Teacher bill revises ‘last hired, first fired’

05/23/2005

Steve Brandt, Star Tribune
May 23, 2005

Remember the anguished wails of Minneapolis parents a year ago when their children lost a favorite teacher to the labyrinthine workings of the state tenure law?

Help is on the horizon.

The Legislature is expected to adopt a bill that allows two big districts to negotiate exceptions to the iron rule of teacher tenure: last hired, first fired. That frees the Minneapolis and St. Paul districts and their unions to negotiate exceptions to seniority in layoffs. They’re the only districts in the state barred from doing so.

Just what that’s worth depends on how far teacher unions are willing to go and how hard the districts are willing to push. But unions joined the districts in agreeing to the proposed change. That followed an outpouring of parental protest in Minneapolis over the forced reassignment of 140 senior teachers who held licenses to teach in more than one subject. Some were shifted into areas they had never taught; some took leaves or retired rather than accept the transfer.

More layoffs are on tap this year, with 294 probationary teachers notified already in Minneapolis and more layoffs to be announced later. St. Paul faces layoffs this year, with the possibility of forced assignment shifts a year from now.

Both districts and their unions are just beginning to discuss their next contracts, and the law wouldn’t take effect until August. That means that changes wouldn’t kick in until 2006 layoffs.

Among the potential changes mentioned in Minneapolis so far are helping specialized places such as Spanish-immersion schools or autism programs to protect their staffs from layoffs or forced shifts.

Minority teachers might also benefit. The district has said it wants to protect its highly qualified teachers of color from layoffs.

Black teachers have been laid off to a much greater degree than other races, in part because of lower seniority. The district also says it wants the ability to recruit and keep quality veteran teachers to bolster the staffs of high-minority schools that experience frequent turnover.

However, the proposed change in both the House and Senate education bills addresses only layoffs for tenured teachers, not how those vacancies are filled. Minneapolis teachers usually achieve tenure when they start their fourth year on the job. After nontenured probationary teachers, junior tenured teachers face the greatest risk of layoffs. Last year, a 1980s state Supreme Court ruling guided how the tenure law affected Minneapolis layoffs. That forced more-senior tenured teachers holding multiple licenses to switch into teaching subjects they typically hadn’t taught in years—or ever—if that kept a more junior tenured teacher on the job.

Beyond the question of who gets axed during layoffs, there’s the issue of which teachers fill the vacancies. That’s governed by the teachers union contract. Teachers who are cut from their schools when their positions are eliminated get first crack at vacancies in their license area. But seniority plays the dominant role in who gets hired for vacancies when teachers seeking a voluntary transfer between schools compete for a position.

Mary Ford helped organize a forum of parents in March to urge greater staffing stability. She said the pending bill “takes us in one step in the right direction. We need to do more so that principals are really given the power to choose and retain staff.”

School board members have complained about the impact of seniority in hiring. Teachers often attempt to shift out of high-poverty schools as they gain seniority. An internal district study last year showed a strong association between high turnover in middle school grades and low test scores.

Rep. Jim Davnie, DFL-Minneapolis, said he sponsored the tenure proposal in the House because he’d heard plenty from constituents about the impact of the tenure law a year ago. A former teachers union president in the Buffalo, Minn., schools, he said the Minneapolis layoff process needs a logic that responds to educational needs, yet respects teachers. “I don’t think teachers favor rigidity for rigidity’s sake,” he said.