from the March 2009, Labor Notes (print)
Ann Crowley had always opposed charter schools, but sick of decades of managerial incompetence in Detroit’s traditional schools, she changed her mind. She even called for charters to be housed in union headquarters during her campaign to lead the Detroit Federation of Teachers this winter. The middle school instructor thinks veteran teachers like her could do charters the right way: by opening a community-owned, unionized school within the remains of a crumbling school district.
Her slate lost badly, but has kept the idea alive, finding a model in Los Angeles-based Green Dot Schools, a growing unionized charter organization. She also found the center of a contentious debate. Everyone agrees that public schools need help, but teachers and union members disagree over how to engage the charter school movement and its largely unorganized workforce—or whether to do so at all.
In Los Angeles, Green Dot has grown to 18 schools over the last decade—and expanded to the Bronx this year, with the blessing of New York’s United Federation of Teachers president (and national AFT president) Randi Weingarten. Green Dot touts its open access, small classes, and schools no larger than 525 students. Along with mandatory parent-volunteer hours, the schools stay open later, which means more time with students and a longer work day for teachers.
They emphasize local control for teachers and principals in hiring and curriculum decisions, also making them responsible for a school’s budget. Green Dot teachers laud professional development programs which, they say, have helped raise test scores and graduation rates. The schools are in demand. At Green Dot’s founding site, in LA’s Inglewood community, 685 students applied for 175 spots in this year’s freshman class. Students, recruited first from the neighborhoods where the school sits, must fill out a short application and an essay expressing interest. Then they are entered into a lottery.
Los Angeles teachers say that this approach doesn’t ensure universal access, though, because it passively screens out foster children and English language learners. “If they were to try to be truly public with the lottery system, they would make sure that every student’s name in
that attendance area was entered into the lottery, and not just the kids whose parents came to some meeting some night,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, a teacher at Crenshaw High School in
south Los Angeles.
WHAT KIND OF JOBS?
Green Dot schools look different than the district. The schools are mostly staffed by young teachers, and teacher turnover is high. At Locke High School in the Watts neighborhood of LA, teachers petitioned the school board to break the school into eight smaller charters two years ago. Green Dot came in, fired 80 teachers, and made everyone re-apply for positions.
Despite attempts by the AFT/NEA affiliate United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) to keep the school in the district, Locke teachers sided with Green Dot, and joined instead the Asociacion de Maestros Unidos. AMU, which is part of the NEA-affiliated California Teachers Association, was created in 2000 to be the union at Green Dot.
The AMU contract has a just-cause provision instead of the district’s tenure system, a longer teacher workday, and a no-strike clause. District die-hards charge that AMU is a company union, but AMU’s collaborative approach, maintained by monthly meetings between union and
company, has still produced battles with management. After agreeing to re-open the contract, AMU is fighting Green Dot’s attempt to create a probationary period during which teachers could be fired at will in their first two years.
AMU president Abigail Garcia said the union wouldn’t budge, noting that at least 50 percent of AMU teachers are in their first or second year. AMU has also questioned the school’s commitment to school site autonomy. “At times, we feel like Green Dot’s idea of ‘teacher-led’ schools is just to ask teachers to provide input before making final decisions,” Garcia said.
“Teacher-led” schools are a mirage, other teacher union activists say, considering Green Dot’s corporatized management. Founded by Democratic Party booster Steve Barr, Green Dot has an unelected management team led by a CEO who is a financial consultant with no teaching background. Michael Fiorillo, a New York teacher and union reform leader, said that corporate management entrenched itself in education through skillful marketing. Among its aims? To make teaching no longer a career.
“The idealism and the eagerness of teachers to improve the lives of their students is manipulated,” he said. “They’re not going to have tenure or seniority, and eventually they won’t have a union.”
CHARTING A UNION
Despite teacher misgivings, charters are taking off. The LA school district, has offered unused space within 40 public schools to charter start- ups. In response, UTLA has reconvened a task force on charter schools and is organizing forums with charter teachers, beginning with those already unionized. Teachers at Accelerated Charter just gathered cards from 80 percent of the workforce in a bid to be the first independent charter school in LA to join the 48,000-strong UTLA. In January, teachers at a charter in Brooklyn signed cards for representation. Now they’re fighting a fierce anti-union campaign in which administrators are trying to recruit students to undermine the teacher drive.
“People in corporate education are wetting their pants at the prospect of these charters organizing,” Fiorillo said. And union infighting may be on the wane. Despite their disagreements, UTLA and AMU joined in a January march, turning out 15,000 to protest California’s fresh cuts to public education.
MAKING A NEW DETROIT
Charters in Detroit, enrolling 50,000 students, have had mixed results. Among the 12 charter schools authorized by the district, some are failing, and some were never opened in the first place, leading to allegations of misappropriated funds. As 70,000 students have left the district in the last decade—and a $400 million deficit rings up this year—the situation looks increasingly bleak. The school board has fired the superintendent and agreed to state oversight this winter. Expectations are low: state overseers earlier this decade splurged on bloated, no-bid private contracts for food service and school renovation.
Crowley, the Detroit charter convert, says schools have not improved since teachers walked out for over two weeks in 2006 to protest dire conditions. Teachers’ pay rose slightly, but many buildings remain undersupplied and sometimes hazardous.
About 200 groups have applied to open new charters in Detroit, but Crowley wants to beat them to it and run her school with experienced teachers. “We can do it on our own if they let us,” she said. It’s unclear whether the Green Dot model would work for the veteran teachers in Detroit, as the organization prefers to hire new teachers to keep costs low. And, as such franchises grow, Fiorillo believes they will become increasingly driven by profit, managed by non-educators, and antagonistic to the union that Garcia and other teachers in Los Angeles are fighting to maintain.
Still, the frustration of years in an inadequate system is leading Crowley to look for ways that teachers can build their own institutions—to retain a culture of collective bargaining and control, which is trickling into charter school break rooms nationwide.
Ann Crowley had always opposed charter schools, but sick of decades of managerial incompetence in Detroit’s traditional schools, she changed her mind. She even called for charters to be housed in union headquarters during her campaign to lead the Detroit Federation of Teachers this winter. The middle school instructor thinks veteran teachers like her could do charters the right way: by opening a community-owned, unionized school within the remains of a crumbling school district.
Her slate lost badly, but has kept the idea alive, finding a model in Los Angeles-based Green Dot Schools, a growing unionized charter organization. She also found the center of a contentious debate. Everyone agrees that public schools need help, but teachers and union members disagree over how to engage the charter school movement and its largely unorganized workforce—or whether to do so at all.
In Los Angeles, Green Dot has grown to 18 schools over the last decade—and expanded to the Bronx this year, with the blessing of New York’s United Federation of Teachers president (and national AFT president) Randi Weingarten. Green Dot touts its open access, small classes, and schools no larger than 525 students. Along with mandatory parent-volunteer hours, the schools stay open later, which means more time with students and a longer work day for teachers.
They emphasize local control for teachers and principals in hiring and curriculum decisions, also making them responsible for a school’s budget. Green Dot teachers laud professional development programs which, they say, have helped raise test scores and graduation rates. The schools are in demand. At Green Dot’s founding site, in LA’s Inglewood community, 685 students applied for 175 spots in this year’s freshman class. Students, recruited first from the neighborhoods where the school sits, must fill out a short application and an essay expressing interest. Then they are entered into a lottery.
Los Angeles teachers say that this approach doesn’t ensure universal access, though, because it passively screens out foster children and English language learners. “If they were to try to be truly public with the lottery system, they would make sure that every student’s name in
that attendance area was entered into the lottery, and not just the kids whose parents came to some meeting some night,” said Alex Caputo-Pearl, a teacher at Crenshaw High School in
south Los Angeles.
WHAT KIND OF JOBS?
Green Dot schools look different than the district. The schools are mostly staffed by young teachers, and teacher turnover is high. At Locke High School in the Watts neighborhood of LA, teachers petitioned the school board to break the school into eight smaller charters two years ago. Green Dot came in, fired 80 teachers, and made everyone re-apply for positions.
Despite attempts by the AFT/NEA affiliate United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) to keep the school in the district, Locke teachers sided with Green Dot, and joined instead the Asociacion de Maestros Unidos. AMU, which is part of the NEA-affiliated California Teachers Association, was created in 2000 to be the union at Green Dot.
The AMU contract has a just-cause provision instead of the district’s tenure system, a longer teacher workday, and a no-strike clause. District die-hards charge that AMU is a company union, but AMU’s collaborative approach, maintained by monthly meetings between union and
company, has still produced battles with management. After agreeing to re-open the contract, AMU is fighting Green Dot’s attempt to create a probationary period during which teachers could be fired at will in their first two years.
AMU president Abigail Garcia said the union wouldn’t budge, noting that at least 50 percent of AMU teachers are in their first or second year. AMU has also questioned the school’s commitment to school site autonomy. “At times, we feel like Green Dot’s idea of ‘teacher-led’ schools is just to ask teachers to provide input before making final decisions,” Garcia said.
“Teacher-led” schools are a mirage, other teacher union activists say, considering Green Dot’s corporatized management. Founded by Democratic Party booster Steve Barr, Green Dot has an unelected management team led by a CEO who is a financial consultant with no teaching background. Michael Fiorillo, a New York teacher and union reform leader, said that corporate management entrenched itself in education through skillful marketing. Among its aims? To make teaching no longer a career.
“The idealism and the eagerness of teachers to improve the lives of their students is manipulated,” he said. “They’re not going to have tenure or seniority, and eventually they won’t have a union.”
CHARTING A UNION
Despite teacher misgivings, charters are taking off. The LA school district, has offered unused space within 40 public schools to charter start- ups. In response, UTLA has reconvened a task force on charter schools and is organizing forums with charter teachers, beginning with those already unionized. Teachers at Accelerated Charter just gathered cards from 80 percent of the workforce in a bid to be the first independent charter school in LA to join the 48,000-strong UTLA. In January, teachers at a charter in Brooklyn signed cards for representation. Now they’re fighting a fierce anti-union campaign in which administrators are trying to recruit students to undermine the teacher drive.
“People in corporate education are wetting their pants at the prospect of these charters organizing,” Fiorillo said. And union infighting may be on the wane. Despite their disagreements, UTLA and AMU joined in a January march, turning out 15,000 to protest California’s fresh cuts to public education.
MAKING A NEW DETROIT
Charters in Detroit, enrolling 50,000 students, have had mixed results. Among the 12 charter schools authorized by the district, some are failing, and some were never opened in the first place, leading to allegations of misappropriated funds. As 70,000 students have left the district in the last decade—and a $400 million deficit rings up this year—the situation looks increasingly bleak. The school board has fired the superintendent and agreed to state oversight this winter. Expectations are low: state overseers earlier this decade splurged on bloated, no-bid private contracts for food service and school renovation.
Crowley, the Detroit charter convert, says schools have not improved since teachers walked out for over two weeks in 2006 to protest dire conditions. Teachers’ pay rose slightly, but many buildings remain undersupplied and sometimes hazardous.
About 200 groups have applied to open new charters in Detroit, but Crowley wants to beat them to it and run her school with experienced teachers. “We can do it on our own if they let us,” she said. It’s unclear whether the Green Dot model would work for the veteran teachers in Detroit, as the organization prefers to hire new teachers to keep costs low. And, as such franchises grow, Fiorillo believes they will become increasingly driven by profit, managed by non-educators, and antagonistic to the union that Garcia and other teachers in Los Angeles are fighting to maintain.
Still, the frustration of years in an inadequate system is leading Crowley to look for ways that teachers can build their own institutions—to retain a culture of collective bargaining and control, which is trickling into charter school break rooms nationwide.
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