The Denver teachers union walked away from a golden opportunity to become full- fledged partners in an ambitious school reform project at Bruce Randolph School.
What a shame.
Fortunately, for the students, school leaders have vowed to press forward with their plans for autonomy.
The school wanted to waive much of the negotiated teachers’ contract to gain such revolutionary powers as setting its own timeline to hire teachers, and paying teachers to work extra. The Denver Classroom Teachers Association declined to pass the waiver request in its entirety.
Granted, the union did come further than we thought it ever would by agreeing to let Bruce Randolph set its teachers’ schedules, and pay them extra for additional work. Kim Ursetta, DCTA’s president, called these wage and hour issues “sacred cows” for the union.
But the union, frankly, had been backed into a corner on this issue. Decline a request from a successful inner-city school that has gotten national attention and you look like obstructionists. Agree, and run the risk that other Denver schools will want the same thing and your organization ebbs into irrelevancy.
So the union tried to come out somewhere in the middle, granting waivers but not buying off entirely — a move that ends up smelling of desperation.
DCTA representatives say they gave the school, which has made great strides since being labeled one of the worst in the state, really everything it wanted.
Except that they didn’t. They offered to give the school some “outs” from the contract, which was a big step. But it also layered some additional conditions on Bruce Randolph.
The whole idea here is to get out from under burdensome rules and conditions, not add more.
For example, the union says it will only agree to the piecemeal waiver so long as achievement keeps improving at the school. Test scores dip and the union takes back the waivers. The union wants quarterly reports on progress.
The key item the union refused to approve is one thing principal Kristin Waters very much wanted: a pared down framework of contract rules that allows the school the flexibility to change without having to jump through multiple hoops.
In essence, she wanted everything she considers irrelevant in the contract to be waived. Her mindset was to create an agreement that included only the elements needed to guide the operation of the school.
Union board members were concerned, Ursetta told us, by a provision that would cut the organization out of the school improvement process, making that the purview of the school and the district administration.
Furthermore, the union won’t consider any more autonomy bids from other schools until it has a chance to come up with a new broader framework for a waiver process with the district.
The DCTA is emerging from this grueling process looking like an organization that is first and foremost concerned about maintaining its power and its relevancy.
The union could gain an immense amount of support, publicly and internally, if it were at the forefront of the educational change that’s necessary to improve education in DPS. As a union leader at Bruce Randolph told us, education reform is coming. Get on the bus, or get run over by it. The union, he said, should be driving the bus.
Waters vowed the school would pursue its plans to govern by the agreement approved by 67 percent of its instructional staff and the DPS board.
It wouldn’t take much of a leap in logic to expect other principals might follow suit, getting permission from the DPS board and moving forward regardless of what the union says.
We would like to see all parties — the union, the district and the schools — pulling together to make education work.
Powerbrokering should never be allowed to deprive our children of the education they need and deserve.
