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The Boston Globe
November 16,
2002, Saturday, Editorial, p. A18
Editorial
Pilot-School hope
The Boston Teachers
Union has taken an ill-timed hard line position against a worthy school
reform effort by one of the city’s leading charitable organizations.
What should be an exciting public-private partnership could now be threatened
by stale thinking and old grudges.
The nonprofit Boston
Foundation had anticipated that six or eight forward-looking schools in
Boston might show interest in its recent offer to provide $15,000 planning
grants to faculties willing to become pilot schools. But the funders were
surprised last week when administrators and teachers from 30 schools attended
a “bidders conference” focusing on transforming existing schools
into pilots, which are designed to encourage better education through
greater autonomy from the teachers union and the central administrative
office. Many union members were also surprised and apparently felt threatened.
Despite a prior agreement by union leadership to remain “neutral”
on the initiative, members voted Wednesday to instruct teaching faculties
to withhold their applications.
The expansion of
pilot schools in Boston is key to school improvement. The freedom to adjust
academic schedules, school days, school hours, personnel practices, and
educational missions places students where they belong - above union work
rules and administrative requirements. But conversion to pilot status
requires a two-thirds vote of the teaching faculty. Even without organized
resistance, achieving that super majority is a tough task. And now it’s
even tougher.
The Boston Foundation
wisely recognizes that the success of the pilot school movement depends
on conversion of existing schools. Funds are scarce for new school buildings.
But the foundation’s pledge of “substantial implementation grants”
of up to $100,000, if accepted, could still put existing schools on the
road to greater autonomy and accountability.
Union president Edward
Doherty says his membership resents the “short notice” of the
foundation offer and “pressure” from the School Department to
submit proposals by December. He says the union will need a “couple
of weeks” to digest the foundation’s proposal and inform the
membership of its ramifications.
The teachers union
recognized the wisdom of pilot schools back in 1994 when it agreed to
their creation as a means both to improve the classrooms and counter growing
public interest in publicly funded, privately operated charter schools.
Eleven pilot schools now operate in the city. The need for more is as
obvious as the roughly 1,600 Boston students in the Class of 2003 who
have yet to pass the state MCAS tests required for graduation.
Copyright 2002 Globe
Newspaper Company
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