Test of wills on pilot schools

By Scot Lehigh  |  April 29, 2005

IT’S A telling irony.

The Boston Teachers Union, through its obstruction, may just succeed in doing something the charter schools haven't done with their successes: Make a charter supporter of Mayor Thomas Menino.

Despite their impressive record, Menino has opposed charters, preferring to nudge the existing system toward reform rather than to let dozens of experimental academies bloom. But last week, efforts to resolve an impasse over pilot schools -- the Boston public school system's answer to charters -- broke down because of the teachers union's refusal to honor a previous deal giving pilots the flexibility to decide for themselves on overtime pay.

''It is outrageous," Menino said of the union stand. ''We have put in place a pilot school system that works, that the teachers union agreed to in negotiations with us in 1994."

That flexibility didn't come free. ''We paid for it with the teachers contract," Menino noted. As the mayor sees it, the only real change since then is that, with 14 Boston charters slated for the fall, charters are bumping up against the cap in state law, thus removing the threat that more can open in Boston. But if the union doesn't change its stance, Menino said he may support lifting the charter cap.

''If they want to go to extremes, I will have to go to extremes," he said in an interview.

Certainly the union's stand threatens to cripple the pilot school movement.

At pilots, teachers keep the union pay scale but give up the pages of work rules that make it difficult to change a school. Management cedes some budget authority and curriculum requirements. The schools decide for themselves whether overtime will be offered for extra hours or extra duties.

Assignment to a pilot is voluntary, and if teachers don't like working there, they can easily transfer out. No school can be converted to a pilot unless two-thirds of its faculty agree.

Pilots have proved a popular experiment -- so popular that when the Boston Foundation announced it would give planning grants to schools that might want to become pilots, interest was widespread.

But last June, the Boston Teachers Union turned obstructionist. Even though 24 of 29 faculty members at the Thomas Gardner Elementary School in Allston had voted to become a pilot, union president Richard Stutman, exercising a provision in the contract, vetoed the school.

His veto has cast a chill on the pilot movement.

The union's principal objection? It wants to reimpose the same overtime requirements in pilot schools that the union contract has for traditional public schools: that is, OT for any mandatory time worked beyond 6.5 hours in elementary schools and six hours, 40 minutes in secondary schools.

''We paid dearly in terms of salary increases in order to get that flexibility, and they now want to come back and restrict it," says Michael Contompasis, chief operating officer for the Boston Public Schools. This from a union whose current contract, when steps and other provisions are included, will mean raises of 30 percent over three years for some teachers.

Stutman wouldn't consent to an interview. But Steve Crawford, the public relations consultant speaking for him, had this to say: ''The inequity that exists when some pilot school teachers are paid for mandatory overtime and some are not is one that cannot continue." So much for giving individual pilot schools flexibility.

To camouflage its decision to walk away from pilots, the union issued a press release emphasizing its plan for so-called ''Discovery" schools -- schools that would implement the union's, um, vision by taking back the flexibility it had previously agreed to.

How do you spell charade?

As Paul Grogan, the widely respected president of the Boston Foundation, points out, there is a basic conflict between teachers' desire to be treated as professionals and the Boston Teachers Union's insistence on a contract so rigid it would more appropriately apply to assembly line workers.

''True professionals don't operate the way the BTU wants to operate," he says.

Neither do charter schools. And their flexibility is one clear reason for their success.

So bravo for Menino for firing a shot across the union's bow. Now the mayor needs to match words with deeds.

Here's what Menino should do next: Bring the Gardner School's pilot plan back for another vote. And make it clear to Stutman that if the union chief vetoes it again, the mayor will file home-rule legislation to lift the charter cap as it applies to Boston.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.