City Council teachers contract hearings this week - please participate!

I am passing on a message from Karina Wood, executive director of Better Providence, about several important public education-related meetings happening this week. Please attend if you can and help spread the word. Thanks!

FYI, also from Better Providence, you can download and read the full text of the proposed teachers' contract here (PDF download).

From Karina:

It is super-important that lots of parents from all across Providence come to the following Council hearings and meetings this week at City Hall and speak out on the teachers contract.


Issues to raise could include: 

• teacher hiring policy: is the Criterion-Based Hiring (interview) agreement in this contract null and void because all vacancies will be filled internally with the teachers who currently have no positions?
• no recess time allocated in school day
• abolition of site-based management
• no parent-teacher meetings required in school year
• school day lengthened by just 5 minutes this year and to just 15 mins in 3 years' time
• no improvement in restoring art and music to our schools 

MONDAY, 9/19, 5:30pm: The Education Subcommittee Hearing is at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 19, City Hall, 3rd floor, on TEACHER HIRING PRACTICES as codified in the new teachers contract. Public comment will be taken. Parents and all PVD residents are encouraged to attend, express your views and ask questions.

TUESDAY, 9/20, 5:00pm: Council Finance Committee meets, 3rd floor conference room, City Hall -- Council's Internal Auditor will present FISCAL AUDIT OF THE NEW TEACHERS CONTRACT.

WEDNESDAY, 9/21, 5:30pm: PUBLIC HEARING ON THE TEACHERS CONTRACT, City Council Chambers, 3rd Floor, City Hall. Parents and all PVD residents encouraged to give public comment.

If you can only come on one night, the most important one is the PUBLIC HEARING on the Teachers Contract on WEDNESDAY, 9/19, 5:30pm.


Please let me know if you are able to come and please forward this information to others.


Thanks!
Karina

Providence Teachers Union contract in full

On Tuesday, the members of the Providence Teachers Union voted with a robust majority in favor to ratify the contract discussed here and elsewhere previously. Here's the ProJo's report on the outcome.

BetterProvidence has posted the full text of the contract (PDF download) for your analysis, distraction, enjoyment. Not for me to judge. You have your fun and I'll have mine. Since this blog constitutes one of my main pastimes, infer what you will about mine.

What will the new PPSD-PTU teachers contract mean for teaching and learning?

Mayor Taveras' August 2 announcement mentioned in the previous post focuses mainly the tentative agreement between the Providence Teacher Union and the City on the teachers contract, on which PPSD teachers are voting today (click here for a PDF version of a letter from Providence Teachers Union president Steve Smith that contains the announcement of the vote).

Each side seems to have given big to get big in certain areas. The union agreed to criterion based hiring to replace hiring/classroom assignment controlled by seniority. The city agreed to nearly all fired teachers keeping their jobs. The city nets $53 million in savings as a result of the agreement, which in our current dire financial situation is, of course, the big win. As former school board president Kathy Crain argues in GoLocalProv, the contract doesn’t seem to contain significant improvement in the conditions it establishes for teaching and learning, so no big wins for students.

Since this is a follow up post to thoughts about the length of the school day, it’s worth noting that the contract itself doesn’t expand instructional time in any meaningful way, other than adding 5 minutes a year to the day over the course of three years. Not nothing, but not really something either.

Additional stipulations of the new tentative agreement that have been released are provided by the Mayor’s announcement and reported by the ProJo, Providence Business News, and other outlets.The contract itself has not yet been made available to the public.

Last but definitely not least, take a few minutes to review the list of reactions and questions about the new contract that Better Providence is compiling on Facebook. Very thoughtful. I want to know the answers and thank Better Providence for asking for more clarity.

PPSD Middle/High School Common Planning Time/Early Release: No More

Update to the previous post about Councilman Zurier’s upcoming hearing about PPSD’s practice of releasing middle and high school students early in order to accommodate the need for teachers’ common planning time: an announcement from Mayor Taveras’ office released Tuesday states, "...the district will immediately increase instructional time by ending the practice of dismissing students early every week to accommodate state-mandated common planning time."

That’s it? Well, okay then.

The City Council Education Subcommittee's August 23 5:30pm hearing, according to email that Councilman Zurier sent to constituents, is still going forward to "review other issues related to the re-opening of school this fall, including the assignment plans for children who were in schools closed this Spring, and the “match” process by which teachers from the closed schools were assigned new positions."

The Mayor’s August 2 announcement focused mainly on the recently negotiated contract with the Providence Teachers Union. More about that in the next post.

Providence City Council teachers contract hearings, 2/17 and 2/22

Karina Wood, Interim Executive Director of the nonpartisan citizens' initiative BetterProvidence, has passed on information about the hearings that the Providence City Council is holding this week to gather information about the contract between the Providence Teachers Union and the Providence Public Schools. Here's Karina's announcement:

The contract with the Providence Teachers Union has a major effect on the cost of education in Providence and on the policies and practices by which our children learn in the classroom. The contract need to be renewed by August, 2011.

This Thursday, February 17 at 4:30 p.m., at City Hall, the City Council’s Education Subcommittee of the Finance Committee is inviting the lead contract negotiators to present the goals they have for the upcoming negotiations. Superintendent Tom Brady, Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith, and Providence School Board President Kathy Crain have been invited to make presentations and take questions from the committee. 

The public is invited and welcomed to attend. Please come if you can.

Ed Fitzpatrick wrote about the upcoming teachers contract hearings in today's ProJo, with a focus on City Council member Sam Zurier, who initiated the hearings. The ProJo's Alisha Pina also reported this story last week.

This is a unique opportunity to learn more about the union and district's aims and expectations, which will have a tremendous impact both on the ways Providence spends money not only on salaries but much more, and on the ways teachers can spend their time as professionals working toward the best possible learning outcomes for our kids. It's also a chance, as time permits, for you to offer your perspective as a citizen about the ways resources can and should be used to create the best conditions for teaching and learning in our city's public schools.
 
There will be a second teachers contract hearing on Tuesday, February 22 at 7:00 p.m.

Learning Community Charter School reaches out to families

"Learning Community charter school takes its message to parents" ran in today's ProJo--it's an overview of the great-sounding community and family outreach work that the Central Falls charter Learning Community , which serves students in K-5 from Providence, Pawtucket, and Central Falls, is doing. Teachers and staff from the school are intentionally developing a wide range of ways to connect to family members, moving beyond events at the school to outreach in students' neighborhoods.

A few key points about the school's successful family outreach jump out:

1. The school sees family members as an essential asset for accomplishing its goals with students.

2. Cultural competence: school staff members understand families' backgrounds, constraints due to work and family responsibilities, language backgrounds, and possible trepidation toward school, and plan ways to connect with families that overcome those challenges

3. The school has focused profession development for community outreach, building the capacity of staff members to reach outside the school and connect with parents to give them a "toolbox" of options to use.

4. Clearly, the definition of the kind of work that belongs in a teacher and staff member's day isn't rigidly limited, but rather is established by agreement at the school site level. Teachers do what works for their school rather than adhering strictly to a contract imposed systemwide (not knocking unions there--unions and autonomy can and very much should coexist).

I'd love to hear more from any Learning Community educators, staffers, or family members who come across this. I hope that we can find ways for the public school systems of Providence, Pawtucket, and Central Falls (and elsewhere) to learn from and adapt your methods of community and family engagement. Congratulations on your success!

New Superintendent Meets with PTOs + Community Meetings

On Friday, 8/8/08, the ProJo ran a report of PPSD Superintedent Tom Brady's meeting with a group of parents from Roger Williams Middle School in one of series of "backyard chats" that he's having with PTOs around the city. Along with other parents from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School, I participated in one of these meetings in July. I heard at that time that Brady was meeting with family members from nine schools; the ProJo article on the Roger Williams meeting states that he has thus far met with five.

It's worth reading to get a sense of the issue that are foremost on the minds of parents of PPSD students; the issues may vary from school to school and neighborhood to neighborhood, but those reported in the ProJo are good representations of what's on parents' minds: lack of translation services for the huge number of Spanish-speaking families (and, it seems fair to extrapolate, families that speak other languages at home), school safety, communication with teachers, inappropriate discipline strategies, and a teachers union contract that gets in the way of the best possible teaching and learning.

If your child's school PTO group hasn't met with Brady, or if you want another chance to hear other parent and community member concerns and state your own, Brady is holding larger forums for community discussion this month (two have already happened). They will take place from 6-8pm on Aug. 13 at Veazie Elementary School, 211 Veazie St.; and Aug. 20 at Providence Academy of International Studies (PAIS), 182 Thurbers Ave. Childcare is available. See the Providence Schools website for more info.