Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Monday, January 2, 2006
Teachers unions and rules, rules, rules
Imagine if you had to consult a two-inch thick manual and get all your co-workers to agree before you could make any major decision in your job.
That’s exactly what’s happening at one Arizona high school, and the principal wants things to change.
At Phoenix Union High School (perfect name for the place, by the way), the principal says teachers are so powerful he can’t do his job effectively. But teachers say the rules in the 20-year-old employee handbook simply protect them from unreasonable demands and were won fair and square at the bargaining table.
Some of the rules are ridiculously specific. Teachers refused to attend a 3 p.m. meeting because the handbook says all meetings must be held at 2 p.m. Others are quite common. The rules allow any teacher to choose an open assignment based on seniority. But the process is so cumbersome, the principal says he misses out on the chance to hire good candidates in scarce specialties like science and math.
This is a touchy subject in education. Teachers’ unions sometimes are quite powerful and in general organized teachers in many parts of the country have gained concessions through the years with smart, tough bargaining.
And in some ways, school boards have themselves to blame. Any negotiation is a two-way street and the boards who were sitting across the table had to agree to everything the teachers won. In my experience covering education, I’ve seen a lot of weak-willed school board cave in to a lot of teacher demands. Often times, the school boards are just not as skilled at negotiating tactics and politics. That’s not the union’s fault.
But put yourself in the shoes of a principal like this one in Arizona, who can’t even call a 3 p.m. meeting or hire a promising science teacher that he knows he’ll need next year. It’s clear that some of the rules are no longer workable and may actually be harming the school’s ability to provide good quality instruction.
So what can be done? Here’s my suggestion. School board should to back to the negotiating table and bargain hard. Go after the most cumbersome rules and get rid of them. Give the teachers back something else they want that hurts less. If necessary, play politics. Take your case to the community. Read the craziest rules out loud. In short, grow a backbone.
Too often school board negotiate all their power away and then want to cry that the unions have been unfair. Then they ask for the rules to be changed, begging legislatures to give them new powers or to create loopholes in the law.
In some cases, legislative intervention can help nudge the process along. Look at Dayton, who forged a good working partnership with its unions to address the problem of reconstituted schools. That probably never would have happened if the federal No Child Left Behind law hadn’t forced the issue by giving the school board the power to reassign everyone at a low performing school.
But in that case, Dayton did the smart thing. They didn’t beat the union over the head with the new law. They instead used it as leverage to get the conversation going about how to reconstitute a school and ended up cutting a deal that requires both administration and union input on the new assignments.
Ultimately, that’s the way I think these problems will be solved, when both sides can get together across a table and work them out. But some argue that it can’t be done that way. What do you think is the best way to deal with these problems?
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