Transforming Labor-Management Relations in Public Education:
A Focus on Student-Centered Decision-Making

December 1, 2003

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A conversation with
Adam Urbanski, President, Rochester Teachers Union; Vice-President, American Federation of Teachers
Director, Teacher Union Reform Network
Manuel Rivera, Superintendent of Schools, Rochester Public Schools

Moderators
Paul Reville, Executive Director, Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC
Roberta Schaefer, Executive Director, Worcester Regional Research Bureau

SUMMARY: The following is a summary of the main points of the forum. It is not an exact transcript and should not be relied upon. This summary was prepared by State House News Service and is reprinted here with their kind permission

Event Transcript
Officials from Rochester, New York traveled to the Worcester Centrum Centre Monday afternoon to discuss their collective commitment to student achievement above all else. They explained how they put traditional biases aside and agreed to living contracts, benchmarked teacher salaries and common standards of accountability.

The discussion was sponsored by the Worcester Regional Research Bureau and the Center for Educational Research & Policy at MassINC, which is in the midst of examining new models of labor-management relations in public education.
The conversation featured Rochester Public Schools Superintendent Manuel Rivera and Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Union, vice president of the American Federation of Teachers and director of the Teacher Union Reform Network. It was moderated by Paul Reville, director of the Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC and Roberta Schaefer, executive director of the Worcester Regional Research Bureau.

Roberta Schaefer, Executive Director, Worcester Regional Research Bureau: I want to explain the genesis of this event. The bureau recently completed a study on the Worcester teachers' contract. That study is not the focus of today's discussion. We conducted that study for three reasons. The contract will terminate at the end of this month. We are interested in how fiscal constraints would impact collective bargaining. And we wanted to know what has changed since education reform was enacted ten years ago. The issues reach well beyond Worcester. Every district in the nation is facing these issues. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, every district is forced to confront the central goal, which is to improve student achievement and the role of collective bargaining agreements in working towards that role. So we are looking at what is happening elsewhere in the nation.

The work of the Teachers Union Reform Network, which is trying to transform unions into agents of education reform, seemed worth an in-depth look. The Center for Education Research and Policy is looking at new models of labor-management relations in the public schools. Paul Reville and I have known each other for 23 years and came of age together in Worcester. He was instrumental in putting together the 1993 education reform act. We have argued with each other, joked with each and chided with each other.

Paul Reville, Executive Director, Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC: I am thrilled to be here. It's like a homecoming. Worcester is still my hometown. The Center is a year old. We are located at MassINC. We attend to our mission through research, convening and advocacy. We are committed to an evidence-based civil discourse on education. Two of the urban high schools we recently cited as high performing statewide are in Worcester. We have an interest in being a statewide organization. The whole relationship between adults is at the core of the educational endeavor. Until we fundamentally reform relationships, it will be difficult to achieve results for students. We are launching a national study of places where labor and management does business in different ways that place student achievement at the center. Today we focus on Rochester, New York. We have the two key leaders, the superintendent and the president of the teachers' federation.

Manuel Rivera, Superintendent, Rochester Public Schools: Rochester is a city of 275,000 in a county of a million. It is a mid-size district. About 85 percent of students are African American or Latino. Over ten to 20 years, it has become increasingly eligible for free or reduced lunch. We have a host of challenges. We have about 52 schools, with five to seven high-performing and another third demonstrating significant progress.

Flash back 12 years. When I became superintendent, I was 39. We had a new mayor and a school board at odds. Partnerships with collective bargaining units were not valued. There was no common understanding about accountability. The mayor would give one perspective and the teachers' union another. I had no contract with the union. It took a year and a half to get one done. It was quite a bloody time. We were fodder for the local newspaper.

As a new superintendent it was quite interesting. Everyone coming at you had the right answer. There was not a lot of consensus.

Fast forward to a year and a half ago. In my eight years with Edison, I worked with a number of unions across the country to resolve conflict. I would develop new contract addendum. I worked in Detroit, Miami, Las Vegas, Colorado. It was a great learning experience. When I came back I said I would not come back unless we were committed to a partnership. It's not just rhetoric. We have spent a good deal of time reaching agreement about performance measures, interventions, supporting schools that are doing well. If you go to the union office today, you see the same school performance charts as you would see in my conference room. The other key ingredient is a relentless commitment to improving student achievement. That is the glue that holds us together.

There are major strategies that we agree on together. We have modest gains in elementary schools. Performance is dismal at the middle grades. We made an agreement to redesign the secondary schools. We are working with local colleges to create smaller school environments. We visited a Boston public school that established a small school with Northeastern. We work together on professional development, and on implementation. We resolve conflict. Walking away from the table is not allowed. That's a temper tantrum.

As we talk about our own labor-management relationships, it's all for naught if we are not making a difference in our schools. We talk about bringing union leaders and principals together. We are looking at decentralizing collective bargaining. We have serious discussions about having school teams of teachers negotiating with principals for changes to the master bargaining agreement. We work through larger issues and support decision-making taking place at the school level. We replicate proven programs and practices. Let's not hesitate to close a school if it's not performing and make an opportunity for others to step in. Leadership development is across the board, with faculty and administrators.

We are looking at better ways to reinforce that we want to be performance driven. We use data better to inform instruction. And we work on teacher recruitment and retention. The data from students in grades 6, 7 and 8 showed the greatest number of people wanting to transfer out, so we needed to focus on retention. Adam and I spend a good deal of time getting out to schools together. We are sometimes invited by faculty. We have a school improvement planning process.

Adam Urbanski, President, Rochester Teacher Association, Director, Teachers Union Reform Network: I am delighted to be here for a very serious conversation. Public education is in deep trouble, especially in urban America. I would call the urban schools in this country our nation's educational intensive care unit. We are pretty much on our last leg.
It is imperative that we make significant improvement. It will be tough enough with us all pulling in the same direction. We are doomed if we are at odds with each other. If we can't get our act together, there is hardly any reason that the children would.

If the schools don't improve, the public will turn more than they have to privatization schemes and other options that don't bode well for society. A strong public education system is a major contributor to our democratic way of life and upward mobility and opportunities that many of us have had. So I take this quite seriously. We are all in the same boat together. If public schools fail, there will be little need for superintendents or union presidents. If you can prove that the leak is the other person's fault, the boat still goes down. The work falls under building good systems and better relationships. One without the other would be tantamount to one hand clapping. We cannot develop good systems if we have lousy relationships. Wonderful relationships are wasted if they are not used to build good systems.

The worst-case scenario is for adults to heighten the level of comfort with one another while the systems still fail. Most agree that good systems must be built, but that good relationships are a matter of fate. That is not true. They can be built, if you work at it. We recognize that in our personal lives, but somehow fail to in our public lives.

We are admonished once that if you don't have something that is primary, then nothing is primary. The primary thing is to improve the learning of students. All else ought to serve that. That is the difference between collaboration and collusion. If it is not about student learning, it is collusion. We are trying to use the collective bargaining process to build a more genuine profession for teachers and better schools for kids.

I would like to share 30 years worth of learning in five minutes. Forty-nine percent of what affects student learning is home and family factors, children's readiness to learn. Good schools try to get a handle on that. It is a caution so we don't over-promise that if we give enough money we can deliver. No way can we educate children without considering their families and readiness to learn. It is not an excuse but a context. Education reform would work best with childcare and housing and health care and juvenile justice and job training reform.

Of all factors in direct control of educators, nothing matters more than the knowledge and skills of the educators, the people I represent. This is why the marriage of teacher unionism and quality is so natural. We are elected to help them, to help them get a voice. Teacher qualifications account for 43 percent of student achievement. The impact of teacher qualifications dwarf class size at 8 percent. Suppose I teach math and have 40 kids, and I don't know math. You cut my class in half, and the only 20 who benefit are the 20 who left.

If you have limited dollars to invest, you can invest in lowering the teacher-pupil ratio. You will get more benefit in increasing teachers' salaries to attract and retain teachers. You get the highest bang for the buck in increasing teacher knowledge and skills. In a typical high school in America, there is a 22 percent chance that they will have an English teacher who has never majored or minored in English. Qualified teachers are hard to get. Teachers matter most. There is limited money. Put whatever money you have in teachers. No technology will ever make up for that essential ingredient. The hallmarks of genuine profession are shared knowledge base, high and rigorous standards, professional preparation, induction, continuous learning, nurturing students' readiness to learn, professional discretion and collegiality. Principles for learning-centered schools include knowledge-based learning, student learning standards, safe and disciplined environment, active learning and student effort, authentic assessments, small schools, leadership and management, coordination of health and social services, home and family involvement, and shared accountability.
Let's end with lessons learned. Change is inevitable but growth is optional. Reform is painful but the pain in itself is evidence that it's real. Letting go is more difficult than adding on. The problem with today's schools is they are precisely as they always were. The general public holds suspect any school that does not resemble what they remember. I'm learning that if teachers are not agents of reform, we will remain targets of reform. The risks of not trying are even greater.

Paul Reville: Rochester is known for professionalizing teaching. How have you worked together, and what have you accomplished? How has that impacted students?

Manuel Rivera: The union and district came together 15 years ago to create a career in teaching program. We revamped performance appraisal, looked at how we support teachers in the classroom, agreed on professional standards for teachers.

Adam Urbanski: We have internships, residency, teachers and teacher leaders. We accord responsibilities and privileges and compensation according to the stage of the career you are in. For example, our youngest colleagues are sheltered from what we call the most challenging assignments. It has a lot of benefits, and it is structured in such a way that it is a good match with what students need

Roberta Schaefer: Thank you. Please be more specific about changes in the contracts over the years. What impact have you seen from these changes on student achievement?

Manuel Rivera: In 1993, we grappled for a year on the question of accountability. You can't talk about it without some agreement on performance measures. We agree on a framework but also about consequences and incentives. Schools that demonstrated excellent progress could access a $1 million fund. A lot of the reforms we had in the early 90s were more systemic - leader teachers and different types of authentic assessments and school-based planning where teachers are involved in decision-making. That evolved in a good way. We saw gains in different sites. We saw gains in schools that embraced all the things important to student achievement. We have seen gains at elementary schools and there is much more that can be done.

Adam Urbanski: We do negotiations differently. We don't relegate it to a once-in-a-while event. We considered that neglect. We have what is called a living contract. We have monthly meetings. We negotiate all the time. We have meetings additionally on an as-needed basis. We have language that neuters some of the most daunting issues like salary. We no longer argue about salary. We have language in some instances where it says this language shall apply in future negotiations. It says salaries will be benchmarked to the average of the five highest-paying districts in our county - there are 19 districts in our county. The concept is competitiveness. We will do some benchmarking and assure the children that they will always be competitive in retaining and attracting teachers. I had proposed a formula that benchmarked salaries based on the five highest paying districts and professions. But you don't always get what you want.

Roberta Schaefer: Is the school budget independent of the municipal budget?

Manuel Rivera: No. We receive revenue from the state and the city.

Paul Reville: You talk about collective bargaining school by school. Is it a system of schools or a school system? How many prerogatives have you been willing to devolve to the local schools, like budget, personnel, seniority?

Manuel Rivera: In four or five weeks we worked out an agreement on a living contract. We still see ourselves as a school system. We will have parameters about salaries and benefits. We agreed to have a group come back to us with recommendations about parameters and what authority each school would have to negotiate apart from the master agreement.

Adam Urbanski: We have a master contract and provisions will continue unless you want to negotiate rules that are different but do not affect others or require additional resources. We see it as honoring the fact that most educators are adults so why not give them opportunity? Why should they have to beg for waivers? Central systems ought to be there as a failsafe, not as a dictating system. It is more comparable to a free society to do it that way.

Paul Reville: What about personnel?Adam Urbanski: We have school-based planning committees made of teachers, administrators, parents and high school students. They are independently elected. It's one constituency, one vote. There must be buy-in from each constituency. We don't need the kind of protection that the seniority provision used to provide when management unilaterally made decisions. If there is an opening, all qualified teachers can apply and the school selects the best person regardless of whether they are the most senior person. It's the same for an administrative position or a principal's position.

Roberta Schaefer: Are there questions from the audience?

Audience Question: I used to chair a negotiating subcommittee on a school committee. In the living contract, what place do grievances have?Manuel Rivera: The living contract committee in the past 18 months - we do not get involved in resolving specific grievances. We have a labor relations person and the union side has an individual, who deals with grievance resolution. In the years I have been around, only one grievance has gone before the school board.

Adam Urbanski: We have put a higher priority to work with management to eliminate things to prevent grievances. We work as hard now on preventions as we used to on grievance processing. Where there are a lot of grievances we drill deeply to find out why. Most grievances are due to bad practices.

Audience Question: The process for accountability, from what I am hearing, came from within in Rochester. Is there a significant difference between this and having it be mandated from above?

Manuel Rivera: If you are going to change districts, you have to own and be responsible for the performance of children. I get along with the commissioner but I won't hesitate to say that I don't need you guys to tell me which schools are not performing. We put together our accountability report and take ownership of that. We recognized the importance of standardized tests but also that those are not the only measurements of student learning. We are committed to alternative assessments.

Adam Urbanski: I meant every word he said. We are fortunate to have a superintendent who openly admits that we cannot ignore federal or state-imposed assessments. But we do not have to pretend that they are always helpful and never hurtful to learning. We are improvising and finding ways to satisfy the political accountability demands while encouraging teachers to meet their moral obligations to do right by kids.

Audience Question: I invite you to come by Clark University. It was a great presentation and really inspiring. How do you break down barriers between labor and management? You clearly have a real strong relationship. How do you institutionalize that?

Manuel Rivera: This is the right question and one we wrestle with together. It is about being real clear about how we work together. We are creating central structures. It's for naught if we can't institutionalize this. We pay close attention to it and are working on it. We bring all of our principals together with union leaders. As we meet with schools to talk about achievement, we bring together union leaders and the principals. We don't have it completely locked in yet but we know it needs a lot of close attention.

Adam Urbanski: It is the toughest challenge. It has not been until now very possible in most places. There has rarely been a genuine partnership. We are in the midst of developing standards now for our partnership because we think it is so important.

Paul Reville: We talk a lot about trust. If it's only about the relationship between the two leaders, it is not going very far.

Adam Urbanski: A lot of people are waiting to develop the relationship until they have someone with whom they can develop trust. They will wait a long time. It is rarely something you begin with. Trust is the outcome of a relationship. You do have to sort of take a leap of faith. As you succeed together, you develop trust. It is not, do I trust him, but do I trust myself to have an open mind?

Audience Question: It is extremely interesting. I agree on student assessments. I disagree that public education is in the kind of straits you say. Public schools are doing a very good job. Charter schools are not the salvation. I am a proponent of site-based management. I like the living contract and settling the salaries once and once only. That is absolutely the major hang-up. Site-based management would be at the building where the staff belongs, along with the principal at that building. How do you deal with parents who come in with their own baggage and who want things for their children but not for the whole school?

Adam Urbanski: Some parents and teachers are more troublesome than others. The only way to build the nurturing community for children is to be inclusive and to be patient and respectful of parents. It is an awesome trust they make when they bring their kids to us and leave them there. Schools have to learn how to be more welcoming to parents and that will help parents learn to be less fearful of schools.

Manuel Rivera: Great schools have parents that are connected. We don't have enough parents coming in that are concerned. I am going out to service agencies to help us get connected. I hear more and more from our teachers that they want parents connected.

Paul Reville: Leadership is connected with followership. What does it take to cultivate followership for the vision you describe today?

Adam Urbanski: I have elections every two years. That is the only poll I take. This is my 23rd year. I assume I reflect their preference. Most people are rational and reasonable. They want people to work together and not at each other's throats.

Manuel Rivera: A number of superintendents I have met have big egos. This is not about Manny Rivera, superintendent of schools. This is about one of the most worthy challenges we have - about education of children. That is what this is about. I am consistently talking about children and improving practices and looking at what we are doing and assuming responsibility, rather than pointing the finger.

Audience Question: Administrators have a challenging time letting go of authority. On the labor side, it's rare for unions to accept responsibility. I hear: you take the action and we will react. How did you break that kind of systemic pattern? When there are tensions about a teacher, how do you break down the dynamic between union and management?

Adam Urbanski: Let me deal with incompetent teacher scenario. We have peer review. It is controversial only where it does not exist. We have had it for 17 years. We don't relegate the decisions or judgments to non-practitioners. We have standards for our profession and we like them and are determined to enforce them. If a teacher is found to be incompetent, we try to improve their competency. In 90 percent of cases it helps and succeeds. In ten percent of cases, I sit across from them and say we have mounted the best effort we could, what else would you like to do for a living? We will help you. Teachers support that. I do not defend indefensible. Unions have to provide fair representation and due process. They are not the mother of every member. There is no need for unconditional love. This is not personal. All of this boils down to common sense and sincerity.

Manuel Rivera: Last year a principal was adamant about a decision. We have a joint panel of five. The evidence was overwhelming that this person should not have been fired; there was an opportunity for growth. The question then is how not to undercut the principal. In Rochester, the union has not shied away from being part of the process and being accountable.

Audience Question: The partnership has longevity obviously. Could you expand on institutionalized structures?

Manuel Rivera: The newest one is on professional development. We came together last week on math. We are looking at what states are doing. It's an evolving commitment. On major strategies we are going to work in collaboration. For those that are ongoing, we put together committees.

Adam Urbanski: In addition to forming joint committees, there is a culture of change. It is clear in Rochester that academic performance is a priority of the union. When I first became president, a teacher would come to me and say I did molest that kid but I can come to you. That is not common. But the fact that someone comes to you and tells you, that says something. Now usually, we are pretty much on the same page. I feel accepted as an equal partner.

Audience Question: Can you reflect on national trends around these relationships?

Manuel Rivera: With Edison, I visited many schools and saw the traditional labor-management view. I was fascinated in Denver hearing labor and management representatives talk about what they were trying to do and the discussion was all about student achievement.

Adam Urbanski: The trend is to work together and find common ground rather than polarizing positions. As results come, then the automatic dynamic will take over and that is nothing succeeds like success. If they see it does work out they will in increasing numbers try to work together. As managers accept unions as legitimate partners, they will see unions will be willing to have a more open mind and to trust more. Until now the overwhelming majority of unions don't feel they can be accepted as equal partners and regretfully they are right.