Teachers’ Union 1; Students, Parents and Community 0

The Des Moines School Board sided with the teachers’ union last night and voted to dismiss school 90 minutes early every Wednesday. According to the school board, the early dismissals will provide an additional 24 hours of professional development time for teachers next year. The more appropriate way to see this is that students will be out of the classroom for three additional days next year. Achievement rates will continue to falter.

The plain and simple truth is that the school board has a contract with the union and kowtowed to their wishes without listening to or considering parents, students and the community. It is time for the school board to form a contract with those they serve, the people who live in the district boundaries. Maybe a binding contract with the community would help balance the wishes of the teachers’ union with the vital mission of the district, educating students.

Teachers are professionals who, by and large, inspire young people to learn and toil in a realm where most of us would be utter failures. They deserve our respect and support. If teachers need development and planning time, we should find a way to provide it, but we should do so without penalizing students. I cannot think of another business or organization that locks its doors to the people it serves during vital business hours every week to train staff. For nearly every other institution, professional development and planning time are done with a combination of paid time during the day and non-paid hours by employees.

Teachers do not punch time clocks. They are professionals. It is time the school board, the administration and the public treat them that way. We need to seek a way to pay them for the whole job (teaching and planning) and stop haggling over how many minutes a day are spent in the school building. Professionals do a job. They do not get paid by the hour.

I have been a follower, participant, champion and critic of the Des Moines School District for many, many years. I count myself and my children lucky to be a part of this school system. But, too often the school board and administration make decisions in a vacuum without consulting or considering all of the parties affected by their decisions. Do not fool yourself, the decision to place the vote for early dismissal on agendas straddling the Holidays was intentional. As planned, the issue went unnoticed by a distracted public and by the time it was noticed, the school board had voted – a decision had been made. The school district follows the letter of open meeting and public notification laws, but they rarely do much more. Public input is regularly discouraged.

In this space last fall, I wrote about how Superintendent Nancy Sebring sat quietly during a lengthy presentation regarding a proposed charter school. She waited until most members of the public left the room and most watching at home turned the channel before she announced a key funding piece of the new school had been denied by the federal government. It is possible that if a Drake Journalism student had not sat until the bitter end of the meeting, this piece of information would have gone entirely unnoticed by everyone but the school board and a handful of district employees. The decision to hold a key vote on the second business evening after New Year’s was a similar manipulation of the agenda done to keep the public out of the loop.

The reduction in learning time is bad for students and the game playing by the school board to keep the community out of the process is reprehensible. One would think an elected school board would involve the public instinctively. This board does not. It is time for the community to draw up a contract with the school board that gives us at least as much say in negotiating the school calendar and matters of education as the teachers’ union has. It is only fair that parents, students and the community be given equal footing in this discussion with the teachers and employees whose salaries are paid with tax dollars.



Note added after initial post: I want to be clear about my statement that professionals do a job and the following sentence that they do not get paid by the hour. I did not say this well. Many professionals (i.e. plumbers, electricians, nurses) get paid by the hour. They are professionals and paying them by the hour is the best and fairest way to compensate them for the nature of their work. Most of these professionals pursue professional development off the clock as well, often with the help and support of unions. If paying teachers by the hour is a solution worth pursuing, so be it, because being considered a professional is not linked to how one gets paid. If my comments insinuated otherwise, I apologize.

This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.