More on contract - I signed the petition to delay the vote

After signing, I sent this in an e-mail to all staff at my school yesterday:

The big concern I have with the contract is the speed with which we have been expected to approve it. There is an online petition that I wanted to pass along that asks the BTU to delay the vote:

http://teach2010.epetitions.net

Ms. English was quoted by the Baltimore Sun as being willing to delay the vote if enough BTU members wanted a delay.

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In my opinion, the BTU spent months and months negotiating and that expecting us to approve the contract in a matter of a couple of weeks isn't reasonable.

Frankly, I am pretty excited about the contract, which I think could bring a lot of good with it to the BCPSS, but I have some dissonance about the concerns that we all are raising about the equity of any contract that attaches a higher salary to student performance. For example: What assessment tool will be used? Will teachers have any voice in the assessment tools? How does class load / class size factor into this? What about teachers who teach students with lower skills coming into the class than other teachers? Will this create any competition between collegues? If IB, AP, and HSA test results are used to assess teachers for their salary, how exactly does that work when scores do not come out until well into the summer? What about classes without external tests? What happens when the "Race to the Top" money runs out? How will the panel that decides teacher raises be chosen?

There are too many questions right now, and, while a union rep is visiting our school a couple days before the vote to answer questions, I still think we're being asked to make the decision too swiftly. The petition referenced above asks for a delay to the vote, so that more information can be disseminated, and I think this might be prudent.

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A few more thoughts (I thought too pointed to put in the e-mail):

1. Why is the only public forum on the new contract on the day of the vote? This is just utterly ridiculous.

2. And, so many want the teachers to take a "leap of faith" on this, but why should we trust the people we're being asked to leap for? Dr. Alonso has had a mixed tenure, in my opinion. I love some of the changes he has brought (more charter schools, making schools smaller, ushering out a lot of the dead weight in the system), but I pointedly disagree with some of his philosophies, especially regarding what responsibility kids have in the process of learning -- a philosophy I think hurts the kids. I think the actions he's taken with my particular school have been way slooooooowwww and I don't think his oversight on principals with their new independence has been particularly effective. So I'm not hook, line, and sinker for everything Alonso offers.

And, then, our union. Oh, our ineffective union. I e-mailed Marietta English a number of times during negotiations and didn't hear back from her. I think, in general, the union does more to protect bad teachers than to help student learning.

So, the fact that the boards will be half North-Avenue people and half-Union people does not necessarily make me feel the safeguards are in place. I have issues with both sides.

Again, the contract excites me. But the lack of information is a concern, especially as the teachers' collective voice was listened to in the negotations of the big pieces of the contract.

Lastly, for full disclosure: I will be out of town for my sister's wedding from Wednesday - Sunday, so I will not be able to vote either way on the contract on the scheduled date. A delay is the only way I would be able to vote.

I think the vote is going to be extremely close. We'll see. I'd vote for it right now, I think, and the BTU rep coming to my school on Monday has the capacity to win me over.