Milwaukee Public Schools contract aims to improve hiring
Tentative teacher deal gives boost to high-needs schools
A tentative teacher contract agreement announced Wednesday for Milwaukee Public Schools would mean the process of hiring teachers would start sooner each spring and operate with more of a welcome mat for people willing to work in high-needs schools or teach subjects in which there are shortages of teachers.
If approved, the contract also would give teachers a larger role in deciding what happens to students after suspensions or violent incidents.
The agreement offers teachers raises of 2.5% this year and another 2.5% next year, and it makes no major changes in health insurance or fringe benefits. It also leaves in place the rule that requires MPS teachers to live in the City of Milwaukee.
The agreement reinstates a mentoring program for new teachers that was dropped for cost reasons several years ago."I think this is a contract that respects the work of our teachers," said Dennis Oulahan, president of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association.
MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said, "We've changed our systems and processes to try to level the playing field in making sure we have highly qualified teachers in the lowest-performing schools." He added that "this bargain was focused mainly on teacher quality."
Both MPS management and union leaders called the changes in hiring practices "significant." They are aimed at responding to concerns expressed both by people working in schools and in studies by national organizations that the highest-needs schools in Milwaukee generally end up with less-experienced teachers, that some MPS hiring practices make matters worse and that a high turnover of teachers early in their careers is costing MPS money and quality.
A study issued recently by The New Teacher Project, based in New York, said MPS was losing good candidates for teaching jobs to suburban and private schools because the hiring process started too late and was not open enough to newcomers.
The agreement would change the date by which teachers give notice that they will be retiring or resigning for the next school year from April 1 to March 1 and would allow schools to begin interviewing for openings March 1 instead of May 1.
It also would allow about 40 schools with weak records to interview new applicants for MPS jobs from the start of the interviewing period. Now, only current MPS teachers can be considered in the first round of interviews. Low-performing schools and schools in less-popular neighborhoods say they have trouble attracting job candidates under the current system and are cut off from going outside the system until the summer.
The new contract also would allow any school to interview new applicants for jobs in subjects that are hard to fill - math, science, special education and bilingual instruction - from the start of the hiring process.
Tim Daly, president of The New Teacher Project, praised the changes in the contract, saying that more Milwaukee teachers could now have a say in who their colleagues are.
He said the proposed changes would "build on the success of the interview team model," so more teachers will be chosen by interview teams at the schools rather than being assigned to schools by the central office.
"Everybody is going to be happy with the direction this leads them," he said.
He added that moving up the hiring process also would help MPS compete with suburban districts in hiring quality teachers.
Safety issues
Changes in the contract related to school safety come after the last school year was marred by several violent incidents. Oulahan said that while the changes may appear minor, he thinks they would be important in actual practice. For example, teachers would be included in decisions on what to do with a student who is returning to school after a suspension. The contract also opens the door for more teachers to testify at expulsion hearings when they have been victims of an assault.
Andrekopoulos said the contract would provide more consistency in student discipline procedures so that teachers are more universally a part of the conversation when a student returns from a suspension.
The agreement covers 2007-'09 and will be retroactive to July 1. The agreement needs to be approved by teachers, who will vote on it in coming weeks, and by the School Board, which is expected to vote Oct. 30.
School Board member Jeff Spence, at a news conference with Andrekopoulos and union leaders, said he was "ecstatic" about the agreement and believed it would lead to increased student achievement.
