[Mpls] "Realignment" at MPS

[David Curle]

Today some of the details around the Minneapolis school district's
Kafkaesque decision to "realign" 185 teachers became clear.

The district's Human Resources department has taken the position that this
move is required under the current rules for preserving tenure.  Under the
decision, junior specialized teachers (such as special ed teachers) will be
laid off.  The district will replace senior, tenured teachers with more than
one license with less senior teachers.  Then the senior teachers will be
required to bid on the specialized positions corresponding to their
additional licenses.

At a meeting between the affected teachers and the union today,
representatives of the union, the district and Education Minnesota closed
ranks and all said the same thing - the tenure rules require this result,
and there is nothing they can do about it.

The Strand court decision on which the district's action is based involved
realignment of a few teachers at a single school.  The holding of the case
is that a district is designed to reassign teaching duties to protect senior
status "where reassignment or realignment and reassignment is practical and
reasonable."  Is there anyone who sees a massive shuffling of 185 teachers
as practical and reasonable?

If there's anyone on this list who the finds district's action defensible, I
'd love to hear it.

Some other tidbits about the district's decision, from a parent's
perspective:

1. The timing of the notice of this move seems designed to sweep the issue
under the rug.  Teachers were notified late in the week, right before a long
holiday when many of the people affected would be out of town.  Affected
teachers will be expected to bid on new positions Thursday THIS week -
without seeing the list of positions until 2 pm that day.
2. In the case of my sons' school, we will lose 2 experienced teachers.  It
goes against everything our school community works for.  We try to cultivate
a certain kind of teacher that fits with our approach to learning.  To have
them pulled from our school willy-nilly shows great disrespect to the entire
school community - teachers, students and parents - to say nothing of the
reassigned teachers themselves.
3. On the district level, the move simply creates more instability at a time
when the district is fully aware that instability is one of the factors that
negatively affects student performance.
4. One primary result of this move will be 185 teachers placed in roles they
do not want and that they are ill prepared for - hardly a recipe for good
teaching.  One of the reassigned teachers I know has not taught special
education for TWENTY YEARS - yet that's what she'll be doing this fall -
until she can drop her unwanted license and get back in the game the
following year.  What a waste!   This is an absurd policy decision that
seems divorced from reality.
5. Arbitrary decisions like this alienate parents from schools they want to
support.  We have chosen to place our children in Minneapolis schools in the
face of heavy criticism of the district from outside - one would think
district decisions would take our needs and wishes into account.
6. The district's communication states that the law requires this type of
realignment to be educationally "reasonable and practicable."  Realignments
within buildings are one thing; the wholesale uprooting of teachers across
the district does not meet that standard.

The Board of Education's contact information is at:
http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/Board_of_Education.html


David Curle
East Harriet