Present: Pam Costain, Lydia Lee, T Williams, Tom Madden, Sharon Henry-Blythe
Mauri Meelander, Emma Hixson, Jackie Turner, Ava Neilson, Bill Green, and Alan Giles

A summary of the previous week’s discussion (authored by Dan Lowenson) is passed around and noted to have been reviewed by Emma and Eva.  Mauri says that they want the Board to review it.

Mauri says that they invited Jackie to this meeting to help discuss “how we will communicate with the public and also how Board members will communicate with their constituents.”

Emma says that she thinks that the position we wanted to take about layoff was discussed the previous week, but that it is not in the notes.  Emma says that we were recommending to seek a priority recall approach for special programs such as NLL, IB, Montessori, and AYP sites.

Pam asks if what is summarized are the goals or the starting point.  Emma confirms that they are the goals.  Alan asks Emma what she would start with. Emma says that it “depends on how we view this bargaining”, and that “we try to avoid putting everything out on the table until we get the lay of the land, so, that is hard to answer.”  However, Emma then tries to clarify, saying “We would start with what we want.”

Pam asks Emma who is on the district’s negotiating team.  Emma lists: herself, Ava Nielson, Dan Lowenson, Bernadeia Johnson, Von Sheppard, Eleanor Coleman, Tom Hegreness, Lucy Kapp, and principals to be determined.  Emma says that the principals that she has requested to be on the negotiation team are Mike Favor, Benice Young, Linda Nelson, Renee James, and Armando Carmacho. Emma says that the list is still somewhat under discussion with Joan Franks, leader of the principal’s group.

T asks if this is the usual size and makeup of the negotiation team.  Emma says that the size of the team is typical, but the negotiating team doesn’t usually have this many “heavy hitters”.  Emma says that “this is obviously a fairly special negotiation, so I thought it was important to have high-level negotiators, to make it clear how important a negotiation this is to us”, but also because these heavy hitters are very persuasive and have credibility with teachers.

Emma says that the size of the district and union’s negotiating teams are usually about the same, but there is flux in and out of the team.  Emma says that the negotiations traditionally use a lot of subcommittees and that subcommittee members come to the master committee when their issue is being discussed.  Emma also says that attendance of principals in the past has been about 50% and that she wants to make sure the district’s team is not outnumbered.

T wonders about the efficiency of such a large negotiating team and Emma confirms that it can be challenging.

Mauri says that Jackie is at the meeting because she wants to understand what the starting position of the negotiations is, so “she can frame how we all communicate going into the negotiations”.  Jackie says that she “wants to develop a consistent district message that you all can carry when you are out in the community” and which can also be used by the administration as “we” begin talking about labor negotiations.  Jackie proposes to start by “looking at some belief statements”, which she describes as coming from a “strategy meeting we had last week.”

(1) We believe that school stability and seniority is important. – We are not as concerned about district seniority as we are about school-by-school seniority. Layoff would be by the building, and this is very different from the way we look at things now.
(2) We also believe that radical changes are needed to begin eliminating the achievement gap. – Jackie says that we want to get the message out, that we can’t do business as usual, and that “we are going to have to make some changes about how we handle contract negotiations, in the way that we work with our staff, in holding people accountable.”
(3) We believe that learning should be at the center of everything that we do. – Our decisions should be guided by what students need in the classroom and what learning needs to take place in order to eliminate the achievement gap.
(4) We believe that interview and select is important. – Jackie says that bumping and bidding is something in the past and that it is very difficult in this marketplace to justify a bumping and bidding system.

Lydia interjects that in her 17 years in the district, she never recalls a teacher being bumped, although clerical staff do get bumped. Jackie says that maybe she is “using the wrong terminology” and asks if teachers just get excessed. Mauri adds “and laid off”. Ava says that there is bumping in the layoff process, but “we don’t usually call it that”.

Jackie says that the way we are doing business now is that we could very well be laying off “young” (but then corrects herself and says “effective”) teachers while we could be keeping other teachers “that maybe aren’t as effective as we need them to be.”  Emma speaks up and says that “the goal we have been looking at would not be a shift in that approach.”  Jackie says that this sort of feedback is why she needed this conversation.

Mauri then asserts that “when we are talking about a vision, we are not necessarily saying what we would settle for.” Jackie says that “we can have a core belief that is not what is decided in negotiations, but I do think that it is hard for us to say that we are serious about elimination the achievement gap in one breath and then not do things differently that may result in helping with that.”  Jackie says that there is an article coming out next week that asks this question; about how the district can be serious about the achievement gap if they are not doing negotiations differently.

Jackie says that if the belief statement about interview and select is not true, they can throw that out.  Emma says that the statement is fine, but Mauri again reminds everyone that the interview and select statement is not the big picture.  Mauri says that interview and select is something we are willing to settle for, in order to get stability and accountability, but she is concerned that if the Board and the district start going around talking about “interview and select”, they are going to get bombarded with other language that they are not familiar with, language that belongs in the negotiations.

Emma asks if they could have a core belief saying something about how site selection of quality teachers is important, as that’s what interview and select is really about.  Ava agrees that interview and select is a strategy, not a goal.  She says that a goal could say that site selection of staff should be based on the needs of the site, and the way that you do that is through interview and select.

Lydia says that we are in kind of a grey area, because there is interview and select already, as any teacher who wants a position does have to interview, before they get thrown in a pool of those who are acceptable. Emma points out that the excessed teachers don’t have to be acceptable.

T asks to clarify what we are we seeking to change about the current practice.  Emma says that the negotiation position that she understands is that all selection of teachers will be based on the site’s choice of the teachers that they want for a position.  Emma says that this is what we call interview and select.

Emma agrees with the statement that Ava proposed, which Ava repeats “We believe that the selection of staff should be based on what is best for the needs of the site.”  There is general agreement about this statement of belief. Bill asks if selecting on the basis of what’s good for the site is that same as selecting based on what’s good for the program, and everyone agrees that it is.

Jackie asks about the first statement of belief (We believe that school stability and seniority is important.). Emma says she’s not sure if we want to say any thing about “seniority”.  Jackie asks about the word “stability”, and Emma says “Oh, yeah, huge”

Jackie asks about the second statement of belief she described (We also believe that radical changes are needed to begin eliminating the achievement gap.) and says that they really shouldn’t use the word “radical” if they are going to “go with something that is more status quo”.  T points out that what is radical to one person might be routine to another and that the extent to which “we” will recommend changes will depend on the circumstances.  Pam suggests that they could use the word “significant” or “dramatic” rather than “radical”. Lydia says that since we are talking about programmatic changes, they could just say “significant programmatic changes”. Jackie agrees.

Pam speaks up and reminds everyone that in the previous session she suggested that it is important to convey that the administration and the Board believe that teachers and the district are in this together.  Pam says that she thinks it is important to say that the district understands that teachers want good things for kids.  There is the sound of nodding heads.

Jackie says that the next statement [We believe that staff should be compensated for quality work] is about the opportunity to compensate teachers and staff who are willing to teach in Northside schools.  Jackie says “if we want staff to do some of the extra things we are asking them to do, and move the students to where we need them to...” Mauri interjects saying “That’s ATTAPS”.  Emma generally agrees, but says that ATTAPS does not necessarily about the same set of schools that the Northside initiative does. 

Bill says that this statement is about doing quality instruction and that he thinks this is fundamentally different that saying that we believe in professional development.  Bill says that he thinks this statement means that we are willing to pay a teacher something beyond the base salary for quality work.  He says that this is a “first cousin” to ATAPS and Q-Comp, but that there are a lot of teachers who are not involved in those programs, and the question is if we are going to pay them for doing excellent work, even if they are not participating in those other programs.  Bill also asks if we have defined “quality work” through test scores, or evaluations from families, parents or principals.

Tom points out that to the average person the statement just says “staff should be paid for good work”.

Jackie says “I don’t know if we can even afford to say something like this” (noting that Alan some concerns) but she suggests the statement “the leadership team really strongly believes that in order to attract and retain quality staff, primarily on the Northside of Minneapolis, we need to do something up and above what we are already doing, otherwise what is the incentive to leave a school like Barton, and teach at another school?”

Bill says that this is about is paying people extra to go into demanding schools and that if that’s what we mean, we should say that.  Jackie agrees, but adds that once the teachers get to the demanding schools, we want them to perform. Bill agrees with that.

T says that we expect quality performance irrespective of where the teacher might be and that we ought to have a system already to improve the performance of low-performing teachers.  T says that what we are trying to say here is that there are particular challenges in our district, which may require extraordinary performance, and that the compensation should be consistent with the challenges and the outcomes of the task.

Pam says that we are moving between with core beliefs and specifics and mechanics, and that she would like this discussion to focus on core beliefs and not mechanics.  She also adds that the meeting time is running out.

Mauri suggests that they skip the discussion of this belief statement right now because Emma was not at the meeting where it was discussed and that that the administration does not have “a lot of measures in place that we would need” for a system of extra compensation based on teachers producing results in demanding schools.  Emma says that the next meeting between the Board and the staff is planned to talk about the ATAPS programs, and this topic would fit with that.