Issue #9 Building Bridges

Problems:

Management and teachers are not often working towards the same goals, especially during the current job action. It has become increasingly difficult to get the trustees and board office to listen to what their teachers are telling them (& vice versa). If there is some return to local contract bargaining, this adversarial relationship needs to soften. Long ago when teachers and administrators were part of the same professional association, it was fairly easy matter for “degrees” of leadership; teachers could take board office positions for a period of time and then return to teaching. Principals taught more classes, and there was a sense of partnership on creating positive learning conditions. Talk to any retired teacher or principal and they’ll describe this era. This team approach took a long time to fade. Even recently, many opportunities for teachers and management to sit down existed. Regular district-wide professional development opportunities with both groups, leadership teams, and district committees that existed from 2000-2009 have all disappeared. To be fair, many of these connections required expensive release time and during times of constraint have been replaced with learning team grants that gives teachers some time out of the classroom for study questions and experiments about teaching and learning. The teacher - administration gap has resulted in many teachers simply doing their own thing in their classrooms and trying to ignore everything else, a classic defense mechanism. The gap is different at every school and seems most dramatic between schools and the board office, so there is a strong role for trustees to play in modeling a better relationship.

The silver lining on the current job action is that everyone in the school system is getting a break from the their regular routines. This has not been easy for all, but it gives everyone a chance to start some new patterns when the job action eventually ends. This will be the perfect opportunity for the school board trustees and board office administration to being a new relationship with their teachers. This will only happen if the board office is willing to examine some of the dysfunction in their past relationship.

Solutions:

Connect the dots between the management gap and the other issues (like #6, #7, #8). Building bridges requires providing opportunities for teachers and specialists to lead change at the district level and for principals and district staff to be involved in learning, even at the classroom level. Design meaningful opportunities for all groups to meet and work together on mutually shared goals.

Lobby both the BCTF and the BCPSEA to agree on some kind of designation that will allow employees from either groups to exchange roles periodically without compromising their professional association.

Encourage trustees and management to spend some time in classrooms to realize the differences between the board office version of what’s going on with other perspectives, including the student perspective.

Be proactive in the research and discussion phase of any future negotiations on local contract issues.  Some items in the teacher contract will undoubtedly return to local bargaining, and the trustees need to be engaged in the process from the outset, and not just reacting or waiting for other districts to set precedents. Why not be a leader?

Lift the gag order (real or perceived) on teachers and principals getting involved in defending public education and giving critique alongside praise to district decisions and policies. This will speed up the rate at which problems with draft policies come to light and make the final outcome more inclusive and powerful. Article E.28 of the PGDTA collective agreement and SD#57 Policy 1170.3 provide starting points for these discussions.