AFT focuses on Latino students

The Latino population is the fastest growing ethnic minority in the United States, making up 13.3 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Census Bureau. In 2002, Latinos made up 17 percent of the K-12 student population, and it is predicted that this figure will rise to 25 percent by 2025. This growth provides challenges, especially in regions, such as the Midwest and Southeast, that have had little experience in providing services to the Latino community.

Recognizing the challenges to our public schools, the AFT is calling for increased attention to the Latino community and to the education of Latino students.

A new AFT policy brief, “Closing the Achievement Gap: Focus on Latino Students,” provides a snapshot of the current demographic and achievement trends of Latinos, an analysis of the barriers that Latino students face and recommendations for improving the educational opportunities available to these children.

More than four in 10 Latino students are English language learners, and 45 percent of Latino students attend schools in high-poverty areas. In many of the nation’s largest school districts, at least one of three students is Latino. In some cities—Los Angeles, Miami and San Antonio, for example—Latino students make up the vast majority of the student population.

Despite some promising signs of progress among the school-age population at large, educational outcomes for Latinos have not improved dramatically in the last 30 years. The challenges to educating Latinos are exacerbated by the dropout rate among this major ethnic group, which is the highest in the country.

Latino students who do complete high school and pursue a higher education tend to enroll in community colleges. However, more than half of these students never complete a postsecondary degree.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics and others, key challenges jeopardizing Latino students’ chances to excel academically and later in life include: disproportionate attendance at resource-poor schools and lack of access to fully qualified teachers; parents with low incomes and a low level of formal education; high mobility of students whose families are migrant farm workers; and undocumented students who can’t attend college or work legally after attaining a degree.

The AFT’s goal is to assist our affiliates in helping to improve the education of Latino students. We must:

• Promote access to more academically rigorous coursework for Latino students;

• Call for the strengthening of dropout prevention programs;

• Promote research-based information on effective instruction for linguistically diverse students;

• Advocate for stronger professional development programs for teachers on effective instruction for English language learners;

• Continue to support federal and state legislation that allows undocumented students to seek a change in their citizenship status so that they can attend college and seek employment;

• Continue to help resource-poor schools improve and promote strategies that work, including early childhood education programs; and

• Promote adult education and parent involvement programs.

The policy brief is available online at www.aft.org/.

Small school reform in the spotlight

The AFT PreK-12 Teachers division leaders devoted much of their last program and policy council meeting to discussing the promise and pitfalls of downsizing high schools as a way to promote achievement. The “smaller schools” model may work, most participants said, if a number of key prerequisites are met—including a willingness to boost per-pupil funding for high school students and a commitment to do more than just promulgate a series of little schools saddled with a “big schools” mentality. Also important was an understanding that small-school reform must not come at the expense of successful high schools using traditional models—that big and small could and should peacefully coexist in many systems.

Many districts nationwide are either converting large high school buildings into schools-within-schools or creating smaller, new stand-alone schools in hopes that smaller learning communities will help faculty and staff get to know pupils and their families better and allow frontline educators to assume bigger roles as school instructional leaders. Designers also believe smaller high schools can focus on curriculum themes that will effectively engage students as learners and perhaps reduce dropout rates.

“We’re seeing fabulous things happening at the building level, and the big thing is to get districts to align policies” to build on gains, Chad Wick, president and CEO of KnowledgeWorks Foundation, told divisional leaders. The nonprofit group currently is working with eight urban districts in Ohio to promote small-school reform at the high school level, and Wick was joined by classroom teachers and AFT building representatives from Toledo and Cleveland Heights to give a firsthand assessment of projects under way in their districts.

Working in partnership with KnowledgeWorks on the “Ohio Eight” project is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested $616 million to support small-school reform across the nation.

Virtually all speakers acknowledged that smaller high schools are more expensive to operate than traditional schools. But, considering the alarming number of students who drop out before high school graduation, the extra investment might pay off handsomely if these new schools help more students complete high school successfully.

Don't they know there's a war on?

The sad fact is that public employee-reservists are often shielded less from lost pay and other disruptive effects of being called to active duty than are many private sector workers. AFT affiliates around the country are working to change that through lobbying efforts aimed at protecting the people who risk all to protect us.

One of the most ambitious legislative victories was in New York, where heavy backing from the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) and other AFT affiliates helped secure passage of supplemental pay, health insurance protection, relief from rising rates on installment loans and other supports for reservists called to active duty. The law, which protects public employees as well as students attending state higher education institutions, offers a broad range of benefits for active-duty reservists—from guaranteed access to videoconferencing centers, which help families keep in touch with their loved ones, to scholarship programs that provide the spouses and dependents of service personnel killed with the means to attend colleges and universities.

Other states have followed New York’s lead and adopted similar provisions for different groups of public employees. Alabama, for example, granted state employees and public education employees a pay supplement equal to the difference between their salaries as reservists and their regular pay. Alabama reservists also are granted relief from their share of health insurance payments and can carry their insurance forward.

The fight continues in states like Virginia, where AFT leader Jeion Ward, one of the newest members of the Virginia House of Delegates, has sponsored a bill to compensate public employees and local school employees while on active duty. Although the bill was tabled in the current session, Ward, who is president of the Hampton Federation of Teachers, has vowed to renew the fight in the next session.

Hampton “is a military town, and we hear from families suffering hardship,” she explains. “If you’re going to serve your country, then we have a responsibility to make sure that your family doesn’t suffer while you protect our nation.”

Due process fuels charter school organizing in Pennsylvania

The Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers (PaFT) can sum up its rationale for organizing charter schools in two words: due process. But the very reason that drives the state federation’s charter school organizing project also is the union’s largest hurdle.

With charter school teachers operating under yearly contracts, many are hesitant to support unionization for fear of retaliation—nonrenewal of their teaching contracts.

Charter school teachers’ concerns are not unfounded, says Candy Salinger-Lerner, the PaFT staff representative who is lead organizer of the charter school organizing project. After teachers at the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School overwhelmingly voted to unionize in December, the school’s chief academic officer cancelled the staff holiday dinner, rescinded the teachers’ holiday bonuses and changed all the locks so teachers could not enter the building early.

Overcoming teachers’ worries of retaliation is a challenge the PaFT has embraced, and Salinger-Lerner, who joined the state federation about a year ago, is just the person to head the project. After teaching for 26 years in the Philadelphia public school system, she took a teaching job with the Philadelphia Academy Charter School. “From the beginning, what I thought was missing [from the charter school] was the union—worker rights,” says Salinger-Lerner.

Charter schools, Salinger-Lerner says, have a large number of newer, younger teachers who “deserve to be mentored and brought up the way I was—through the union.”

Teachers can end a school year having no idea what their salary for the next year will be and even “having to negotiate their own pay increases and benefits,” Salinger-Lerner says.

“The AFT is committed to playing its role in addressing the issues that tend to pit public schools against charter schools,” says Phil Kugler, assistant to the AFT president for organizing.

Kugler maintains that if workers in charter schools remain unorganized, it “will make it more attractive for certain political leaders to promote expansion of charter schools.”

In addition to due process, Salinger-Lerner says unionization would ensure that charter school faculty are provided the same benefits as their counterparts in local school districts. Although the 1997 state law establishing charter schools requires this, she says, it isn’t happening in practice.

The performing arts school is the state federation’s second organizing victory among charter schools. West Oak Lane Charter School in Philadelphia was the first. There are approximately 80 charter schools throughout Pennsylvania, 49 of which are in Philadelphia.

Baltimore averts state takeover

Baltimore city leaders completed a last-minute $42 million loan to the city school system, averting a state takeover that leaders of the AFT-affiliated Baltimore Teachers Union warned would be “an educational fiasco” for the school system.

The city loan, completed in late March, was a last-ditch effort to avoid a state takeover that would have taken public school accountability away from officials elected by Baltimoreans and given the state the power to tear up the teachers’ contract. The state solution drew heated opposition from BTU and its members as well as local city leaders, who ultimately drew from a city rainy-day fund to pull the system back from insolvency.

“The proposal to replace Baltimore’s school board with a powerful state-controlled panel … could cause the fiscal mess confronting our schools to descend into an educational fiasco,” warned Baltimore Teachers Union president Marietta A. English. “Decisions concerning Baltimore schools would be made by bureaucrats and bean-counters who are not accountable to the public and whose primary interest in books is balancing them.”

The city loan was a lifeline, but not a solution, to the school system’s fiscal problems. To get the school system on sound financial footing, BTU worked with financial experts to develop a plan that would stabilize school finances, leave the system debt free by June 2005—and avoid disruptions to student learning. The union also identified additional available savings through early-retirement incentives for teachers with at least 30 years of service and through reduced school spending on contracted services.

English believes “this approach could eliminate the (school system) deficit—without the cold calculations that could undermine reforms under way in our schools, and without wresting oversight from the community where accountability rightly belongs.”

Union's AIDS campaign expands to other African countries

Thanks to the continued support of AFT affiliates and members nationwide, the work of the AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign is expanding. From a small pilot project in Zimbabwe two years ago, the effort to assist African teacher unions now includes Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa as well as other African countries. More than 12,000 African teachers have been trained as AIDS educators; they now have the information and resources they need to work with their colleagues to help prevent the spread of AIDS in one of the world’s most impoverished areas.

In South Africa, as many as 60,000 teachers are expected to die from AIDS before the decade is out. In Kenya, officials estimate that 70 teachers die of complications from AIDS each month. Similar numbers are being seen throughout the continent.

“We are now looking at expanding our work beyond prevention and education and looking at ways that teacher unions can assist in providing the care and medicines that people require,” says AFT secretary-treasurer Edward J. McElroy, who along with AFT vice president Thomas Y. Hobart Jr., participated in a fact-finding trip to Southern Africa earlier this year.

AFT members and locals have done outstanding work in raising funds for the campaign. More than $145,000 has been collected through the distribution of commemorative pins. Three AFT locals have been recognized as Leading Locals in the fundraising campaign, raising more than $2.50 per member: the Bellmore-Merrick (N.Y.) United Secondary Teachers, the Gary (Ind.) Teachers Union, and the Providence (R.I.) Teachers Union. The AFT Black Caucus New York State Chapter helped to raise more than $11,000 for the campaign and was recognized by the AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign with the 2004 National Service Award at the New York State United Teachers representative assembly in March.

More than 70 locals have participated in the campaign, with 20 locals contributing more than $1 per member. For more information on the campaign and a list of Leading Locals visit www.aft.org. Contact Gregory King in the office of the AFT president at gking@aft.org for an information packet on fundraising for the AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign.

Union wins battle to stop contracting out in Oklahoma City

An eight-month campaign to fend off a sweeping privatization proposal in the Oklahoma City school district ended in victory for the AFT in late March when the school board voted unanimously to reject a proposal that would have contracted out hundreds of PSRP jobs.

The district administration and school board had looked at bids from Sodexho and Aramark but concluded that the controversial plan to outsource close to 1,000 support staff positions wouldn’t save money—something the Oklahoma City Federation of Classified Employees (OCFCE) and its allies throughout the community had stressed repeatedly in recent months.

The final vote was preceded by a lively rally outside the school administration building—featuring labor, education, religious and civic leaders—as the school board met in a closed session. Employees and their supporters then packed the meeting, and many of them provided testimony about the risks of the contracting proposal. OCFCE president David Gray, who is also an AFT vice president, received a standing ovation after his remarks in which he said it was “time to scrap risky schemes like contracting out” and trust the district employees to help improve services.

“Our campaign to protect the safety of children, the quality of education and workers’ wages succeeded,” Gray said after the meeting.

While the vote was a huge victory for the union, the school board left open the possibility that it might hire a private company to manage the food service operation, which is running a large deficit. But the board backed off after a closer examination of the budget. “We made sure that cafeteria workers did not lose their jobs and become scapegoats for management-level problems,” he said.

The Oklahoma City effort involved a cross section of AFT staff. In addition, staff from the AFL-CIO’s Food and Allied Service Trades, or FAST, also provided valuable corporate research on the potential contractors as well as campaign strategies.

U.S. Supreme Court ruling blunts latest voucher threat

States may withhold scholarships from students preparing for the ministry, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year in a case that could have significant, positive implications on efforts to block vouchers at the state level.

The 7-2 decision in Locke v. Davey revolved around a challenge to Washington state’s decision to exclude theology students from participating in a higher education scholarship program funded with public money. The state constitution forbids the use of public funds for “any religious worship, exercise or instruction.” The high court held that the state’s action was a legitimate effort to separate government and religion, rather than an anti-religious action, as charged by the plaintiff, a theology student studying to become a church pastor. Thirty-six other states have similar prohibitions.

The Institute for Justice and other pro-voucher groups joined the challenge along with the Bush administration, arguing that the free exercise clause of the U.S. Constitution struck down these limitations in state constitutions and required states to offer scholarships for theological degrees whenever they offered general scholarships.

“Had we not won this case, our battle against vouchers in the state courts would have been dealt a significant setback,” says AFT counsel David Strom.