To sign or not to sign – tensions rise over Ackerman demand

by Dale Mezzacappa

[Update 7/15/09: District and union reach accord on individual contracts for teachers - read about it here.]

Despite high hopes that contract negotiations between the District and Philadelphia Federation of Teachers would take on a more cooperative character this year, talks are being held in a contentious atmosphere complicated by Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's demand that teachers sign individual contracts.

Such contracts – to be signed when a teacher earns tenure —are mandated by the state school code. But the Philadelphia School District, for unknown reasons, apparently stopped requiring teachers to sign them more than twenty years ago.

Among other things, the standard contract in Pennsylvania specifies that employees must give 60 days' notice of plans to retire or resign. Ackerman has consistently complained that the convoluted transfer and seniority provisions in the collective bargaining agreement with the PFT make it difficult to hire teachers for the upcoming school year in a timely manner.

The demand to sign individual contracts, accompanied in Ackerman's latest letter by threats of disciplinary action, has inflamed teachers and helped inspire 5,000 of them to attend a Philadelphia Federation of Teachers meeting on June 29.

Members "feel outright disrespected," said PFT president Jerry Jordan – who added that the issue of too many vacancies is real but could have been addressed more collegially.

Ackerman, though, has so far plowed ahead with her demands, positioning herself as a gung-ho reformer who inherited a system marked by more egregious inequities, broken promises, and counterproductive practices than others she has worked in. 

She has regularly emphasized that she's in Philadelphia to "support children" by making adults shape up.

She concluded her latest letter to teachers, dated June 22: "There are those among you who would have to believe that this action, and others whereby I am holding the District and adults accountable, is an indication that I am anti-teacher…. I am not! I am, however, definitely for children … and I believe you are too."

In late June, after months of keeping mum on her goals and priorities in the teacher talks, Ackerman began speaking out. In addition to citing the vacancy and seniority issues, she has said she need more power to fire "bad" teachers and has publicly called for a longer day and year and some form of performance pay. All of these issues – while they have been tackled in other cities – raise red flags for the PFT.

The union, for its part, has emphasized its favorite themes, particularly smaller class size and safe schools. Jordan has questioned the value of a longer school day – Philadelphia's is among the shortest in the state – without more discussion of how the time will be used.

On this question, Ackerman may have the upper hand. She has said she is prepared to use the full powers given the District by Act 46 and Act 83 that prohibit the union from striking and allow the District to simply impose its will in crucial areas including length of the workday and how teachers are assigned. Prior District leaders chose not to invoke these powers.

The PFT has seen its bargaining power wane over the past several years since the state passed legislation first declaring the District distressed – Act 46 – and then taking it over – Act 83 – and replacing the Board of Education with a School Reform Commission jointly appointed by the governor and mayor.

In addition to taking away the union's right to strike, the legislature declared that the District did not have to negotiate anything except salaries and benefits.

No Child Left Behind also gave districts the power to reconstitute persistently low- performing schools by replacing all the faculty. The charter school movement has reduced student enrollment and, with it, union membership. Most charter school teachers do not belong to unions.

"Renaissance schools" are Ackerman's response to NCLB's requirement that districts intervene in low-performing schools. She has declared her intention to "fix" up to 35 low-performing schools by slating them for the sort of drastic makeovers, including gutting the teaching force, allowed under NCLB. But she has announced few details of the plan, and Jordan said she has not consulted the union.

In this climate, teachers regarded Ackerman's sudden demand to sign individual contracts as another effort to demonize them. 

The PFT has advised its members not to sign such contracts, unless they are newly tenured. "If you were not asked to sign a professional employee contract at the time you received tenure, you do not have to sign one now," says a posting on the PFT Web site.

The site also points out that the teachers are required to give 60 days notice even without these contracts – so Ackerman's concern is misplaced, according to Jordan.

But Ackerman, in the June 22 letter, warns of disciplinary action if teachers fail to sign the contracts. She is being fully backed by state Secretary of Education Gerald Zahorchak.

"The decision to sign the contract that you will receive in the next few days is your choice," the Ackerman letter says. "But please understand that the consequences for not signing will be dictated by State law, including any disciplinary action taken by the District." What form such action would take is unclear.

Ackerman has also said that she will be requiring non-tenured teachers to sign contracts annually, which is not a requirement of the school code.

There is a high attrition rate among teachers during their first three years; according to a 2007 study by Research for Action, less than half the teachers hired in 1999 were still in the district in October 2002.

Ackerman's letter points out that "last year, approximately 1,000 teachers retired or resigned from classrooms throughout the District. This affected learning conditions for thousands of students who were taught by long term or day-to-day substitute teachers. Obviously, this is not the kind of educational environment that students or parents should expect when they begin a new school year."

She appended a June 17 letter from Zahorchak reaffirming that "a professional employee must sign an employment contract and must provide written notice to a school district at least 60 days prior to resigning his or her position."

Philadelphia has long faced a cascade of last-minute retirements and resignations that left students without teachers at the beginning of the school year. As the Notebook reported in its summer edition, first-day-of-school vacancies spiked this year after a period of decline. It is unclear, though, how many of those vacancies opened up late in the summer.

Jordan said, however, that the problem of late notifications waned after a provision in the 2000 PFT contract assured teachers they would continue to get benefits over the summer if they announced their intentions by April 15.

"If the goal was to say, 'We don't want people to leave at the last minute,' there is nothing in the union contract that prohibits the superintendent from saying that," Jordan said. "I think the superintendent was trying to make sure that all teaching positions are filled from the first day of school forward, which I don't disagree with. I think that was the reason for sending [the letters] out, [but] I don't know who advised her that was the route to take."

Jordan said that said that the union's counsel has found an old state Supreme Court case involving the Jersey Shore Area School District that protects individual employees even if they haven't signed these contracts. The case held that teachers cannot lose the protections of the teacher tenure act if a district fails to provide these tenure contracts in a timely fashion, according to Jordan.

Teachers were put off because initially, contracts were sent to all teachers on June 4 –even to those who had signed tenure contracts years ago and to those who had not yet attained tenure, which is automatic after three years of satisfactory teaching.

The first document was also of the "fill-in-the-blank" variety, poorly worded and effective on September 1, 2009 – the day after the current collective bargaining agreement expires. There was a blank where a salary should have been.

Ackerman rescinded those documents, but is sending out new ones July 2, according to District spokesman Fernando Gallard.

Barbara Brady, communications manager for the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the union that represents most of the teachers in the state, said that signing the individual contracts is common practice and has not aroused controversy anywhere else.

"We've had a couple isolated issues here and there but nothing that we would consider a major problem," Brady said.

Several other Pennsylvania school districts that were contacted said that tenure contracts were routine.

Meanwhile, a coalition of activist groups led by the Education First Compact and the Cross City Campaign for School Reform is attempting to influence the negotiations and hone its message. 

"We would like to see a much stronger discussion about what can be done to attract teachers to want to come to hard-to-staff positions in schools," said Brian Armstead of the Philadelphia Education Fund and a leader of the Philadelphia Teaching Effectiveness Campaign. While Ackerman has talked a lot about having the ability to decide where she'd like to place teachers, Armstead said, there has been little talk of either individual incentives for teachers or school-based programs that persuade teachers to take difficult positions.

"You have to create an environment so that teachers want to be there and create a sense of teacher ownership in a school," he said. "Teachers aren't just commodities, but they have to be made to feel like valued partners."