the district bothered to include seniority and degree-attainment in the new compensation plan at all, given that research has shown seniority isn’t correlated with more effective teaching beyond about five years on the job, and there’s little, if any, connection between getting more college credit and better teaching.

School Board member Charles Uphoff, who sat on the committee that created the new plan, said a main goal of the new plan is to pay the “profession of teaching more professionally.”

It’s nice to see someone in public education realizing teachers are not, say, interchangeable workers on an assembly line.

Meanwhile, back in Madison, the school district is possibly the last one in the state still wedded to a salary schedule — by way of a collective-bargaining agreement repeatedly extended by a union-beholden School Board while Act 10 was held up in court.

Will the Madison School Board Prove Mary Burke Wrong (or Right)?

James Wigderson, via a kind reader:

We should not have been surprised when Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke voted with the rest of the Madison school board to negotiate a contract extension with the teachers union. After all, it was just a month ago that Burke told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a video recorded interview that she believes she didn’t need Act 10 to get the same concessions from the unions. “I think it was only fair to ask for contributions to health care and to pensions, um, but I think those could have been negotiated, ah certainly firmly but fairly.”

Let’s set aside that negotiating a contract extension with the union is likely a violation of the law, as attorney Rick Esenberg of WILL informed the school board. Okay, that’s a little bit like saying to the dinosaurs, “setting aside that giant meteor head towards Earth…”

But setting the issue with the law aside, we’re about to about to see whether Burke’s claim is correct that she is capable of achieving the benefits of Act 10 without having to rely upon the powers granted by Act 10 to local government bodies. If we’re to use upon history as our guide, Burke is unlikely to prove anything except that the passage of Act 10 by Governor Scott Walker and the legislature was necessary.

After the passage of Act 10, Madison teachers staged a massive “sick out” in order to protest Walker’s reforms. Despite a public statement from then-WEAC President Mary Bell to go back to work and a request by the Madison Metropolitan School District to cancel a scheduled day off, Madison’s teachers continued to stay out of work to continue the protest. In fact, a MacIver investigation discovered that John Matthews of Madison Teachers, Inc. lied about the union’s involvement in planning the protest.

Against that background, and a determination not to be bound by the terms of Act 10, the Madison teachers union and the school district negotiated the first contract extension into 2013. Instead of the 12.6 percent health care contribution called for under Act 10 and even supported by Bell, the district was only able to negotiate a 5 percent health care contribution. The agreement did allow an increase to 10 percent the following year.

Teacher Union Collective Bargaining Continues in Madison, Parent Bargaining “like any other union” in Los Angeles.

Act 10.

Mary Burke.

School Board answers to MTI, not to students, taxpayers —

Norman Sannes

Nothing has changed in the past 30 years. The love affair between the Madison School Board and Madison Teachers Inc. Executive director John Matthews is still in full bloom.

The latest pending agreement to extend the existing union contract is proof. The ensuing litigation could cost Madison taxpayers a great deal. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has already promised to challenge this if the School Board caves to MTI.

MTI is not about our kids. It never has been (other than indoctrinating liberalism). The union’s opposition to the Madison preparatory charter school is further proof.

The School Board is supposed to be looking out for the kids and the taxpayers, but their first priority continues to be MTI and the demands from Matthews.

Milwaukee teachers’ union asking School Board to negotiate new contracts

Erin Richards:

Citing the decision of a Dane County judge who struck down portions of a state law prohibiting most collective bargaining for public employees, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association is asking the School Board to negotiate new contracts with its members.
To press for action, the MTEA rallied supporters to wear red, make signs and attend the School Board’s meeting en masse Thursday night.
The MTEA says a one-year contract with teachers, education assistants, substitutes and accountants could help keep qualified teachers in the classroom and help solve the district’s impending teacher shortage. It would also maintain the salary structure of pay based on earned degrees and years of teaching experience for teachers.
Milwaukee’s teachers have been shielded from the effects of Act 10, a state law enacted in 2011 that dramatically limits collective bargaining for most public workers and dictates higher employee contributions to benefits, because of a four-year bargaining agreement that does not end until June 30.
Teachers agreed to benefit concessions in that contract.

Can the Chicago Teachers’ Strike Fix Democratic Education Reform?

Richard Kahlenberg:

In 1960, when Albert Shanker and other members of New York City’s teachers union sought collective bargaining rights, they set a strike date for Monday November 7, the day prior to the presidential election between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. The timing would provide maximum leverage, they reasoned, because the Democratic mayor, Robert Wagner, would not want to come down hard on striking teachers the day before the election. This strategy was vindicated when teachers won an agreement that led to bargaining rights after just a single day on strike.
The same logic surely crossed the mind of the shrewd president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis, who knew that calling a strike this week would be highly disruptive to President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. At a time when Obama is trying to rally his base, the strike reminded teachers across the country of his support for merit pay and nonunion charter schools–policies also backed by Obama’s former chief of staff and the current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. And at a time when Obama is struggling in the campaign money chase, the strike negotiations have distracted Emanuel from helping the president raise dollars from wealthy donors. Both factors may help explain why the strike now appears close to settling.
But if the strike has been bad for Democratic presidential politics, it may ultimately be good for Democratic education policy, which for too long has aped right-wing rhetoric in the name of education reform. It can’t hurt to force a leading Democrat like Emanuel to spend a little more time negotiating with actual teachers and a little less time wooing hedge fund managers, many of whom passionately back the education policies that rank-and-file teachers despise.

Going Broke for Reform In Michigan, insolvency leads to school choice opportunity

The Wall Street Journal:

Muskegon Heights and Highland Park–two of Michigan’s most insolvent school districts–this year are handing their classroom keys over to charter school operators to save money. That’s good news for local taxpayers, but the biggest beneficiaries may be the kids.
Both districts were running deficits that approached two-thirds of their budgets, thanks to the double whammy of rising labor costs and declining enrollment. To help the districts avert bankruptcy, Governor Rick Snyder appointed emergency managers who under a new state law can break collective-bargaining agreements. While such flexibility was essential to get their books in order, it may not have been sufficient.
According to Muskegon Heights manager Don Weatherspoon, the district would have to slash salaries by 35%–reducing hourly wage rates to about $10–merely to break even. That would have likely caused a teacher walk-out. When the emergency manager for Detroit schools last month proposed extending a 10% pay cut for a year, teachers threatened to strike.

The Bigger Picture on MMSD School Board Conflicts of Interest

I found the recent Wisconsin State Journal article on the school board elections and Nichelle Nichols’ Urban League employment odd and at the same time interesting. When I was elected in 2006, there was a well established practice that board members would abstain from both discussion and voting if there was a conflict of interest OR the APPEARANCE of a conflict of interest. I distinctly remember leaving the room, and watching other board members leave the room when discussions involved employment, financial interests, leadership positions in nonprofits, and other factors involving the board member or a close member of their family. This practice is less codified than it was in 2006, and perhaps should be revisited when the new board member(s) take(s) office.
In tapping members of the community, there are few board members who have zero conflicts of interest. I have stepped out of participation when the discussion involved agreements with my employer, or decisions that would possibly affect the value of property owned by my husband. Arlene has stepped out of discussions involving Promega, her employer. As a retired teacher with related MMSD benefits, Marj has stepped out of negotiations and bargaining. Ed has, in the past, stepped out of decisions involving the Goodman Center where his wife is a board member. More than one of us has stepped out of disciplinary decisions that have affected the children of colleagues or friends of the family.
I believe that this high standard of conduct has been good practice for the district. People openly acknowledge that they oughtn’t discuss or vote on a matter because they may not be entirely neutral or lacking in interests other than the best interest of the district. Which is what board members are elected to consider first and foremost.
Nichelle Nichols has acknowledged the issues throughout her campaign and has indicated that she would step out where discussions and decisions overlap with her ULGM responsibilities. Mary Burke, if elected, will need to do her own soul searching about whether it is appropriate to vote on matters related to AVID, Boys and Girls Club, Dane County United Way, and perhaps other organizations where she plays a significant philanthropy and/or leadership role. If re-elected, I expect that Arlene will continue to take the high road as she has done in the past. The candidate who appears to carry the least conflict of interest baggage is Michael Flores, and I would expect that other board members and district counsel would play a role in helping him to decide how to handle conflicts if they arise.
What concerns me at this time is a subtle shift that has de-emphasized the higher standard to which board members once held themselves. The GAB response to DeFour appears to narrowly focus on whether there is an employment relationship between a board member and an organization that may benefit from a board vote, ignoring other types of relationships that would make impartiality challenging to exercise or demonstrate.
In addition, the post-election orientations for board members that were formerly in place have fallen by the wayside in recent years. As a result, people elected in recent years did not receive the printed copies of board policies and discussion of how they worked – including conflicts of interest – that helped to train and inform myself and other longer-serving board members.
In addition, Board Policy 1540 – School Board Ethics that addresses ethics was rewritten in recent years. That rewrite added a good deal of language about board behavior, but the relevant language on conflicts of interest is relegated to the MMSD “Code of Conduct” Board Policy 9000A, in which the following sections are overshadowed by concern about decisions made to enter into contracts or purchase services:

3 No employee or member of the Board of Education shall participate in or attempt to influence any District decision-making process in which s/he has a substantial personal or financial interest.
4 No employee or member of the Board of Education may use her/his employment or position with the District in a way that produces or assists in the production of a substantial benefit for the employee.
“Substantial personal interest” or “substantial benefit” to the employee or member of the Board of Education includes, but is not limited to, such interest or benefit that an immediate family member has, as well as an interest in an organization with which the employee or member of the Board of Education is associated.

It is my hope that as the newly configured board takes shape in a few weeks, it will use the orientation and settling period to review and reflecting on the above sections of board policy and procedure. My personal perspective is that such an effort would be time well spent, if only to collectively remember and affirm the fundamental and primary responsibility of elected board members to serving the best interests of the district and its students. There is no question that individual board members ‘get it,’ but there also is something very powerful about making a group commitment to these values at the beginning of the annual school policy cycle.

Seattle’s Teacher Union Opposes Teach for America

Seattle Education Association:

The Seattle Education Association Stands For A Stronger System of Universal, High-Quality Public Education in Seattle Public Schools!
Bringing Teach For America (TFA) to Seattle Does Not Make Public Education Stronger!
Commit to at least two of the following action items:

Use the following points to craft your own letter to school board members. Click here to get contact information.
Sign up to speak at the school board meeting on November 17, 2010. Information on what to do Monday, November 15 at 8:00 AM to get on the agenda is here.
Attend the school board meeting with signs expressing your opinion about the TFA agreement that will be voted upon. To read the introduction and the agreement, click here.

Read up on Teach For America, inform yourself!

Madison Prep supporters revamping proposal to overcome district objections; Seniority Changes

Matthew DeFour:

And even though teachers would be unionized, they would have different rules from those at other schools to bring costs down, Caire said.
Caire’s original proposal for Madison Prep called for a “non-instrumentality” charter school, meaning it would employ its own staff and be free of day-to-day district oversight. In October, Caire and Matthews announced an agreement by which Madison Prep would use union staff, opening the door for Madison Prep to submit an “instrumentality” charter school proposal to the district.
But a district analysis based on language in the union contract found the cost would be higher than originally projected. Cost-saving changes to the contract, which expires in June 2013, couldn’t be made without nullifying it under the state’s new collective bargaining law.
In November, Madison Prep supporters changed their proposal to a non-instrumentality charter school. District officials opposed that option, saying it would have insufficient oversight and conflict with the union contract, which requires the district to hire union employees.
The latest iteration of Madison Prep would be an instrumentality charter school. But because it would open in fall 2013, the current union contract wouldn’t apply, meaning separate rules could be written for the school.
Matthews, however, said MTI opposes the types of changes Madison Prep would seek, such as eliminating a provision that grants senior teachers priority for new job openings in the district.
“Those are rights people have,” Matthews said. “It gets us right back to why there was so much reaction to what Gov. Walker did last year.”

Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.

Madison School District agrees to release teachers’ sick notes

Steve Verburg:

The Madison School District has agreed to terms for releasing more than 1,000 sick notes submitted by teachers who missed work in February during mass protests over collective bargaining.
The district will remove the teachers’ names and other identifying information from the notes, under an agreement reached Monday with the Wisconsin State Journal, which requested the records under the state’s Open Records Law.
“It’s essentially what we asked for in May,” State Journal Editor John Smalley said Tuesday. “It was never our intention to publish any names or individual situations, but to look at the collective situation of all of these sick notes and how the district as an institution handled it.”
School Board President James Howard said the agreement protects teachers while complying with the newspaper’s needs and a Nov. 21 court ruling ordering the district to turn over the notes. The newspaper sued the district for the records after the district denied requests for them.

Jack Craver:

Many friends of mine are upset with the legal battle the Wisconsin State Journal waged to obtain the 1,000 sick notes Madison teachers used to get off work during the union protests in February. My own radio host and boss, Kurt Baron, referred to the paper as the “Wisconsin State Urinal” in describing his decision to no longer have the paper as his home page online. Some called into the show and promised to cancel their subscriptions.
Teachers should have a right to individual privacy over their medical records. We shouldn’t know whether John Q. cited herpes or hemorrhoids on his doctor’s note.
I am less sympathetic, however, to the teachers’ right to collective privacy. As long as their names are redacted, the public has the right to know if 273 teachers cited malaria and 345 claimed to suffer from ebola.
Unfortunately the recent ruling will violate individual privacy by allowing the State Journal to see the names of the teachers on the sick notes.

Detroit Moves Against Unions: Mayor and Schools Chief Leverage State Law to Force Change, Close Budget Gaps

Matthew Dolan:

A new state law has emboldened the Detroit mayor and schools chief to take a more aggressive stance toward public unions as the city leaders try to mop up hundreds of millions of dollars in red ink.
Robert Bobb, the head of the Detroit Public Schools, late last week sent layoff notices to the district’s 5,466 salaried employees, including all of its teachers, a preliminary step in seeking broad work-force cuts to deal with lower enrollment.
Earlier last week, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing presented a $3.1 billion annual budget to City Council in which he proposed higher casino taxes and substantial cuts in city workers’ health care and pensions to close an estimated $200 million budget gap.
Mr. Bobb, already an emergency financial manager for the struggling and shrinking public school system, is getting further authority under a measure signed into law March 17 that broadens state powers to intervene in the finances and governance of struggling municipalities and school districts. This could enable Mr. Bobb to void union contracts, sideline elected school-board members, close schools and authorize charter schools.
……
Mr. Bobb, appointed in 2009 by Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm and retained by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, pledged last week to use those powers to deal decisively with the district’s $327 million shortfall and its educational deficiencies. Mr. Bobb raised the possibility of making unilateral changes to the collective-bargaining agreements signed with teachers less than two years ago.
He is also expected to target seniority rights that protect longtime teachers from layoffs and give them the ability to reject certain school placements.
The Detroit Federation of Teachers will likely fight him on these issues. The union couldn’t be reached for comment.

Charter Schools & Unions

Rebecca Vevea:

There were no charter school unions in 2008, when the Chicago Teachers Union formed its Charter Outreach Committee to knock on doors and help charter teachers organize.
Nationally, 604 charter schools, roughly 12 percent, have collective-bargaining agreements. But 388 of those schools are in states where the law dictates that charters be included in existing collective-bargaining agreements with local districts, according to data collected by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Illinois law does not require charter schools to be part of local collective-bargaining units.

Teachers’ union sues MIddleton-Cross Plains school district

Gena Kittner:

The union representing teachers in the Middleton-Cross Plains School District sued the district Monday over their collective bargaining negotiations.
According to the complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court, the union said the district “bargained in bad faith” and proposed non-negotiable contract changes including removal of just cause for discipline and discharge, total district discretion of work hours, elimination of seniority protections, elimination of fair share union dues, modifications/freezes on salary schedules and elimination of compensatory time off.
The district also proposed, according to the complaint, that the School Board be the final step in the grievance procedure as opposed to having a third-party arbitrator as the current agreement states.

A Simple Approach to Ending the State Budget Standoff

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

Here’s an idea for resolving the state’s budget repair bill crisis. Governor Walker’s budget repair bill is designed to eviscerate public employee unions. But with a few changes it could actually lead to an innovative and productive way of addressing the legitimate concerns with the collective bargaining process, while preserving the most important rights of teachers and other public employees.
Background: A Tale of Two Unions
First, some background that highlights the two sides of the issue for me as a member of the Madison School Board. Early on Friday morning, February 25, our board approved a contract extension with our AFSCME bargaining units, which include our custodians and food service workers. The agreement equips the school district with the flexibility to require the AFSCME workers to make the contributions toward their retirement accounts and any additional contributions toward their health care costs that are required by the budget repair bill, and also does not provide for any raises. But the agreement does preserve the other collective bargaining terms that we have arrived at over the years and that have generally worked well for us.
AFSCME has stated that its opposition to the Governor’s bill is not about the money, and our AFSCME bargaining units have walked that talk.
Our recent dealings with MTI, the union representing our teachers and some other bargaining units, have been less satisfying. Because of teacher walk outs, we have to make up the equivalent of four days of school. An obvious way to get started on this task would be to declare Friday, February 25, which has been scheduled as a no-instruction day so that teachers can attend the Southern Wisconsin Educational Inservice Organization (SWEIO) convention, as a regular school day.

Through a variety of circumstances, I’ve had an opportunity to recently visit with several Dane County (and Madison) businesses with significant blue collar manufacturing/distribution employment. In all cases, these firms face global price/cost challenges, things that affect their compensation & benefits. Likely reductions in redistributed State of Wisconsin tax dollars could lead to significantly higher property taxes during challenging economic times, if that’s the route our local school boards take.

Madison School District preparing hundreds of teacher layoff notices

Matthew DeFour & Gena Kittner:

The Madison School District and others across the state are scrambling to issue preliminary layoff notices to teachers by Monday due to confusion over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill and the delay of the state budget.
Madison may issue hundreds of preliminary layoff notices to teachers Monday if an agreement with its union can’t be reached to extend a state deadline, school officials said Thursday.
The School Board plans to meet at 7 a.m. Friday in closed session to discuss the matter.
The Wisconsin Association of School Boards this week urged local school officials to decide on staff cuts by Monday or risk having potential layoffs challenged later in court.
“It’s hugely important and hugely upsetting to everyone,” said Craig Bender, superintendent of the Sauk Prairie School District, which will issue preliminary notices to 63 of its roughly 220 teachers. “It has a huge effect on how schools can function and how well we can continue to educate all kids.”
Bender said the preliminary notices reflected “a guess” about the number of teachers who could lose their jobs because the state budget has not been released.

The first tremors of what could be coming when Gov. Scott Walker releases his 2011-’13 budget proposal next week are rippling through Wisconsin school districts, where officials are preparing for the worst possibilities and girding for fiscal fallouts.
“I’m completely nervous,” Cudahy School District Superintendent Jim Heiden said. “Walking into buildings and seeing teachers break into tears when they see you – I mean, that’s the level of anxiety that’s out there.”
For the past two weeks, protests in Madison have been the focus of a nation, as angry public-sector workers have descended on the Capitol to try to stop Walker’s proposal to roll back most of their collective bargaining rights, leaving them with the ability to negotiate only limited wage increases.
Next week, the demonstrations could move to many of the state’s 425 school districts, the first local entities that will have to hash out budgets for a fiscal year that starts July 1.

Susan Troller:

Gov. Scott Walker’s secrecy and rhetoric regarding his budget plans are fueling rumors and anxiety as well as a flurry of preliminary teacher layoff notices in school districts around the state.
In Dane County, the Belleville school board voted to send layoff notices to 19 staff members at a meeting on Monday. Both the Madison and Middleton Boards of Education will meet Friday to determine their options and if they will also need to send out layoff notices, given the dire predictions of the governor’s budget which will be announced March 1.
In Madison, hundreds of teachers could receive layoff notices, district officials confirmed. Superintendent Daniel Nerad called it an option that would provide “maximum flexibility under the worst case scenario” in an e-mail sent to board members Thursday evening.
Most districts are bracing, and planning, for that worst case scenario.

Fixing Teacher Tenure Without a Pass-Fail Grade

Andrew Rotherham

Education eyes were on Washington this week to see what President Obama would say about schools in his State of the Union address. But just as in 2010, if you really want to follow the action on education reform, it’s better to look toward the states. All the new governors (29), education chiefs (18 new ones elected or appointed since November) and legislators (nearly 1,600) mean things are more fluid in the states, where teacher tenure is becoming a major flash point. Florida and New Jersey are considering pretty much ending tenure altogether. And while those states may be ground zero for tenure battles, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania are also considering significant changes.
Quick primer: When people refer to tenure for public-school teachers, what they’re really talking about is a set of rules and regulations outlining due process for teachers accused of misconduct or poor performance. The elaborate rules often make it nearly impossible to fire a teacher. Joel Klein, who recently stepped down as New York City schools chancellor, has pointed out that death-penalty cases can be resolved faster than teacher-misconduct cases. In some places, the due-process rules are part of collective-bargaining agreements, and in others they’re state law. In either case, there is a consensus among education reformers and some teachers’-union leaders that the rules need to be changed and the process streamlined. The contentious debate tends to be about how to modify what constitutes due process — as negotiators did in a landmark teachers’ contract in the District of Columbia in 2009 — rather than get rid of it altogether.

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