In a message dated 8/16/2004 3:50:20 PM Central Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< 27 suing teachers call deal to ask legislature to allow city flexibility in recent reassignments a settlement; district disagrees, at least semantically. http://www.startribune.com/stories/1592/4928656.html >> The Stand decision allows the district to "realign" a tenured teacher to preserve the job of another tenured teacher. The teacher tenure act does not explicitly allow for involuntary reassignments of tenured teachers, but does allow the district to place a teacher on an unrequested, unpaid leave of absence as necessary to reduce the teacher work force due to declining enrollment, etc. However, the district appears to be realigning teachers (tenured and not tenured) in order to preserve the jobs of probationary teachers. Based on incomplete information from the district, it is appears that at least some special Ed teachers were laid off and replaced by high-seniority elementary teachers in order to save the jobs of elementary classroom teachers who are still on probationary status, but are a rung or two higher up on the seniority list than the affected Special Ed teachers. The district has acknowledged that the Strand doctrine only applies to teachers who have completed their probationary period (usually 3 years), yet the district "realigned" 140 tenured, elementary school teachers, to preserve the employment of up to 92 (and possibly fewer) elementary teachers with tenure. Did the district also save the jobs of any elementary school teachers still on probationary status? Was it really necessarily to layoff 608 teachers to deal with a net reduction of 210 full time teaching positions? The realignment process will reduce the amount of money that needs to be budgeted for elementary school teachers. It will also dramatically lower the overall quality of instruction in regular Ed classrooms and raise the cost and lower the quality of special Ed services. The district may be able to get more money from the state and federal gov't in the form of Special Ed reimbursement by putting less qualified, but higher paid teachers in Special Ed classrooms. The realigned teachers who "sued" the district are not really suing the district. Their lawyer, Gregg Corwin explained that he did not want to allege any violation of the teachers' contract or the teacher tenure act because that would put him in an adversarial role with respect to the teachers union. The contract defines the union as the teachers' "exclusive representative" for teachers who allege the district is violating the contract or contract law (the Teacher Tenure Act). Corwin has to work with the leadership of the teachers union because he works another school employees union. Corwin also works for several other unions. Corwin informed the teachers about this conflict of interest before he took their money. The Teacher Tenure Act as currently written might have served as a mechanism to prevent the district from reshuffling most of the teachers who have been reshuffled, if a critical mass of teachers had asserted their rights under the act. But many teachers are misinformed about their tenure rights, and others go along to get along, i.e., are afraid of retaliation from the administration if they assert they right to not be bumped, except as allowed in the Teacher Tenure Act (which allows the district to place teachers on involuntary, unpaid leave as "necessary" in the face of a force reduction due to declining enrollment, financial shortfalls, etc). Any realigned teacher who has received a written notice from the district about their assignment within the past two weeks might be able to get their old job back by sending a letter to the district administration, with cc to the union, alleging that the reassignment is being imposed without your consent, and under circumstances that do not give the district the right to reassign many of the teachers who are being reassigned. You have a right to obtain evidence from the school administration related to the alleged need to realign your position (e.g., Areas where positions are to be eliminated, number of probationary teachers who might be laid off in those areas, etc). You have the right to a public hearing before the board of education. -Doug Mann, King Field Mann for School Board www.educationright.com - REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
