Assuming that the blanket termination stands up, I think some of the teachers will be rehired when they understand that they have to accept the new terms.

It does stink whenever anyone is asked to do additional work without additional compensation, but in a situation when the whole institution is failing in its mission, you probably should recognize that something additional is going to be required of you.

It's not these teachers fault that the students have the backgrounds that they do. And it's incredibly frustrating when someone else seems to think they can use you to magically fix a problem and you are skeptical of the difference your extra labors will yield.

But this story doesn't seem to be about how the teachers made a counteroffer about how they would help the kids; it just seems to be about them shooting down the new requirements with a vote and then facing some extreme consequences. ETA: well the article says that they did want to negotiate about the terms; we just don't know what they intended to counteroffer.

I've gotta say.. I love kids and worked with emotionally disturbed teens for years. I really enjoyed spending time with them. I used to have to take the kids from our outpatient psych unit to the cafeteria for lunch and eat with them every single day. I HAD to still have a down time away from them. A person just cannot expected to spend every second of the day with their students. Why doesn't the school board come in and help tutor these students and eat lunch with them every day?? The article I read about this did indicate that many of them already do after school tutoring and eat lunch with some of the students sometimes but they don't like it being mandated. I can understand that. It just seems like there are so many other options. There is a lunch buddy program that my work participates in with the Detroit Public Schools. A whole crew of people at my work place go and eat lunch with small groups of kids in a mentoring type program. Why not start something like that? Why not have some peer tutoring available after school? These kids spend most of their day with teachers. They would really benefit from interacting with other groups of adults; consistent, compassionate, interested adults.

I agree that you can't spend every minute of every day with the kids, but eating lunch with the kids some days, especially if you have a separate planning period, isn't the end of the world.

I agree that mentoring programs would also be nice (eta: that sound sarcastic, but I'm serious: I think the mentoring would be great), but I suspect the reason they wanted teachers to eat with the kids at lunch was because they wanted to use that time for academic remediation.

The best situation, in my opinion, would have been for the superintendent to seek teacher input about how to make positive changes for instruction and extra help, but sadly, most of the time, that's not how school leadership works.

(and apparently what the teachers were doing informally wasn't working.)

AGDee, So true. This is why I support after-school programs (and worked for one).

I have a dumb question, and I swear I'm not trying to be madmaxian by mentioning race. But how does a town in Rhode Island end up with almost a 50% Hispanic population? And has it been this way for a while? If it was fairly recent, for the school board to have let the school go on as they did before (when the town had a fairly homogenous/white populace) and be surprised that the graduation rate went down is frigging stupid.

Unless they have teachers who know how to teach ESL students, all the lunches and good intentions and extra time in the world aren't going to make a damn bit of difference. JMO.

I'm actually surprised this is this big of a deal. Haven't they already been doing this in other places for a couple of years now as part of NCLB or state's funding/control or something.

Hmm where to start on my comments....

Someone mentioned the teachers wanting a higher salary and that they shouldn't even be asking for it in this economy. No offense, but are you effin kidding me! So just because I'm a teacher and the economy sucks, I should demand the respect and pay I deserve for my profession? I don't think so. Until you have stepped into the shoes of a teacher, you don't understand what teacher has to put up with. You may think you do because you have friends or family members who are teachers, but you will never truly understand until you've walked a mile in our shoes.

In today's society and because of NCLB teachers are BLAMED for EVERYTHING. It's OUR FAULT that the kids test scores suck. It's OUR FAULT that their grades suck. It's OUR FAULT that the kids don't graduate. It's OUR FAULT that the kids don't speak English. No offense, but when the hell did all these problems (and thensome) because my fault as a teacher?

I've taught in low-income, predominately Hispanic (like 80%) and of that 80% Hispanic, I would say 50-60% are ESL students. I CANNOT make a child learn English. I CANNOT force the parents to learn English and therefore help their child. I CANNOT make the parents actually give a crap about their child's education. I can only do so much!!!!!

When did it become the teachers fault for everything?

When is some of the responsibility going to fall on the student and the parents? I'm guessing when hell freezes over. We live in a society were absolutely no blame falls onto the student. We live in a society where personal responsibility isn't taught and accepted.

As for the firing of all the teachers, it's not going to fix anything. The superintendent and the board are stupid as hell if they think that getting all new teachers will "magically fix" the problem. The district obviously has many problems, but a whole new staff isn't going to fix it. In fact, I'd bet my bottom dollar that if the district decides to fire them all, that their test scores will plummet next year.

*standing ovation*

I know that this is slightly off topic, and maybe it needs to be a spin-off, but I firmly believe in bilingual education rather than ESL/ELL programs. Primarily because I've never met an ESL teacher who actually spoke Spanish fluently.

I mean.... yes, the kids are in America, but it's so much better for them if they learn to read and write in Spanish and English. One thing I encountered with several immigrant families when I was a teacher is that just because a school system translates documents into Spanish for families doesn't mean they're actually literate in Spanish. Ya dig? I think these students are poised to have a gift of fluency in both English and Spanish if we cultivate it.

I don't know.

And I don't know how Rhode Island exploded with Spanish speaking immigrants any more than DC did. I am a minority in what was once an all-black neighborhood.

if we had attended a government school in germany, france, spain, mostly anywhere around the world, there would have been no special treatment or classes taught in english. it would have been up to us to learn the language of the country where we were attending school. as far as i can tell, most countries government school systems operate this way.

it is hard on the non-native speaking student, but if we began teaching bilingually, how would we determine which languages would be the "bi"? or are we talking about tailoring it for every child whose family would be esl? the costs would be astronomical.

Yeah, you didn't care about my point. LOL. Won't insult your intelligence by saying you missed it.

If the textile factories in NE would still be going great guns, I would have thought that was it, but nowadays? Not so much.

And the problem with that, is unlike the countries you mentioned, the United States doesn't have an official language. Most oft he country is Anglophone because of our history as part of the British Empire, but English officially has no more standing in this country then say Swahili.

It's unfortunate when the community and school district don't give teachers the support and tools to do their jobs effectively and then turn around and fire the teachers for not doing their jobs effectively.

ESL and/or language training would be beneficial. Community lunch buddy programs (especially with bilingual mentors - I can't imagine that there are none in the community) would be beneficial.

What I would like to know, is have these tools been available, or was the district really thinking that they could depend only on teachers to provide these services?

I know I can't empathize with the teachers that much, but my mom was a school business official, and my dad was an elementary principle (and before that, an elementary math teacher), and I do know for a fact that things we hear about the negotiations from the outside are starkly different from what's usually going on there - even if you get "both sides of the story."

I'm not necessarily pro-union in general (because of the economic inefficiencies of price floors/cielings - don't even get me started about the CTA) but in this case - it looks like all sides are full of FAIL and unfortunately only one group is really footing the cost of these low scores (besides the students).

Thank you for speaking the truth. It angers me when people THINK they know what teachers go through on a daily basis just because some teachers MAY leave work at 3pm. Trust me, especially if you work in the inner city, that 3pm feels more like 7 or 8 pm and many teachers don't leave at 3pm although their kids are dismissed around this time. When I taught I NEVER left at 3pm, more like 6pm every day. I was either tutoring a child, preparing for the next day, attending a staff meeting, sitting with kids who had detention, talking to a parent, coaching the cheerleaders (which I didn't get paid extra for), etc. etc. and that was just at school. Let's not even talk about my personal time spent grading papers and talking to parents on the phone.

Also many kids have serious issues at home and they bring them to school every day. Teachers are not only teachers these days but counselors, tutors, parents, social workers, disciplinarians, etc. etc. When I taught I was only 25 teaching 7th and 8th graders so my students always wanted to come to me about their personal problems because they thought I would understand since I was closer to their age I guess, but emotionally it was draining. I looked forward greatly to my lunch time without them every day so I could have some time to myself and peace of mind, and even then if I didn't go out for lunch or close my classroom door, my students would come looking for me and spend my lunch time with me also. They were extremely NEEDY because their needs weren't being met at home.

Also with so many children not being disciplined at home, teachers spend a great deal of their time telling children to sit down and shut up (well, not in those words exactly) when they could be teaching. So many problems to address but probably the biggest IMO is the lack of discipline and study at home. By the time a teacher's day ends, especially inner city teachers, you feel like you've worked 60 hours in some cases, and are just beat. This is why I left the profession. I was very dedicated, went above and beyond for my students, but got burned out quickly and I saw this happen to other young teachers as well.

It takes a very special person to teach in some of these schools today in spite of many problems and even safety issues depending on where the school is located. IMO teachers should be among the highest paid, should get the support from school administrations that they deserve and need, and should not be soley held responsible for children getting an education.

Trust me, in most cases 40 or even 60 hours at a desk is nothing compared to the hours spent TRYING to teach and discipline many of these kids in the classroom today. Yesterday's students and today's students are totally different. You really don't get it but you would if you could go into an inner city school and observe a classroom, just one and you would get the point.