Negotiating for Change: Modifying Collective Bargaining Agreements for School Turnarounds

July 7, 2011

This set of papers from Mass Insight may start the most honest conversation about school turnarounds to date: In order to fix failing schools, it reminds us, collective-bargaining agreements must be fundamentally redesigned. To that end, the report package provides useful guidelines as to how states, districts, unions, and advocates can negotiate and draft CBAs that advance turnaround efforts. It also identifies contract elements that must be bargained to clear room for turnaround success. For example, instead of CBAs that reward seniority and allow a centralized, inefficient authority to make all school-based decisions, the authors push for contracts in which key decisions are made by school leaders and staff in exchange for accountability. To attain this revamped CBA model, the authors outline several approaches to negotiation (e.g., “living contracts” and third-party facilitation) as well as suggestions for specific contract modifications. The report even provides sample language for model contracts. One interesting proposal (seen today in places like New Haven, CT) allows individual schools to amend their district-wide CBAs, exempting them from certain bureaucratic roadblocks, and allowing them to create their own contracts, to which their teachers voluntarily commit (they remain members of the local union, however). There’s much important information in the five short papers for districts seeking to gain turnaround traction.

Rebecca Weinberg, Michael Contompasis, Dalia Hochman, and Meredith Liu, “Negotiating for Change: Modifying Collective Bargaining Agreements for School Turnaround,” (Boston, MA: Mass Insight Education, June 2011).

» Continued

Negotiating for Change: Modifying Collective Bargaining Agreements for School Turnarounds

Strained Schools Face Bleak Future: Districts Foresee Budget Cuts, Teacher Layoffs, and a Slowing of Education Reform Efforts

Chris Tessone / July 7, 2011

When it comes to school funding, this latest Center for Education Policy survey report shovels more bad news onto the already massive mound. A sample of 450 districts finds that about 70 percent faced funding cuts in 2010-11; of those, 85 percent cut jobs for teachers or other staff. When asked what next year holds, 60 percent of districts expecting decreased revenues are planning layoffs in response. The survey also delves specifically into district management of federal stimulus dollars—and emerges with some disheartening results. Districts mostly spent their ARRA money on protecting fringe benefits and administrative staff while firing teachers in non-core subjects and slashing investments in technology and instructional materials. Further, “reform initiatives” suffered: Two-thirds of those with decreased funding also reined them in (though the authors never define what they include in those initiatives). Unfortunately, the survey’s format raises more questions than it answers, giving no sense of the depth of cuts or the scale of new investments. And forget about questions regarding productivity enhancement. Nearly every district will be affected by the funding cliff next year, but, from this survey, it’s hard to tell how many districts have retooled and cut baseline spending and how many are just laying off teachers and waiting out this financial storm.