Time to Teach Issues
June 2011
Status Report
This status report is an update with regard to the progress that has been made by the district in addressing the issues affecting the ability of certificated personnel to effectively and efficiently provide services to students in the Rowland Unified School District. These issues were first brought to the negotiating table by the Association in the 2005-2006 school year.
Background
The Association of Rowland Educators conducts regular surveys of the membership to assess their interests and priorities to assist the Association in prioritizing the bargaining goals for the year. For the past decade, the overwhelming sentiment that has been relayed to the ARE leadership has been the fact that RUSD has facilitated a climate of instruction that impedes the ability of the teachers to effectively and efficiently meet the needs of the student population. The Association brought these issues to the negotiating table in the 2005-2006 school year to seek solutions to these problems.
It became evident to everyone at the bargaining table that creating solutions to the problems with Time to Teach was an undertaking that would take a great deal of time and energy. The district proposed that the Association table the issues around Time to Teach and allow for the creation of a committee made up of district and ARE members that would work to solve the problems brought up by ARE at the negotiating table. The district had just recently announced the hiring of Dr. Maria Ott as the new superintendent and was not interested in a protracted negotiating process with the Association.
The Association discussed the proposal of the district at its next regularly scheduled board meeting. Although there was a great deal of reservation about dropping the Time to Teach items from the negotiating table because of the fear that the issues would never be resolved, it was the belief of ARE leadership that extending this olive branch to the new superintendent would help to create an atmosphere of trust and collaboration between the Association and the district that still had not recovered from the labor crisis in 2000, when a strike was narrowly averted at the last minute. The Association took the step of lowering its guard and allowing the district to address the issues of Time to Teach through an ad hoc committee that was supposed to resolve the issues of importance to the teachers. The Association required that the new committee be chaired by Dr. Christine Ericson.
The categories of concern to the teachers in 2005 were:
The categories of concern to teachers in 2011 are:
It has now been six long years since the Association of Rowland Educators took a leap of faith and extended the superintendent a gesture of goodwill by allowing a proposal presented at the negotiating table to be addressed through a committee. The unwillingness or inability of the district to address these issues has proven to the Association that any attempts to work collaboratively with the district to solve problems are a waste of time. The teachers in this district are not respected enough by the leadership to be empowered to make decisions affecting the profession. As a result of the inability of the district to work with the Association to resolve issues with Time to Teach, The Association is no longer inclined to agree to the creation of committees to resolve any issues. We have been sent a clear message by the district leadership that our only recourse in this matter will be to resolve issues through collective bargaining.
IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW PROGRAMS
ISSUES: There is an ongoing concern that new programs come up too quickly and often overlap one another. This is a recurring issue that was originally articulated as a concern by the Association during the initial bargaining proposal back in 2005. The perception of teachers in this district is that staff development and program implementation in this district originates from an administrator attending a workshop and deciding that they have discovered the answers to everyones problems with education. The teachers feel that they are then the subject of various levels of experimentation. The universal sentiment is that the programs are imposed upon, rather than created by the staff. The lack of focus in program implementation, combined with the fact that the programs seem to change on a regular basis, reinforces the conclusions of the USC study of Rowland Unified that there were too many things going on simultaneously in the district for true excellence to be achieved in any one category.
The Time to Teach Status Report from June, 2008 indicated the sentiment on the part of teachers that RUSD was taking on too many new initiatives at the same time, often scheduling staff development that overlapped or conflicted between schools and divisions. It was suggested that the strategic planning work would make great strides to streamline activities into a more cohesive and efficient model of staff development. ARE has even seen elaborate illustrations outlining the effectiveness of the strategic plan and highlighting the advancements that have been made by the district with regard to this matter. ARE surveys of membership indicate a sharp contrast between the narrative of collegial and efficient staff development presented by the district and the reality of the sentiments expressed by a majority of teachers in written form to the Association.
ARE set aside some time during the October, 2010 Rep Council meeting to discuss some of the issues relating to staff development and the extraneous issues that impede the ability of teachers to perform effectively and efficiently. It became evident early in the discussion that many of the issues originally brought to the bargaining table in 2005 had deteriorated, causing people to ask why ARE had done little or nothing to empower teachers. The site reps were then directed to list the new and ongoing things on their sites that were creating additional work. The following is a brief list of the programs or strategies that have been brought into the district. It should be noted that the universal sentiment expressed to ARE was that these programs were imposed on the staffs.
SIL SBDI PLC COP RTI IB COTSEN BALL GLAD PTP CGI WFTB
ELDRA DRA CELL EDI PICTORIAL MATH THINKING MAPS GAP ANALYSIS
POWESPEAK DUAL IMMERSION MIND INSTITUTE CLEMMOR TARGET GROUPS
CULTURAL PROFICIENCY CHECKPOINTS CHECKLISTS SST I, II, III, IV INTERVENTION GROUPS
UNIVESAL ACCESS DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION STUDY ISLAND
The interesting component in all of this to ARE is the fact that teachers are complaining about the fact that the district has engaged in too many simultaneous ventures to be effective at any one of them. Additionally, the Association is concerned by the fact that teachers feel that staff development is something that is imposed upon them, rather than something that they seek to advance professionally. Many have indicated that the district is actually impeding real progress by not allowing them to collaboratively pursue best practices on their own. Teachers feel that the district has no interest in empowering them to become the best, despite whatever rhetoric the district produces to the contrary.
ISSUES WITH DISTRICT BENCHMARK ASSESSMENTS
ISSUES: There is still an issue in benchmarks with the enormous amount of time that teachers are required to devote to grading the constructed response portion of the exams, which are not used on the CST exams. The constructed response questions were designed to facilitate the use of higher level thinking skills in the completion of the exam. It is the belief of the teachers in this district that a much more efficient means of assessing the higher level thinking skills would be to use conceptual multiple choice questions on the exams. We believe that the effectiveness of the benchmark exams would be enhanced by restructuring it in this manner. The current system delays the grading of the exam until the teacher has completed the grading of the constructed response questions. Removing the constructed response questions from the exam would also bring the exam closer to the model used by the State of California.
In addition to the problems associated with the constructed response portion of the benchmarks, there are issues with the reporting of the results that could easily be addressed by having the report template simplified. ARE would be willing to work with the district to achieve this objective. It is our belief that the OARS system will allow us to streamline all of this. Once again, the district has chosen to ignore the Association as they implement this new information system. ARE has had no chance to have a representative involved in the creation of the “checkpoints.” The repeated failure of the district to consult with the Association leadership when considering new programs continues to foster a climate of distrust between teachers and the district.
ARE remains hopeful that the creation of the new checkpoint exams will incorporate our recommendation that constructed response questions be eliminated from the exam altogether. Additionally, we are concerned that there will still be redundancy issues with regards to the reporting that must be completed by department chairs that may be possible to streamline into an efficient model. Not being included in the planning and implementation of these programs places ARE in the position of having to react to realities via member complaints, which only serves the purpose driving a wedge between the teachers and the district.
TIME PULLED OUT OF CLASS FOR PROFESSIONAL GROWTH
ISSUES: One of the major concerns that the Association has about the implementation of staff development in RUSD is the amount of time that our teachers are being pulled out of class to attend staff development meetings around the district. The situation is so pervasive that it is common for the district to run out of substitute teachers on certain days from the vast number of employees that are attending some form of staff training. ARE would like to provide some clarity to the criticism that we levy against the district with regard to this issue. It is our belief that staff development and training is an essential component to the belief that we should strive to continually improve professional practice. However, professional development should be conducted in a manner that provides the minimal amount of interference to the classroom environment. The continual and frequent practice of pulling out staff members for training disrupts the learning environment and places a great deal of pressure on the whole system by entrusting the academic progress of our student population to day to day substitutes.
A teacher who has been pulled out of class for staff development work for 10 school days between August and April will have essentially missed about 7 percent of the available instruction time prior to their students taking the CST exams. When this number is added to the lost instruction time due to assemblies, illness of the teacher, fire drills, minimum day schedules for parent conferences, and the multitude of other factors that affect the instructional day, it must be inferred that these factors have created a detrimental impact on the learning process.
ELD MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT
ISSUES: The most contentious issue that ARE had to deal with in the 2011-2012 school year was the SBDI program that the district had adopted in a vain attempt at addressing the needs of English Language Learners. It became evident to ARE at the onset of our own inquiry about the origins of the SBDI program that there was a complete disconnect between the administration and the staff as to why this program had been adopted in the first place. ARE was told by administration that the teachers had selected this program enthusiastically. The only school of the four that had selected SBDI was Rincon. The staffs at the other 3 schools insisted that this program had been imposed upon them. Further investigation by ARE into this matter led to the disclosure of the word “voluntold,” which had the meaning that administrators were told to volunteer their staffs for the SBDI program. While ARE may never know the true origins of the SBDI implantation in Rowland Unified, we do know that this program did not originate with the teachers. In that sense, and to that extent, SBDI was a microcosm of the relationship between ARE and RUSD.
The sad story of the failed experiment of SBDI is not even the enormous amount of money that the district spent on the numerous trainings that teachers were pulled out of class to participate in. Nor is it the money spent on the salaries of everyone tied to the program. The real tragedy of the SBDI issue was the fact that the teachers at Villacorta had to engage in civil disobedience in order to get the attention of the district. It was not until teachers began to refuse to schedule observations that the district finally capitulated on the issue of SBDI. The willingness of the staff to assert themselves in this endeavor speaks volumes with regard to their capacity to stand up for what is really a best practice. The fact that they had to go to such lengths to prove this point with the district indicates the level of distrust and disrespect that the leadership of RUSD has towards teachers.
SBDI is now gone from the picture. Our population of English learners will still remain here in need of the preparation to help them realize the American Dream. The ability of RUSD to meet and conquer the challenges presented by this population will hinge entirely on the ability of the leadership of Rowland Unified to realize the fact that the collective wisdom of the 700 plus teachers and education support professionals surpasses the collective wisdom of the Cabinet.
OVERABUNDANCE OF POINTLESS STAFF MEETINGS
One of the continual complaints we hear from our ARE membership is the sharp increase in the number of staff meetings that teachers are being asked to attend over the last few years. The teachers who have complained about this issue have also expressed to ARE that the response from their site administrator has been almost uniform when faced with the complaint from the staff members about this issue. Teachers are told that the staff meetings are the result of the district being placed into Program Improvement. There has been an increase in both the frequency and length of the meetings. Our site reps have indicated that meetings that used to take 45 minutes are now lasting well beyond an hour. Once again, the agenda is controlled by management or their designee. Any site leadership team that is selected by the principal cannot act independent of them. Therefore, only in vain could anyone claim that these agendas that originate in a leadership team chosen entirely by the principal, are the byproduct of a collaborative process.
There are a couple of questions raised by this fact:
In addition to the increasing number of staff meetings that teachers feel is a waste of their professional time, there is a universal sentiment that the articulation days do not provide adequate time to accomplish anything of lasting importance. The 90 minutes allotted for articulation at each meeting does not provide enough time to articulate effectively.
Another concern that has been brought to the attention of ARE leadership has been the fact that principals have been dictating the use of SI time during the first three days of duty in August. While the collective bargaining agreement from July 6, 2010 stipulates that at least 6 of the 18 hours of time are designated for classroom preparation, there is still an issue about what to do with the remaining time. The contract stipulates in Article 7.9.7 that “staff development shall be determined by the staff at each site.” The staffs at each site have indicated to ARE that they have little or no say as to what type of staff development that they will receive. When they inform their principals of this clause in the contract they are rebuked and reminded that anything that is not covered in the 3 days can be made up in an additional faculty meeting. This is just another example of what we described earlier as the concept of “voluntold.”
One of the most insulting aspects of the current staff development climate in Rowland Unified concerns the recent implementation of Apple IPads. As the exclusive representative for certificated personnel in Rowland Unified, ARE is deeply offended by the manner in which staff development for this new technology was handled. Teachers were told that they would have to attend training sessions in the summer for no pay in order to have access to the new technology, which according to the district, is a panacea to cure the ills of disproportional identification in special education. Teachers who are in summer school will have to attend the training and forfeit a day of pay in order to have the privilege of using the technology. This policy and the hubris with regard to how the district defends it are shining examples of the complete disrespect towards teachers as professionals. Real capacity building will never flourish in a system dominated by a 19th century business management model.
TEACHERS FEEL POWERLESS
The overarching theme that has been present in virtually every issue that ARE has dealt with this year with member complaints is the fact that the teachers in this district feel that they have no voice as professionals in shaping the policies that impact the environment of the classroom. We recognize the fact that to some degree, the increasing pressure of Federal and State mandates, coupled with the current level of hostility toward public education has played some part in shaping this reality. ARE cannot however ignore the fact that there are several tangible examples of the district failing to listen to, work collaboratively with, or respect the professional opinions of the very professionals charged with the education of children in this district.
The Association of Rowland Educators now recognizes that the unwillingness or inability of the district to recognize and respect the professional intent of teachers to actively and continually work collaboratively towards improving professional practice is a current reality that will only change when the teachers begin to mobilize and assert their collective strength as professionals.