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Executive Council: Central Falls Students Deserve Better than Mass Teacher Firing
The AFL-CIO Executive Council today condemned the firings of the entire education staff at Central Falls (R.I.) High School and called on the Obama administration and the local school superintendent to work together with the teachers to create an environment that allows students and teachers to succeed.
(You can tell the Central Falls school administration that the students deserve better and to work with teachers to build on improvements at the high school by signing an AFT petition here.)
In the midst of the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, more than 90 dedicated professional educators are out of a job. On Feb. 23, the Central Falls school trustees fired the entire teaching staff of the high school, which is located in Rhode Island’s smallest and poorest city.
In all, 93 got pink slips—74 classroom teachers, plus reading specialists, guidance counselors, physical education teachers, the school psychologist, the principal and three assistant principals. Negotiations over strategies to improve the school between teachers and the school superintendent broke down when the superintendent walked away from the table and fired the teachers.
The Executive Council statement said:
The approach embraced by the Central Falls superintendent—mass teacher firings—has been demonstrated to be a failed model that will not result in the kinds of changes necessary to continue improving instruction and learning.
The council added that it was “appalled at recent comments by President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan condoning the firings.”
These comments are unacceptable, do not reflect the reality on the ground and completely ignore the teachers’ significant commitment to working with others to transform this school.
The comments are particularly disappointing in light of the recent state report, which found that the high school’s reading and writing proficiency have gone up 22 percent and 14 percent respectively over the past two years.
In a statement yesterday, AFT President Randi Weingarten summed it up this way:
Students and teachers at Central Falls High School deserve the best and the fact is that they haven’t gotten it. It is incumbent upon all stakeholders to turn that around, not by mass firings but by focusing together on programs that work and on providing students and teachers with the tools they need to succeed.
We ask the Central Falls school district to reconsider the mass firings and attempt to work out a genuine reform plan through a mediator to achieve the best outcome for students and teachers.
Read Weingarten’s full statement here.
The council strongly backed the teachers, saying:
We stand in support of the Central Falls Teachers Union in its fight to improve the teaching and learning in Central Falls schools, preserve the rights of its members and keep the teachers where they belong—in the school, working with the students and making progress on academics.
We call on the Central Falls administration to return to negotiations with the Central Falls Teachers Union and seek, in good faith, a collaborative path to proven reforms that provide students with the opportunity to succeed.
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“Central Falls—the poorest city in Rhode Island”
The deliberate economic impoverishment of many school districts is a common thread behind school closures across the nation.
The attacks upon public schools are taking place across the nation. Los Angeles, San Franciso, Long Beach, Detroit, New York City, were article subjects in recent stories on the WSWS.
Here are two current articles from the World Socialist Web Site http://www.wsws.org regarding Central Falls
Follow the links below to read the full articles, with photos included in the second article.
Obama applauds firing of Rhode Island teachers
By Jerry White
2 March 2010
In a speech before the US Chamber of Commerce in Washington, DC on Monday President Obama hailed the decision by school authorities in Rhode Island to fire the entire teaching and support staff at Central Falls High School.
The mass firings ordered by state school officials were part of a national plan developed by the Obama administration to deal with so-called “failing schools.” Seventy-four teachers and 19 other school employees were dismissed after they rejected a “turnaround” plan—authored by Obama’s education secretary Arne Duncan—which would have torn up their contract and forced them to work longer hours without additional pay.
Obama made it clear the firings would be as a model to impose his right-wing school agenda on teachers and other school employees throughout the country. This includes merit pay and other “performance-based” schemes, along with plans to shut down thousands of public schools and replace them with privately owned charter schools.
….
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/teac-m02.shtml
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(NOTE: This WSWS article contains three photographs)
Central Falls High School firings
Rhode Island school district seeks to tear up teachers’ contract
By Mike Ingram
1 March 2010
The mass firing of teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island on Tuesday, February 23, was greeted with predictable enthusiasm by the Obama administration. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, declared, “I applaud Commissioner Gist and Superintendent Gallo for showing courage and doing the right thing for kids.”
Duncan was referring to events at the school committee meeting at which the names of all 74 teachers and a further 19 staff members were read aloud in an announcement of their impending dismissal in the fall.
The firings are the result of Superintendent Frances Gallo’s adoption of the so-called “turnaround” option—one of four options set out by the Obama administration for dealing with “failed schools.” For the first time, Obama’s education policy requires states to identify their bottom 5 percent of schools in performance and “fix” them using one of four methods. The other options are school closure, takeover by a charter school or school-management organization, and transformation, which requires a longer school day and other attacks on the working conditions of teachers.
…
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/cent-m01.shtml
This is all due to last year on the Smoke Shop raid on the Narraganset Indians. Did you know the tribe’s students go to this school/ I think there are several Chenys and McCains that are behind this and drawing their full salary in Providence. I would bet some of those names pushing the school district are the same ones trying to get rid of the Narraganset indians.
Both Duncan and Obama are gloating over this gross injustice. It is time that organized labor give the democrats the boot as they certainly are not in support of working people with these kind of attitudes!
Tony Mazzochi was right! We need a third party!
Why do we need the mass demonstrations March 4th to defend public education?
What is behind the attack to destroy public education?
Here is a socialist perspective that cuts to the root causes on WHAT is happening and WHY!
The full Statement below was originally posted on the World Socialist Web Site here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/mar4-f23.shtml
For a socialist movement to defend education!
Statement of the International Students for Social Equality
23 February 2010
On March 4, students and workers throughout California and the US will demonstrate against the attack on public education and increases in tuition that are making a college education unaffordable for the majority of working class youth.
The ISSE encourages all youth and working people to take part in these events. It is high time for a fight back against the unrelenting attack on jobs, living conditions and social services!
However, demonstrations by themselves will not solve this crisis. What is necessary, above all, is a new political movement that unifies all sections of the working class in a common political struggle, directed at the source of the crisis: the capitalist system and the two political parties—the Democrats and Republicans—that defend it.
Having emptied the federal treasury through the bank bailout and the funding of two criminal wars, the big business politicians claim there is no money for education or any other basic services. They insist that only the affluent should get a decent education, while the vast majority of young people are consigned to poverty-stricken schools and a future of low-paying jobs or joining the military.
The right to education—including access to low-cost and even free higher education for many working class, minority and immigrant youth—was won through mass social struggles. Today, every politician, from Schwarzenegger to Pelosi to Obama, insists that universal access to quality education—along with health care, jobs and a home—is an extravagance that working people must learn to live without.
This is unacceptable. The working class is not responsible for the crisis of American capitalism or the economic meltdown produced by the recklessness and avarice of the Wall Street speculators. We must not pay for it.
Opposition to education cuts has found its strongest expression in California, where students throughout the state are planning walkouts in response to tuition hikes of up to 33 percent and the firing of thousands of staff. But this is a national and international struggle.
In New York, Michigan and other states, parents, teachers and students have organized protests to fight school closings and funding reductions. In Greece, Spain, Germany and other countries, there have been mass strikes and protests against cuts in higher education and other austerity measures.
The ISSE calls for these struggles to be integrated and for a fight for the international unity of the working class in defense of public education, jobs and decent living standards for all.
Some groups involved in the March 4 demonstrations have claimed tuition increases can be reversed through appeals to the politicians in Sacramento and Washington. This is not the case. This attack is a deliberate and conscious policy of the ruling class and both of its political parties, which are determined to make the working class pay for the Wall Street bailout and economic crisis through destroying the gains won by working people through decades of struggle.
Barack Obama is leading the attack on the right to public education. The president has used the economic crisis to blackmail bankrupt school districts into increasing the number of privately run charter schools and impose merit pay and other punitive “performance-based” schemes on teachers and school employees. An escalation of the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” program, Obama’s school “reforms” will increase inequality by cutting off funding for schools in poor neighborhoods and channeling resources to so-called priority schools, where a handful of young people will get an adequate education.
Millions hoped the election of Obama would mean the end of Bush’s hated policies of war, attacks on democratic rights and handouts to the wealthy. The last year has demonstrated that it is impossible to enact serious change through the two-party system, which is dominated by the financial aristocracy. A new political movement must be built so that the working class can assert its own, socialist solution to the crisis.
The International Students for Social Equality advocates the following program:
1. No education cuts! Billions to rebuild schools! Free public education for all! The ISSE calls for free, quality public education from kindergarten through university level. Pour trillions of dollars into the public education system to hire teachers and provide good wages and benefits, build new schools and equip every building with the most up-to-date technology and learning tools. The debts accumulated by students to pay for exorbitant tuition must be immediately canceled.
2. For an emergency public works program! Jobs for everyone who wants to work! The Obama administration has done nothing to provide relief for the tens of millions who have lost their jobs, incomes, health care benefits and homes. The fight to defend education must be linked up with the struggle to defend jobs, including those of city workers in Los Angeles and San Francisco and auto workers at the NUMMI plant in Fremont. The ISSE calls for a ban on all home foreclosures and the launching of a multitrillion-dollar program of public works to hire the unemployed and guarantee good-paying jobs for all.
3. Withdraw all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan! For an end to militarism and war! The US government spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year to send young people to their deaths in the interests of the American ruling class. The ISSE calls for the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. The US war machine must be dismantled, and the vast sums squandered on the military used to meet pressing social needs, both in the US and in countries ravaged by American bombs.
4. For the international unity of the working class! As the international scope of the economic crisis reveals, workers and young people in every country face the same struggle. The ISSE calls for the unity of the working class and rejects all efforts to scapegoat immigrants and divide the working class along racial, ethnic or national lines.
5. Nationalize the banks and large corporations! For equality and the redistribution of wealth! The question of who controls society’s wealth lies at the heart of the crisis in education. The wealthy have no interest in educating workers destined for unemployment or menial jobs, and it is their interests that dictate government policy. Taxes on the wealthy must be sharply increased to provide resources to rebuild social infrastructure in the US and internationally. The banks and major corporations must be nationalized and placed under the democratic control of working people in order to break the economic and political grip of the financial elite over society.
6. Defend democratic rights! The arrest of California students in response to protests in November shows what type of methods the government will use to suppress popular opposition. As part of a defense of democratic rights as a whole, the ISSE demands the dropping of all charges against student protesters, the ending of police repression on the campuses and neighborhoods, and an end to political censorship of socialist and left-wing views.
7. Mobilize the working class to defend education! Public education cannot be defended on the campuses alone; it requires a fight by the whole working class. This means uniting every section of the working class in a common struggle in defense of jobs, education and basic rights. This fight can only be carried out in opposition to the trade union apparatus, which works to subordinate all struggles to the Democratic Party and the capitalist system as a whole.
8. For the political independence of the working class! The experience of the Obama administration demonstrates that the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are the bitter enemies of workers and students. The precondition for a fight to defend education and other social programs is a complete and irrevocable break with the two parties of big business and the construction of a mass socialist party of the working class.
9. For socialism and equality! To defend education, the problem must be addressed at its roots: the entire structure of American and world society. No opposition to cuts in public education that accepts the parameters of the capitalist system can be successful. The alternative to capitalism is socialism. The defense and expansion of public education requires the reorganization of economic life on a world scale, to meet social need, not private profit.
If you agree with our program, make the decision to join the ISSE and take up the fight for socialism!
This mass firing was endorsed by Obama, who is turning out to be much worse than even those of us who didn’t vote for him expected.
Other than appointing a decent Labor Secretary (while underfunding the DOL), just exactly what has the president done that would justify all the volunteer effort, union dues, and high praise heaped on Obama by the labor movement?
Like most poor urban school systems, I’ll bet Central Falls has its share of teachers who were qualified to take a much better paying and lower stress job when they were fresh out of college; but took a job in a struggling school system like Central Falls because they “wanted to make a difference.” And I’d also be willing to bet that there are also some Central Falls teachers who spend part of their paychecks on textbooks and other school supplies for the kids because they “wanted to give something back to the community.” Shame on them!! That’s no way to get ahead in today’s greedy world!!
Firing of Central Falls, R.I., Teachers vs Firing NYC Teachers
The firing of entire staff is nothing new to teachers in the New York City Public School System. It is a part of both Option 1 and Option 2 in the Plan For Restructuring.
Therefore School Phase-out/Closure or Replacement of School Staff become options. However, there is an Option 3: Major Restructuring. This entails a dramatic change in school structure/organization or suspension of school based decision making authority.
All of the above are a part of the Region/District needs assessment of each identified school and are in consultation with staff and parents. And lest we forget, the Region/District determination of appropriate options for restructuring identified schools requires consultation with staff and parents. “The replacement of school staff must be consistent with existing contractual provisions.”
If “Negotiations over ways to improve the school between teachers and the school superintendent broke down when school officials insisted that teachers add new duties, some without any extra pay at all,” in Rhode Island ,this should have been a signal for both parties to continue negotiations. Surely, the wanton firing of Rhode Island professionals in a democratic society is not a picture of democracy in action. Dissent does not mean disloyalty. It is merely a means to become a part of the process of a just government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Therefore, it is up to the union to ensure that its members’ voices are heard and justice is served.
Blaming teachers for failures which occur within a school is unfair. It is time to look at how the schools are pauperized by the continued budget cuts: cuts which strangle education in inner city schools. It is unconscionable to even suggest further cuts to programs, resources and personnel in the already underfunded public schools. The failure of local and state governments to provide funding to economically poor citizens and their schools compromise the teachers’ efforts and the future of this great nation.
Our quest must be to secure public schools that reflect democracy in action because…the children are waiting. They are waiting for their only chance to get the education they deserve.
It is a dream that cannot be deferred.
Phyllis C. Murray
UFT Chapter Leader
Visit:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/02/25/firing-of-central-falls-ri-teachers-illegal-unjust-disgraceful/