The quietly launched LAUSD Duffy-Cortines summer deal that bumped out permanent subs

On 10-29-09:

"Senority system in LAUSD keeps good teachers out,"
By Larry Sand, Updated: 10/29/2009 04:42:33 PM PDT

The writer is a former teacher. He sides with the union's deal to give priority for substitute teaching calls to go to the laid off teachers over the existing body of substitute teachers, many of whom have been subs for years.

This is a story that has generated a few comments. Some of these favoring the laid off teachers and some favoring the subs, especially noting that most of the subs have the greater seniority. You can see that at http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_13669698

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earlier stories as the Substitute Teachers came to realize their dangerous reality:

Sept. 22, 2009

"Veteran substitute teachers protest loss of work," L.A. TIMES- "L.A. NOW" section online http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/09/veteran-subs-protest-loss-of-work-and-endangers-health-benefits.html From the story:

Under the agreement, 1,800 full-time teachers who were laid off this summer are given preference for open substitute jobs. In L.A. Unified there are roughly 2,200 openings for substitute teachers every day.

Subs must work one day a month to keep their health benefits and must total
100 days worked in a school year to earn benefits for the next year. In his
statement, Duffy pledged to help the veteran subs recover the work hours they
needed.

The deal was criticized as a secret one because this part of the agreement was not given much or any publicity. The Times' writer says they had to go find this out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 15, 2009

"L.A. schools chief stands by controversial deal to use laid-off teachers as subs," [Updated] October 15, 2009 11:47 am, L.A. TIMES' "L.A. NOW" -

The Los Angeles schools superintendent says he opposes revoking an agreement that has imperiled health benefits for more than 1,000 veteran substitute teachers while costing hundreds of them regular work.

In an interview, Supt. Ramon C. Cortines said he stands by a deal that was designed to help recently laid-off full-time teachers by giving them preference for available substitute jobs over veteran subs with more seniority.

I think that Cortines is just tired of dealing with the same work and especially, he's not interested in helping AJ Duffy, the union president, to look good to his members- and then create more power for Duffy. The idea of dealing with the union to save jobs was a task in itself and this detail is more Duffy's problem than that of Cortines.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

October 22, 2009

"Veteran L.A. substitute teachers losing work -
L.A. Unified Supt. Ramon Cortines stands by a one-year deal made with the teachers union to give assignment preferences to laid-off instructors, including those with less seniority" By Howard Blume, October 22, 2009.

The arrangement to bypass teacher seniority only came to light when the district provided a copy of the agreement to The Times. The deal then created a firestorm within United Teachers Los Angeles, especially when veteran substitutes noticed that they were getting little or no work. Many subs rely on their district employment as primary income. They also get health benefits when they work at least 100 days a year and at least one day a month.

Because of the ongoing state budget crisis, the Los Angeles Unified School District on July 1 laid off about 2,000 full-time teachers who had not yet earned tenure. About 1,800 of them then signed up for sub work. On average, the district employs about 2,200 substitutes a day.

You can see from the numbers that after assigning the substitute assignment calls to the laid-off teachers, there's not much left for anyone else. It doesn't do much for the regular subs, who were effectively doomed by the Duffy-Cortines arranged agreement. Cortines say it is designed to keep teachers around until the economy improves and they can come back to LAUSD.

He did not mention that there is a steady decrease in enrollment in LAUSD schools over the last decade, at the same time a school building surge is continuing, now producing about a new school per month.

As an aside, consider that (1.) many of these new schools will ultimately become managed by charter schools and (2.) you have lots of school in the fifth year of PI (Performance Improvement) status.

After 3 consecutive years of PI status, the state can take over the school. Right now, taking over schools is sort of "on the back burner" for the State, preoccupied with some other problems, so any changes will be slow to come, but meanwhile, 2 or 3 more years worth of students will be churned out of the LAUSD, either by graduation or dropping out, educated NOT to their fullest potential.
==========================================================================

Here's an abstract of a doctoral work: "National Implications: An Analysis of E-Mentoring Induction Year Programs for Novice Alternatively
Certified Teachers" that considers the importance of mentoring on novice teachers, a category of teachers that leaves the profession at high rates (30% and up) within the first five years of teaching. It considers the impact of mentoring and e-mentoring to reduce the attrition rate. Pay rate, to the surprise of lots of people, is not among the leading reason for leaving teaching.
http://www.nationalforum.com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Anthony,%20Taiwanna%20D.%20An%20analysis%20of%20E-Mentoring.pdf

The object of the study is what to do about keeping and making good teachers by mentoring approaches that will support them and make them better teachers who, in turn will produce better educated students.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the Article of June 8, 2005:

The issue of The Total View newletter from Success Performance Solutions that advises on hiring at topic 1. Fifty Percent of New Teachers Leave in 5 Years. on http://www.super-solutions.com/teachershortages.asp

According to a National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) survey of 8,400 public and private school teachers, the main reasons for high teacher turnover and attrition rates are with inadequate administrative support (38 percent) and workplace conditions (32 percent).

Teacher recruitment and other supply-side solutions may not only fail to solve the problem, but could also make it worse if recruitment strategies involve lowering teacher standards, or if the effect of increasing teacher supply is to deflate salaries or erode working conditions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2008

Here is an article "Why Are New Teachers Leaving- The Case for Beginning-Teacher Induction and Mentoring? -that talks about what's needed to help new teachers become successful, namely the mentoring of new teachers and how the structure should be to establish such support on a systemic basis. This is a very detailed plan that is described showing the entire plan and what should be done and what is the purpose of the actions.

http://www.icfi.com/docs/beginning-teachers.pdf

UTLA, Contracts, Layoffs and Best Teachers- Steve Lopez writes.

Steve Lopez of the L.A. Times gets to the topic of the UTLA union contract and the teacher layoffs with a prominent factor that neither item addresses, comparative excellence in any teachers.
"Seniority, not quality, counts most at United Teachers Los Angeles," Steve Lopez, L.A. Times, March 25, 2009 http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez25-2009mar25,0,4942695.column

The story compares UTLA's contract (347 pages) with Green Dot Public Schools contract (33 pages). Some of the same things I have seen before and mentioned in the postings are also pointed out in his article as important considerations, and that main one is that the layoffs are going by seniority that is a provison agreed to by the union. One teacher, Robert Rubisa, a third-grade teacher whose wife, a less senior teacher of 4th grade, is being laid off, had talked about his experience with the union positon,

Rubisa said he went to his union rep and suggested that teachers give back
some of their sick days to help balance the budget and avoid some layoffs.

"The union rep said we should not balance the budget on teachers' backs," Rubisa
said.

The tentative contract announced yesterday highlights that furloughs will not happen this year. I wondered when I read that whether more teacher jobs could be saved by using that to some extent, spreading around some of the loss instead of complete elimination of teacher's jobs. The response stated above is what I had heard before as furloughs had been discussed and apparently that's out as well as a partial measure to save jobs.

Lopez, as usual, brings out some views with his positioning of comments, facts and scenarios. A lot of what I have observed matches the view of Lopez not because we are both so smart but because the identifcation of the issues is so obvious an inescapable. Lopez goes further with comparing the younger operation by Green Dot, the charter school organization, and the way they seem to use more pragmatic approaches to the job. UTLA is shown to be burdened by its contract with an accumulation of assorted boilerplate provisions to the extent that it becomes undecipherable to him in seeking answers to actual situations. The UTLA is undeniably an organization with a particular interest and sometimes it does not operate for the best outcomes of everyone, even though it serves good purposes in other situations.