Quolke’s Corner #43
Inclusion
As reported in both my last Presidential Update that was mailed to members’ homes and in the Plain Dealer on September 28, the CTU won an arbitration ruling this summer dealing with how Inclusion will be implemented at Ben Franklin. The ruling was clear, inclusion classes are to be staffed with one regular education teacher and one special education teacher. Additionally, it was pretty clear, that additional staffing may need to take place at Ben Franklin.
While the CTU has legal options we can pursue, we felt from Day One that it is beneficial to all stakeholders to work collaboratively with the District in order to gain a full understanding of the scope of the arbitration award and the impact it will have on our schools.
To that end, I gave Dr. Sanders my word that as long as the District was sincere and willing to work collaboratively on reaching a solution, the CTU would pursue solutions with the District.
After two meetings, it became evident that the District has little or no interest in working to resolve this issue. In fact, Dr. Sanders responded to an inquiry about this matter posed by Board Vice President Louise Dempsey by saying, the district would reduce an equivalent number of regular education teachers if it had to hire more special education teachers. This statement came less than four hours after CTU members met with his District team about the issue and shows a complete lack of willingness to acknowledge that CTU is working toward finding viable solutions.
Maybe I should be surprised, but maybe not. Consider the following:
The District sent a team to the CTU to work on the Special Education issues. Heading the District’s six member team was David Millstone, an attorney with the law firm Squire, Sanders, and Dempsey. Millstone, the spokesman for the District’s team, was the only person who actually spoke. It seemed the other members had to ask for permission. Imagine, $600,000 worth of education administrators’ salaries sitting around the table scripting or taking notes and the only person allowed to talk is an attorney!
Of course, when District “team members” do have something they want to say they break for a caucus. Afterwards, Attorney Millstone comes back to report the District’s position – which by the way, initially was something to the effect of …there are limited possibilities. If you can’t offer a solution we can simply layoff regular education teachers and hire additional special ed teachers.
CTU offered a solution to this grievance almost 12 months ago. It was flatly IGNORED by the District, initiating the arbitration hearing that led to this decision.
CTU asked the District to involve principals, Chapter Chairs and Special Education Liaisons in a discussion to determine how large the scope of the problem is. The District’s response was basically, “We’ll have to get back to you on that one.”
CTU asked about estimated budget projections and utilization of stimulus dollars. The District’s response was that they were not prepared to respond they would have to get back with us.
You get the point. Certainly this is not even close to the spirit of “With Us NOT to Us.”
Should CTU members be concerned? Absolutely.
Dr. Sanders sits on the Board of Directors of Council of Great City Schools. The Council of Great City Schools, in the report written by Boston Consulting Group ($700,000.00 report), praises Dr. Sanders and his leadership team for their reform efforts. The public and community perception is that Dr. Sanders is innovative in his approach to reform our schools and our programs. Yet, when the only sincere innovation he has to offer for providing services to students with disabilities is to REDUCE the number of regular education teachers, something is wrong.
When the Board refuses to move on a motion they passed to review possible “pork” in the administration and possibly freeing up additional dollars, but allows their CEO to threaten our schools with reducing teachers to comply with providing services to students with disabilities….something is very wrong.
In Union,
David