Providence RI teacher dismissals seen as blow to seniority system

The Providence Journal ^ | February 26, 2011 | Linda Borg

[Cincinatus' Wife]

PROVIDENCE — No matter how you slice it, school experts say, the decision Thursday by the city School Board to notify teachers that they might be terminated at the end of the school year strikes at the heart of their union contract’s seniority system.

Mayor Angel Taveras says that the decision he recommended to the board is strictly about balancing the city and the School Department budgets. He says that termination will save money because teachers who are dismissed and not rehired will not end up in a substitute teaching pool.

But David V. Abbott, the state’s deputy education commissioner, said the difference between layoffs and dismissals is this: When a teacher is laid off under state statute, he or she is put on a recall list. Although that teacher is no longer working and no longer paid, that person exists in an employment “limbo.” The teacher hasn’t been actually dismissed.

If a job becomes available for which that teacher is qualified, that person must be rehired based on seniority.

“If you are laid off, you have the right of recall,” Abbott said Friday. “You still have one stick in your bundle. If I’m dismissed, I’m out of work and I need to be rehired.”

In effect, every teacher who is terminated has to reapply for his or her job as would any new teacher entering the system.

“It is a way to get around seniority,” said Tim Duffy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees. “In order to give the administration the flexibility to recall the teachers they need, they had to give out dismissal notices.”

.....And statewide, the situation gets still more complicated in the months to come. Many other school districts may be altering the use of seniority in assigning teachers.....

[Cincinatus' Wife]

....Something for people to think about when they reach their late 50s.

And something for people to think about when the union controls the conditions of their employment to the degree that it plays a large part in bankrupting the state treasury.

[HarleyD]

Yes. People shouldn't rely upon age as a factor for employment. But people shouldn't be fired after a sterling career because they're “too expensive”. Merit pay doesn't work because bosses usually give it to their cronies. In the case of teachers, how many of us would like to be judged by the conduct of a bunch of eight graders who refuse to complete their assignments? Really what is needed is fair and honest appraisal of employees through peer review. But that is a very old-fashioned idea that went out in the 80s.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

A lot of things went out in the 70s. A lot of things need to be rethought.

[Thunder90]

WI school districts would be wise to copy this practice. Fire them all and then rehire only the best ones (with no Union).