RI school district agrees to rehire fired teachers

[Moosepoop]

Source: Associated Press

By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press Writer Eric Tucker, Associated Press Writer – 41 mins ago

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. – A school district that gained the support of President Barack Obama for promoting accountability after it fired all its teachers from a struggling school announced on Sunday it had reached an agreement with the union to return all the current staffers to their jobs.

The two sides said a transformation plan for Central Falls High School for the coming school year would allow the 87 teachers, guidance counselors, librarians and other staffers who were to lose their jobs at the end of this year to return without having to reapply. More than 700 people had already applied for the positions.

The agreement also imposes a longer school day, more after-school tutoring and other changes.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_entire_school_fired

[boppers]

1. Well, that was a hell of a saga.

Lets see if the changes made work.

[defendandprotect]

2. Good . . . .

[Starry Messenger]

Hopefully the district will be cleaning up its act.

The demanded changes may not come to much if things like this are still going to occur--

http://www.projo.com/news/content/central_falls_meeting.1_03-24-10_DPHSMAF_v14.3b316d7.html

Jorge A. Torres, another math teacher, told the trustees that the start of the 2008-2009 school year was so chaotic, school administrators completely forgot to hire a math teacher for students learning English.

“It took them a month to hire an ESL math teacher,” Torres said. “That year, we were all over the place ... We are trying our best on our own. Even with all this, the math scores have gone up for the past three years. I know it doesn’t sound like much, going from 4 percent to 7 percent. But we are willing to work. We need your support.”

Cheryl Aucoin, a reading specialist, described similar problems with the literacy program.

For 12 years, Aucoin said, she has watched reading programs come and go. Some of the most successful ones were cut when the district ran into financial difficulty or when a new administrative team decided they wanted to try something new, she said.

“We talk about being a data-driven high school,” Aucoin said. “But many of these programs were not in place long enough to cull data needed to calculate their success or the lack thereof.”

The teachers often perform the actions voluntarily that the district demanded for low-wages and mandatory time. They rightly pointed out that the school, district and community needs to do its part as well. Even against all obstacles, the scores were actually rising last year. It's going to take more than just the teachers to create the kind of ambitious gains looked for by the PTB.

[YvonneCa]

3. Good news. FINALLY some fairness and ...

...sanity. :)

[orleans]

4. so does this mean the school district no longer has obama's support?

(and if the school was struggling because of nclb & teaching to the test, why would he support that anyway?)

[harkadog]

5. If you read the link the union gave into the district's demands

If they had done that in the first place none of this would have occurred.

[1monster]

6. Having just read Stary Messenger's post and link, I rather think that the

school board and administrations should have been fired, and not rehired, not the teachers!

The link in the OP said that the teachers were already volunteering those extra hours at no pay, so why make it mandatory? http://www.projo.com/news/content/central_falls_meeting.1_03-24-10_DPHSMAF_v14.3b316d7.html (Starry Messenger's post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4384401&mesg_id=4384424)

And I can tell you as a substitute teacher, who has done several long term sub jobs, teachers do not just leave school at 3:00, go home and forget about school until the next morning. I spent 45 minutes to an hour after school most days, and then went home and worked on lesson plans, correcting tests and homework, recording grades, writing missing work messages for students, and other miscellaneous things that had to be done for another three to four hours every day.

Two months ago, I went to an art/crafts/music festival and saw a teacher who had accompanied her mother, sitting in a lawn chair working on lesson plans. Even on a Sunday, teachers often cannot take a few hours off to enjoy themselves.

The only good thing to come out of the whole flap is that the teachers maybe were ablt to demonstrate to the school board that they were making progress despite the administration and school boards inability to understand the problems faced by a school with so many non-English speaking and E.S.E. students. (At least I hope they were.)

[Starry Messenger]

9. You said it, sister.

:thumbsup:

[mbperrin]

10. Teacher for three decades here. Thank you!

This says it well.

[EFerrari]

12. Exactly. n/t

[EFerrari]

7. Right. So, what? Do we thank the president for lobbying on the behalf

of management?

Damn those pesky unions, protecting their members at that school that was found to be improving by the state.

[harry_pothead]

8. I wonder if our president will publicly support their rehiring...

...like he publicly supported their firing. We shall see.

[maryf]

11. So is this hitting the news like the firing did???

or are folks still blaming teachers for the ills of the education system?