The principals and staffs at two of the city’s lowest-performing schools must reapply for their jobs as part of a state-ordered overhaul of the troubled schools.
Any of the roughly 130 people who work at two Brooklyn high schools — Boys and Girls and Automotive — who want to keep their jobs next school year will face newly formed hiring committees made up of superintendents, teachers and principals union representatives, city appointees, and parents, according to a city-union agreement made Thursday. Teachers who choose not to reapply or who are not rehired will be placed in other Brooklyn high schools, according to the teachers union.
The state had ordered the city to put a plan in place at both schools to reevaluate their administrators and staffers and replace any who were “unwilling or ineffective,” according to a letter sent to the city Friday by State Education Commissioner John King, who conditionally approved the agreement. Earlier this year, the state designated the chronically low-achieving schools as “out of time” and required the city to make major changes. Final plans for the schools were due Friday, but the state gave the city an extension until Dec. 19 to file them.
In addition to the rehiring process, the schools will also add extra learning time for students and a mandatory week of summer training for teachers. In an effort to stabilize the schools, the city will not send them new students mid-year for the next two years, as Chalkbeat previously reported.
The long-struggling schools might also enact a host of other interventions, according to the preliminary plan the city submitted Friday. The city could audit teachers’ lessons and assessments, require personal graduation plans for each student, put extra student-support services in the school, shrink class sizes, and reduce teachers’ course loads, the proposal said. A joint city-union committee at each school will choose which changes to carry out.
The Bloomberg administration forced teachers at two-dozen struggling schools to reapply for their jobs in 2012 as part of a school-restructuring plan, which the United Federation of Teachers opposed and an arbitrator eventually stopped. Unlike the Bloomberg-era plan, the latest deal does not limit the number of teachers who can be rehired or require the principal to be replaced.
Chancellor Carmen Fariña attributed the union’s willingness to go along with the new plan to the “real partnership” between this administration and educators, a point that Mayor Bill de Blasio echoed.
“The agreement we’re announcing today is something we could only achieve because of the trust we’ve built with educators,” he said in a statement, “and our shared commitment to a city where every neighborhood has the strong public schools it deserves.”
The agreement follows the city’s announcement this week of a $150 million plan to rescue more than 90 low-performing schools by flooding them with supports for students and educators. The staffs at those schools do not have to reapply for their positions.
In his letter, King said the city’ final plans for the two out-of-time schools must include goals for each school around attendance, school culture, student credit-earning and course-taking, and “academic progress,” though it was unclear how academic progress will be measured.
The city still must submit improvement plans for nearly 250 other low-performing schools. Those were originally due in July, but the city received an extension through Friday. However, the city asked for more time, and King agreed to accept those final plans next month as well.
In a separate letter to Fariña, King said those plans must include targets similar to those expected for the two out-of-time schools and added that any struggling schools that do not improve must face “increased accountability.” He said the rehiring process and other changes at Boys and Girls and Automotive could provide a “blueprint for turnaround efforts” at other schools that need intensive interventions.
Fariña also agreed to provide a “detailed explanation” of the unusual arrangement she made with the new Boys and Girls principal, Michael Wiltshire, who she installed last month to replace the principal who abruptly left. Wiltshire not only received a $25,000 bonus to take on the tough assignment, but he also was given the option to leave after one year and to continue to oversee the successful school that he has led for a decade, Chalkbeat revealed last month. In a letter sent to King on Thursday, Fariña also promised to submit a sample weekly schedule for Wiltshire and a description of his duties after this school year.
In her letter, Fariña also said that the parent associations and leadership teams — which include administrators, faculty, parents, and students — at both schools have been “either lacking or non-existent.” The city helped reform them and will now start meeting with the “reconstituted” groups monthly, Fariña said. Chalkbeat previously reported that the city went around the leadership team at Boys and Girls, which had been aligned with the outspoken principal who resigned, when it appointed the new principal.
Finally, Fariña assured King that the schools’ admissions policies would not change. While the schools may not have changed how they admit students, Boys and Girls has adjusted its enrollment by advising struggling students to transfer out, Chalkbeat reported on Friday. Roughly 30 students have left the school since Wiltshire took over last month, sources there said.
Read the full agreements between the UFT and the city, the principals union and the city, and the UFT, principals union, and the city.