Boston Teachers Union e-Bulletin #13 (2009-10),  11/18/09

Good morning,

           Many events took place yesterday. We will go over them.

The State Senate passed its version of the Ed Reform Bill by a 28-11 margin. According to the State House News Service, the senate sped through nearly 100 amendments before adopting the bill: "Speeding through nearly 100 amendments to the bill Tuesday, the Senate rejected dozens of amendments and adopted redrafted versions of many of the proposed changes to the bill.  The redrafted policies, tacked onto a bill that senators said was the most significant education reform bill since 1993, were not available during debate.  It will take some time for the House and for legislative clerks to sort through the many changes made to the bill." (State House News Service, 11/17/09.)

As of now, we do not have a final version of the bill. The MTA's website has a very preliminary version, and this afternoon at the BTU membership meeting, we will hand out a document from the AFT-Mass, which is also a preliminary document. As more information becomes available, we will forward it to the membership.

From here, the bill goes to the House, which will probably not take it up prior to its recess, which begins tomorrow. Lobbyists from the AFT-Mass will spend today on Beacon Hill monitoring developments. This is a developing story, and any assessment of the bill today is premature until we see a full copy of the bill.

Yesterday, the superintendent released her proposal to turn around some district schools that have been labeled as 'underperforming.' Identified schools were supposed to have conducted meetings with staff last night. Both the Globe and the Herald reported this development. The BTU released a statement last night, some of which appeared in the Globe. The BTU statement follows:

            "We welcome the responsibility of being full partners in the turnaround of so-called 'underperforming' schools. (I say 'so-called' because it is unclear whether student test data alone can determine whether a school is or is not underperforming, and student test data was the sole criterion for establishing this category.) A partnership is a sharing of ideas and a sharing of duty. That entails working with us and collaborating with teachers and staff-the educators who know our schools and students best. A joint approach, a healthy collaboration, can and will succeed where an imposed solution cannot."

Lastly, the Herald wrote a story this AM regarding merit pay for a select group of Advanced Placement teachers at O'Bryant. It is an old story and we have reported on this before. In essence, Exxon-Mobil has offered an amount of money for certain staff at O'Bryant High School. Most of the money has been earmarked for good, positive things: professional development for AP teachers, summer school, special tutoring, and the like-all designed to increase performance on the AP exam. We support all of the above, and we have agreed with all of the above from the beginning. But, Exxon-Mobil has set aside an additional pot of money for teachers, depending on how well their students perform on the exam. This money, at $100 per teacher per exam score of 'three' or higher, we have rejected. In fact, we filed a grievance on the $100 'merit pay' over a year ago. Here's why.

On the one hand, Exxon-Mobil does not have the right to negotiate a separate pay scheme for our members . We don't work for them. On the other hand-the key issue-is that many teachers are responsible for the growth and success of students, and it is unfair to select a few (in the O'Bryant case,  six or seven members of the O'Bryant faculty) and reward them for student success that is the culmination of 13 years of schooling. Finally, we reject the notion that it takes an incentive to get teachers to work harder. We resent that implication.

The grievance over the merit pay was filed, and we have had, perhaps, 10 days of formal hearings and informal discussions and meetings over the last 15 months. We thought we reached an agreement with school department attorneys a few months ago. School Department attorneys Peter Berry and Virginia Tisei accepted the union's offer to settle the grievance on the $100. Eight of us were present in the room, and we had a verbal handshake to aggregate the $100 and split it among all teachers at O'Bryant. The teachers could decide, for example, to use the money for scholarships, supplies or professional development as the faculty saw fit. There was no equivocation or ambivalence from the school department attorneys. "We agree," they said. We left the room with an understanding that to split the money was the fairest way to work with this situation. Our members generally feel it would be less divisive and further, that it would send a loud and clear message that good education arises out of good teamwork. Exxon-Mobil did not agree, and this forced the school department to reconsider its acceptance. And therein lies the issue: Who knows better how to build a better school, those who work in the schools or those who make policy in the corporate offices a multi-national conglomerate? Long story short, the school department caved in to the money. Their instinct, their gut feeling, was similar to ours: Merit pay is a divisive issue, counterproductive to the growth of a healthy school environment. The department can say what it wants in today's Herald, but the truth is, they agreed with us until they bowed to pressure from Exxon-Mobil.

Sincerely,

Richard Stutman
BTU President

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