All 1,926 public school teachers in Providence fired

http://www.projo.com/news/content/PROVIDENCE_SCHOOL_MEETINGS_02-25-11_MCMMBSG_v26.1bd455c.html

by ffumarola • 15 years ago

54 92 15 years ago

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

Just wanted to point this out for those of you who haven't seen this in the news. To combat a $40 million budget deficit, all of the teachers were fired (not laid off).

Just curious what other peoples thoughts are. More specifically, what long-lasting implications do you think this kind of policy is going to have on the USA's ability to keep up with the rest of the world? I think I'm speaking more to the attitude that surrounds education and not necessarily this specific instance.

ubercore• 15 years ago

They were given notices of _intent_ to fire. Most of those orders will be rescinded before the school year is over. The law requires that teachers be notified by March 1st of any possible change in employment by the end of the year. The city couldn't predict which schools will be closed or affected, to prevent opening the city to lawsuits, they sent notices to all teachers as a precaution.

Also, the city's deficit over the next two years is closer to $180 million, due to falling revenue.

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

They were able to afford tax cuts for people who make over $10 million/year (I'm recalling this from memory from this past summer...).

And IMO there are plenty of programs that should be cut before education.

yummyfajitas7• 15 years ago

It's important to note the reason they were fired. As teacher Richard Larkin said, "You [the mayor] want to pick and choose teachers." If they were laid off, the district would be obligated to rehire them in order of seniority.

According to the article, "Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired".

So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers, and getting rid of low quality teachers with seniority. Overall, this will probably be very helpful in allowing the US to maintain our lead over (most of) the world.

kenjackson12• 15 years ago

So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers, and getting rid of low quality teachers with seniority.

Probably not. Ask them how they'll determine who the best teachers are? They have no metric today, at all. They'll likely simply use inverse seniority. Hire back the cheapest.

This is akin to a company firing people the day before their options vest, just because it saves a lot of money. Maybe good business practice in the short-term, bad in the long-term, as even good teachers will realize that they'll likely be fired if they climb up the salary scale.

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

But rather than creating a true evaluation system that would be able to create better teachers and identify the strong teachers, they are just doing a blanket firing.

I wonder what they are going to use to rank the fired teachers. Personal preference? Who is cheaper? Less senior employees who don't have as good of pensions?

If they thought this process through and decided to create an evaluation system, I think a lot of people would understand. Just firing everyone to cherry pick who you want based on some criteria that isn't formalized seems... too politicized.

MaysonL• 15 years ago

So this is basically about cherrypicking the best teachers

One would hope so, and that it will not end up being cherrypicking the ones who have most fervently sucked up to the superintendant and board, and firing the most fervent union members.

I wonder, are they going to perform the same triage on the principals and other administrative staff?

asolove• 15 years ago

If I understand the article correctly, this was a difficult but perhaps correct decision. But I don't know the details, so here is what I understood:

1. The school board had to close a budget deficit by getting rid of staff, but they did not have time to get exact numbers. 2. Under the terms of the union contract, they had a deadline to inform teachers if their jobs were in trouble. So they have sent everyone official notices in preparation for only having to eliminate some of them. 3. If they sent layoff notices to everyone, when they found out how many slots they had left, they would have to take teachers back by seniority rather than merit. 4. So they sent termination notices so they could hire back whoever they wanted.

Now, as I said, I don't know the backstory. This may be an attempt by a controlling superintendent to get rid of a faction that disagrees with him.

But from the facts in the story, it looks more like a union that negotiated a contract more in the interest of the senior teachers than in the interest of the school district or the students. And that because of the limitations in the contract, the board had little choice if they wanted to retain their best teachers.

damoncali4• 15 years ago

If states had as much money as they thought they had, the teachers would be sitting fat and pretty.

It says more about the idiotic financial management of local government than it does about teachers. (Watch out California - you guys are really fucked). So compared to the rest of the world, I think the US is fine - and by fine I mean in a financial cluster.

Umalu• 15 years ago

I suspect this was done to defeat a union contract that made it difficult to shrink the workforce. The logic behind collective bargaining is "if you don't like it, you have to fire all of us." That's usually a good tactic, as most employers arent willing to do that, but sometimes the bluff gets called. In terms of how this impacts education, it depends on whether this is a trend and how you feel about unionized teachers.

pluies2• 15 years ago

> Just wanted to point this out for those of you who haven't seen this in the news.

It's also interesting for those of us who live in said rest of the world. Thanks!

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

No problem!

wyclif2• 15 years ago

what long-lasting implications do you think this kind of policy is going to have on the USA's ability to keep up with the rest of the world?

Excellent implications. The dregs of the teacher pool (and in American public schools, the worst teachers are pathetically, heinously bad) will be sifted out, and the best will be hired back. It will also allow a fresh start for the training of new teachers.

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

And the best teachers will start being more cautious, not crossing any "lines" and trying new things, not angering the superintendent by teaching hot issues, etc.

I do not believe one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. Fix the issue, don't put a bandaid on it.

extension2• 15 years ago

This is the key piece of information that explains how this is possible:

Superintendent Brady has said that the majority of teachers will be rehired

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

Sure, they are politicizing the process. They don't want to deal with union rules so they fired everyone. It also lets them skip out on benefits, I believe.

But, think to yourself, for all of the amazing teachers they fired, how many just had the wind let out of their sails? I wouldn't come back as enthusiastic about doing the right thing after getting fired like that.

extension2• 15 years ago

Oh sure, I'm not supporting or criticizing what they did. I was just initially confused as to what a school system was going to do without teachers.

jergason• 15 years ago

It appears that they did this in order to avoid having to rehire teachers based on seniority first:

Teachers begged the School Board to issue layoffs rather than fire them outright because, under the layoff provisions, teachers are recalled based on seniority. There is no guarantee that seniority would be used to bring back any of the fired teachers.

So it looks like there were lots of senior teachers the board wanted to eliminate, not necessarily all of the teachers.

TomOfTTB2• 15 years ago

As others have said this is a ploy to allow the school district to get rid of bad union teachers and I think that's a good thing. People need to start realize this isn't a union issue it's a PUBLIC union issue and the public unions have become a problem.

Public unions have not proven themselves in the same way as private unions have. Private unions were (and in some cases still are) a good tool to protect employees against corporate greed run a muck.

But as we've seen with our over spending governments the inclination of the government is to be overly generous with people like teachers and that's now being abused.

This isn't a liberal/conservative issue. FDR is still the most liberal president we've ever had and even he said public unions were "unthinkable and intolerable". The head of the AFL-CIO was against public unions in the 50s.

(Facts taken from the New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/47u53dq)

Here's the exact FDR quote...

"[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."

Isn't that exactly what's happening right now? Look at this quote from the article...

"This is a quasi-legal power grab,” said Richard Larkin, a teacher at Classical High School. “You want to pick and choose teachers. Well, we will not be bullied."

Isn't picking and choosing teachers exactly what has to be done in order to keep good teachers and get rid of bad ones? How out of control do you have to be when you don't acknowledge the fact that the school should be able to pick which teachers it thinks are best?

kenjackson12• 15 years ago

As others have said this is a ploy to allow the school district to get rid of bad union teachers and I think that's a good thing.

It's probably not. They probably have no idea who the bad teachers are. It's most likley an attempt to get rid of the most senior teachers, regardless of ability. And political -- an attempt to kill organizations that tend to be Democratic (this would be equivalent to trying to dismantle fundamentalist churches, as their Republican leaning).

Everyone looks to Finland as this great example of how education should be done, yet it looks nothing like what is being done here. And Finland is 100% teacher's unions. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-higgins/why-do-the-educ...

uvdiv• 15 years ago

And political -- an attempt to kill organizations that tend to be Democratic (this would be equivalent to trying to dismantle fundamentalist churches, as their Republican leaning).

I'm sure that would be an issue if fundamentalist churches were funded with public taxes and compulsory to attend.

lionhearted2• 15 years ago

> And political -- an attempt to kill organizations that tend to be Democratic (this would be equivalent to trying to dismantle fundamentalist churches, as their Republican leaning).

Whoa, this just sunk in with me. I guess it's commonly accepted that most teacher's unions lean Democrat, but I never considered that the people educating children are fundamentally partisan. That's... kind of scary.

Hell, you equate with them as the equivalent of the most fanatic members of the right. That really can't be good that the kids are being educated by fanatic partisans, if your analysis here is correct.

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

"is to be overly generous with people like teachers"

That seems to be the talking point nowadays. But, having a lot of family and friends that are teachers, just isn't true from what I know. I'm not sure where you think the abuse is coming in (benefits, pay?)

Most teachers salaries max out quite low compared to what could be made in private industry. And even their benefits aren't that much better than private industry, if at all. I have paid less for health benefits for the past 4 years in various jobs (for companies both small and large) and I always had better benefits than my sister, aunt, g/f, etc.

Schools should absolutely be able to pick teachers that are both good and bad. But a blanket firing shows a complete lack of respect and lack of commitment to fixing a problem.

jpiasetz• 15 years ago

Do the PV calculation of their pension. Most of them are doing better then you think. Rhode Island's pension were guaranteed 3%. http://www.projo.com/news/content/pension_cuts_01-16-09_TOCV...

sixtofour2• 15 years ago

"But a blanket firing shows a complete lack of respect and lack of commitment to fixing a problem."

And it shows operating on ignorance. "You're fired. No, I don't know if you're a good or bad teacher. But you're fired."

protomyth• 15 years ago

Technically, if you compare the same job (teaching) public vs private schools, counting benefits, public teachers make around 25% - 50% more. The whole "compared to private sector" needs to compare the same job.

ryanto• 15 years ago

I absolutely understand the need to choose good teachers over bad teachers. However, how much will the teachers' salary play into the selection process? I would imagine a teacher with 20 years experience gets paid quite more than a teacher with five years experience. Serious question, does salary go into consideration when rehiring or is it solely based on teaching skill?

damoncali4• 15 years ago

Unfortunatly, teachers are not exempt from the basics of economics. If salary isn't considered, they're doing it wrong. The job of the government is to maximize the educational output with the resources they have available. If that great (or crappy, for that matter) teacher costs too much, and the money is better spent elsewhere, so be it.

techsupporter• 15 years ago

"Public unions have not proven themselves in the same way as private unions have. Private unions were (and in some cases still are) a good tool to protect employees against corporate greed run a muck."

Though the article deals with teachers, your quote makes me wonder: If public sector unions are a bad deal, why are police and fire department employee unions exempt from being targeted? Where I live (Texas), these employees have both civil service rules and a union (so they are arguably double-protected) while other public employees--except teachers--have neither and are at-will employed. I have seen no hint that police and fire should have their union representation or civil service requirements eliminated; the exact opposite is stated in places like Wisconsin and Ohio.

kenjackson12• 15 years ago

If public sector unions are a bad deal, why are police and fire department employee unions exempt from being targeted?

Actually police and firefighters are also being targeted. But there's just a lot fewer of them. Remember that there are more teachers in the US than any other profession. For example, see: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/02/police_and_f...

This really isn't about good or bad teachers. The whole myth of the giant population of bad US teachers exists to push the agenda to break up unions.

The reason? Unions weaken the right and strengthen the left. The right has been trying to kill unions for a long time, but it hasn't been until the rise of minority district charter schools where they've been able to make a strong push that bad overpaid teachers are the problem.

The one question I've been asking everyone in my district is to point out the bad teachers. No one will tell me who they are, or how it is decided. I asked do the bad have warning, will they be given time to shapen up and feedback on their issues? Apparently no. These sorts of things make me a tad suspicious.

icegreentea• 15 years ago

One reason is that many places classify firefighters and police forces as critical services, and therefore cannot go on 'real' strikes. At most they can enact work to rules, and stop working overtimes. This takes away a lot of the bite of unions.

mirkules2• 15 years ago

Absolutely agree. I was appalled when I saw the article about not being able to fire teachers and instead putting them into "rubber rooms":

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/disgraced-teacher-enjoys-wel...

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/05/04/200...

And then you have really good teachers who wanted to teach for free but wasn't allowed to (they finally, wisely relented) because of some dumb technicality:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/29/local/la-me-lopez29-...

(p.s. yes, he was my middle school teacher, and he is an AWESOME teacher)

The future of the education system is grim, and only by drastic measures can a difference be made.

A question: I don't quite understand why the teachers seem to think that a layoff is better than a firing? Does it affect their tenure/experience, or something like that?

ahoyhere• 15 years ago

Your examples don't make sense because they are not set in Providence. There's no indication that "rubber rooms" are a problem in Providence, either.

The rest (and OP) is just supposition as to motives which remain unknown.

fleitz• 15 years ago

I agree with you on the points that we should be able to select the best teachers for our schools, however, I think most of that is rhetoric designed to distract from the fact that it's a budgetary issue. Selecting the best teachers and best schools requires school choice, not bureaucrats deciding for us who is best and who is not. School choice, vouchers and real reforms are no where near this debate. The debate is framed in this language to obtain popular support.

It's a budgetary issue, remove the ethos and pathos and you'll find at the core of the issue a budgetary one. The council needs to eliminate $40 million dollars, one way to do this is to ensure all your teachers have no seniority and thus are all at the bottom of the pay scale. Layoffs will just remove the lowest paid employees so they all must be fired and then rehired to ensure that their previous seniority isn't factored into the calculations. A $40 million dollar deficit spread across 1926 teachers is $20,000 per teacher per year, you're not going to negotiate that kind of drop. Anyone want to bet that the avg. teacher salary minus the base teacher salary in Providence is about $20,000?

However, a cold numbers based story like that wouldn't play well to the public so you need something else like selecting the 'best' teachers, and you can be sure that if the board was given the option that the 'best' would become the 'cheapest', especially in an uncompetitive market such as public schooling (aka. state sponsored daycare).

I'm a big fan of real school choice, but this just seems like a way for the school district to lawyer their way out of an agreement, and obtain popular support by couching the argument in terms that are not on the table. If it's about letting the best teachers rise to the top, the school board should fire all the teachers, and provide vouchers for parents to use in obtaining their children's education. This is about firing a bunch of people and rehiring the same people at a lower price.

lionhearted2• 15 years ago

I found this interesting:

> Yes: Melissa Malone, Kathleen Crain, Niña Pande, Julian Dash

> No: Robert Wise, Brian Lalli, Philip Gould

There's a stereotype that men are more in favor of small government and women are more likely to be elementary school teachers than men. Yet, all 3 of the women on the board voted for the dismissal whereas 3 out of the 4 men voted against.

Doesn't necessarily mean anything, could be random noise, but that caught my eye at the end of the article.

simonsarris2• 15 years ago

This is how it worked at my private school in New Hampshire.

Every single teacher, regardless of how long they have been teaching there (some more than 30 years) were hired for a 1-year period and then re-hired (or not) for the next year. Every single one of them had to do the same process.

It seemed like a very good way to never have bad teachers for more than one year. In my 4 years at HS there were only two bad teachers, and the contracts of both were simply not renewed after their first year.

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

That seems interesting. Do you have any information on what they used to "rank" teachers or decide if they were good or not?

damoncali4• 15 years ago

Apparently, if they get laid off rather than fired, time served is the ranking system.

Seriously, though, I've seen schools where teachers are evaluated like college professors - by students. Seems to be at least a partial solution.

simonsarris2• 15 years ago

I am not certain on any of it, but I imagine it was a combination of the student input (we all got to rank them on various things and any complaints were noted) and also what the well-respected teachers who had been there a long time thought of them.

Almost all of the admin were teachers who retired from teaching, so I imagine they took input from the fellow teachers (who were still teaching) very seriously.

Additionally, it was seen as pretty important that the teachers engage the students in non-classroom ways. For instance a new teacher started a formal chess club at the high school and got us to play against other schools, and I would imagine that things like that are considered a huge plus.

It probably also helped that the school was small (880 students) so it wasn't hard to notice quality and for the admin to know every teacher on a personal level.

mcantor• 15 years ago

Isn't this basically a tenure thing? AFAIK public unions make firing a First-In-Last-Out operation, which means the senior teacher you hired 10 years ago is there to stay until every single other teacher that came after is gone.

In my completely non-expert opinion, tenure seems to be a multiplier. From a students' standpoint: A good teacher with tenure is a godsend, because they feel comfortable challenging the system to make sure their job (educating the kids) gets done. Conversely, a bad teacher with tenure is a cataclysm, because they don't really want to be there, the kids don't really want them to be there, and the school administration doesn't really want them to be there, but by God, they're staying, because it's easier to collect a paycheck and hate your job than change your situation. To use a metaphor from Kevin Smith's Clerks, tenured crappy teachers are perennially shitting their pants instead of lifting the lid on the toilet seat.

sigstoat2• 15 years ago

perhaps, since you're suggesting it's useful, you can tell me what subjects taught in a K-12 education necessitate the teachers challenging the system?

i'd consider perhaps high school literature and history teachers, but beyond that?

waterside81• 15 years ago

Math? Instead of teaching kids to memorize formulas and just apply to them to contrived examples, teach kids how match actually works in the real world and its applications. Great TED talk on this very matter:

http://blog.ted.com/2010/05/13/math_class_need/

ffumarola18• 15 years ago

- Civics/Politics - Science (especially in districts that don't want to teach students about the theory of evolution) - "Technology" (I had a computer teacher in HS who said F it and let us play around with hacking our test routers)

So we have math, literature, social studies, and science.

moblivu• 15 years ago

This should be the canvas of the future education system: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_crea...

angus772• 15 years ago

Could someone please explain how teachers' unions protecting "bad teachers" from being fired is in the best interests of the teachers unions?

They get accused of that a lot, but I can't see how that would work for them. If my coworkers were making me look bad, I sure wouldn't want to associate myself with them. It seems to me it would weaken the credibility of the union and thus take away the power the union has to back me up.

All 1,926 public school teachers in Providence fired

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