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Interim MSCS Head Wants Vote on Teacher Contracts Next Week

Memphis-Shelby County Schools’ two teachers unions disagree over whether the district should sign the pending contract or start afresh. I Karen Pulfer Focht for Chalkbeat

The head of Tennessee’s largest school district wants the school board to vote next week on a labor agreement that has been stuck in negotiations for three years. Interim Superintendent Toni Williams’ proposal comes after the district rejected one teachers union’s attempt to restart the bargaining process from scratch.

Educators in Memphis-Shelby County Schools have been without a memorandum of understanding with the district since 2018, when the last agreement expired. The district’s two teachers unions last went to the bargaining table in 2019, but have not agreed on a new contract with the district to date.

That could change after the United Education Association of Shelby County, the smaller of the two unions, tried to kickstart a new round of negotiations, arguing that an entirely new contract is needed to address rising health care costs, stagnant salaries, and large class sizes.

“I’m a veteran teacher with over 25 years of exemplary experience, but right now, I am marking the days off the calendar for when I can retire because I am mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted,” said Fredericka Johnson, a UEA member, at a board meeting Tuesday.

Johnson signed a UEA petition that would force the district back to the bargaining table under a 2011 Tennessee law that requires a district to launch the bargaining process if unions can collect signatures from 15 percent of teachers.

On Tuesday, the district announced it was unable to verify the number of signatures on the petition because of discrepancies that included duplicate and ineligible signatures. With an insufficient number of signatures and the window for submitting a petition closed, MSCS says it cannot start the teachers union bargaining process.

Kenneth Walker II, the district’s general counsel and chief legal officer, said Tuesday that an MOU from the 2019 bargaining session was drawn up, but disagreements over compensation and fringe benefits prevented it from being signed. 

That contract would allow teachers to select the members who serve on district professional committees, boosting the district’s contribution to medical insurance premiums from 66 percent to 70 percent, and include a pledge to increase compensation during upcoming fiscal planning for the 2023 budget.

Separate from the bargaining process, Williams also proposed forming a teacher advisory council focused on improving teacher compensation, one of her top priorities as interim superintendent. 

In a presentation to the board, Williams said the council will serve as a “platform to elevate the voices of teachers throughout the district on compensation and other issues,” and would give teachers “direct access” to her office and other district leaders. The district has already opened up nominations for teachers to participate.

Danette Stokes, president of the United Education Association, supports the idea of creating a teacher advisory council, but said it’s no replacement for the bargaining process.

“Teacher voices are important. We should be at the table every time decisions are being made about us,” Stokes said. “But a teacher advisory council cannot engage in collaborative conferencing with the district.” 

The district’s unions disagree over whether the district should sign the pending contract or start afresh.

Several members of the Memphis-Shelby County Education Association, the district’s larger teachers union led by recently elected board member Keith Williams, urged the board to sign the existing MOU.

Charlotte Fields, an MSCS educator for over 26 years and a member of MSCEA, said the MOU “represents what is best for all educators.”

But other public commenters on behalf of UEA disagreed. Many shared concerns about teachers’ existing working conditions and pay and advocated for restarting the collaborative conferencing process, a bargaining procedure laid out in Tennessee law.

When MSCS hired Johnson 19 years ago, she was ecstatic. She’s no longer happy with her job, the veteran teacher told the board Tuesday.

Over the last nearly two decades, Johnson said the cost of district-provided health care plans have increased, while her salary has stayed virtually stagnant. Her planning time is “constantly interrupted” because she’s asked to cover other classrooms because the district does not have enough substitute teachers. Class sizes have increased, despite administrators’ promises of reprieve. And Johnson says she has occasionally had to lay a bag of ice over the thermostat in her room for the heat to turn on.

“District leaders are constantly stating that teachers are doing the ‘hard and heart work’ for our students,” Johnson said. “Now is the time for you to show you’re doing the same for us.”

Stokes said her union is not ready to give up on restarting negotiations. Stokes said Wednesday that the union submitted the required amount of signatures by law, and she’s consulting with union lawyers to determine her next steps.

Lisa Jorgensen, another UEA teacher, called on the board to act quickly to begin a new round of negotiations.

“Educators are drowning with work overload,” Jorgensen said. “Our working conditions are unsustainable and becoming more so.”

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Amid Teacher Shortage, Tennessee May Drop Major Test for Teacher Candidates

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Amid worries about teacher shortages, Tennessee is considering reducing requirements for some nontraditional candidates to earn their teacher licenses, despite concerns that the change could hurt teacher quality.

In the first of two votes on a controversial proposal, the State Board of Education approved Friday dropping EdTPA, a licensing test required currently of about 900 “job-embedded” candidates, who comprise about a third of the state’s teacher pipeline. 

That pathway lets people with non-teaching bachelor’s degrees work as classroom teachers while simultaneously pursuing licensure by taking graduate-level coursework through partnerships between their school districts and approved teacher training programs.

The proposal to drop EdTPA, which would take effect next September, is among numerous ways Tennessee is trying to increase its teacher pool after seeing a gradual decline in the number of aspiring educators graduating from the state’s 40-plus teacher training programs.

However, both state and national data suggest that current shortages are limited to certain districts, schools, grades, and subjects, not an across-the-board problem. Some higher education leaders question the rush to revamp rules with statewide application.

In their preliminary vote, board members voted unanimously to drop the EdTPA requirement for job-embedded candidates. But they emphasized that they want more feedback from teacher prep programs before their final vote set for February.

“There’s a fear of lowering the quality, lowering the bar. And there’s a fear of not having enough people to fill the classrooms. So we’re trying to manage these two fears that are real,” said Nate Morrow, a board member from Williamson County, prior to the vote.

EdTPA has been used since 2013 by numerous teacher training programs, including some of the largest ones at the University of Memphis, Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee Tech University, and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. In 2019, it became a statewide requirement to gain licensure as the state set new goals for training new teachers.

The assessment measures teaching skills and was developed by researchers at the Stanford Center for Assessment Learning and Equity. It requires candidates to submit a portfolio of materials for review, including a series of lesson plans, video of themselves teaching, and written analysis of their instructional practices.

Teacher prep leaders disagree about whether to remove EdTPA as a job-embedded requirement for licensure. Critics call the portfolio stressful and needlessly time-consuming, while supporters say it’s a valuable way to measure teaching readiness.

“A year ago, we had to have the highest EdTPA scores in the country. So what changed during that time so that we don’t need EdTPA at all?” asked Bill Estes, dean of the college of education at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, during an interview with Chalkbeat.

Without more data and a deeper analysis, Estes said, it would be a “step backward” for Tennessee to have differing standards and requirements for its various pathways to licensure.

“There are (districts) and subject areas that need more teachers, but not across the board. This is a blanket policy that I think will weaken the quality of teachers we have in Tennessee,” he said.

Claude Pressnell, president of the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association, said there’s no consensus within his group about whether to drop edTPA. The bigger concern, he said, is any change that treats teacher candidates differently by saying that one group has to pass it, and the other group doesn’t.

“Our members want to keep a level playing field related to requirements of all ed prep programs,” Pressnell told Chalkbeat.

During Friday’s meeting, Sara Morrison, the board’s executive director, said the proposal is a starting point to discuss ways to eliminate duplications and streamline requirements for the state’s various pathways toward teacher licensure. EdTPA merits consideration, she added.

“For job-embedded candidates, since they are being evaluated (by school leaders), they have an assigned mentor, they’re getting a lot of that same reflective practice and feedback that is part of EdTPA, it seemed duplicative to also do the EdTPA while they’re also classroom teachers of record,” Morrison said.

Darrell Cobbins, who represents Memphis on the board, said he has lots of questions about how to ensure teacher quality without driving candidates from entering the profession. But for now, he said, many school leaders seem most worried about the latter.

“There’s a recurring theme around teacher shortages, teacher retention, career advancement,” Cobbins said. “There seems to be a pleading from district leaders, from teachers themselves, that we employ some avenues of flexibility and creative thinking around how we support districts in addressing their challenges.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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Opinion The Last Word

Confessions of a First-Year Teacher During a Pandemic

Photo: Liquoricelegs | Dreamstime.com

Ask any experienced or veteran teacher for advice and one thing you will always hear is “never take work home with you.” But what nobody really says is that avoiding “taking work home with you” also means trying not to carry the weight of secondary trauma, PTSD, anxiety, insomnia, and constantly changing policies, all of which are proven to affect teachers at high rates. Sure, teachers can stay at school after hours to finish grading papers or complete lesson plans for the week, but part of being a teacher, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, also means taking extra time and effort to show ourselves grace, focus on our mental health, and practice self-care.

During the third week of school, I told my writing class that they would have homework to make up for the work we could not get to in class. Maybe I made the wrong move.

“Ms. Insong, please don’t give me any more homework,” a student said to me while in tears. “There is no one to help me with my homework at home. My big sister isn’t here anymore.”

“What do you mean?” I responded.

“She got Covid and passed away in May. She was the only one who could help me with my homework. Now I don’t have anyone to help me with my homework.”

She continued to cry. My eyes began to water. After my class left to transition, I stepped out of class to unload the bricks that weighed on my chest. I cried, too.

Family members are in the hospital. Loved ones have suddenly passed away. Parents have lost their jobs. People are struggling to make ends meet during this strangely uncertain time. We are forced to accept and adjust to today’s reality. Students and teachers are afraid of more than just the virus. We are also afraid of the effects it can have on our futures. For students, a loss of a parent or guardian can lead to other challenges such as loss of household income and homelessness — just to name a few. If students don’t show up to school, teachers could possibly lose their jobs. Students are trying to stay focused while coping with issues beyond the classroom, and teachers are trying their best to do the same while finding ways to help students regulate their emotions and make up for the time lost in the classroom.

Hearing the reality firsthand, especially from children, can take a toll on school workers. I found that taking care of my mental health and practicing self-care is essential to staying healthy and present in the classroom. In the media, self-care is often painted as having a glass of wine after a long day at work or taking yourself out to dinner — and although these are all enjoyable pleasures, getting wine drunk for the night won’t solve all your problems. Self-care is a daily practice that encompasses much more than that. Just like therapy, it won’t work unless you stay committed and you do the work. According to the National Institute of Mental Illness (NAMI), there are six elements of self-care: physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, social, and professional. It is recommended that people spend at least two to three hours a day practicing self-care. One of the biggest and most effective acts of self-care is saying “no” and maintaining healthy boundaries.

Setting boundaries in the professional setting can look like saying no to extra tasks when you know you already have a lot on your plate. Even as a professional, working hard to reach deadlines and objectives, it’s important to remember that it is okay to pause and breathe. Step out of the classroom for a few minutes when you are overwhelmed. Remember that whatever energy you bring into the classroom, your students will feel, too (and vice versa).

With the mental and emotional effects of Covid-19 in mind, some schools in Memphis have taken action to make social-emotional learning (SEL) a part of daily lessons. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) states that “SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” SEL is proven to lead to long-term positive outcomes.

In the classroom, social-emotional learning can be as simple as “temperature checks” in the morning. In other words, asking students how they are feeling this morning, acknowledging those feelings, and then giving them the tools to self-regulate.

One thing I wish I learned as a child, is that it is okay to not be okay. So yes, let’s teach our children and students that. We are overwhelmed. We are tired. We are afraid. We are human. Students and teachers aren’t always going to show up to the classroom happy, prepared, and focused every single day. Some days, we will be exhausted. Some days, we will cry. Some days, we will be angry and frustrated and some won’t understand why. But if we give our students a safe space to express themselves, if we give them the tools to cope with their emotions in healthy ways, and if we, as teachers, take the time to be open-minded, flexible, and do the inner work, too, we can grow and learn to be okay together.

Ashley Insong is a starving artist who is working toward being a best-selling author while teaching full-time and freelance writing part-time. She enjoys singing and writing poetry and short stories about love, self-discovery, and her Filipina heritage.

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Opinion

The Next Superintendent

The next superintendent of Memphis City Schools should be too young for the job.

Too young, that is, by conventional standards. If ever a school system needed fresh blood, fresh thinking, and youthful energy and idealism, it is MCS.

Memphians are familiar with the superintendent search process. Engage some consultants and a local nonprofit or two with no vested interest — which means no children actually attending Memphis public schools — to do a “national search” for a Dr. Gerry House or a Dr. Carol Johnson, who brings along some friends to take the most important and well-paid administrative jobs.

They announce their “reforms,” make headlines, burden teachers with extra paperwork, polish their resumes, stay a few years, and suddenly leave for greener pastures. Then the school board names an “interim” superintendent who is over 60 years old and a 30-year employee of the school system: a Ray Holt, Johnnie B. Watson, or Dan Ward. Then the process starts all over.

What if, instead, MCS was run by a superintendent and staff of twenty- and thirtysomethings with recent experience as teachers, coaches, and principals of Memphis public schools or similar urban public schools?

There are two good sources for such candidates. One is the current pool of Memphis teachers and principals who have demonstrated results and earned the respect of their peers. The other is the national Teach for America program, which is now 17 years old and has enlisted 17,000 of America’s brightest college graduates into teaching in urban and rural schools. One of the goals of Teach for America is to keep its “corps members” in public education beyond their two-year obligation. One way to do that is to show them they can put their talent, training, energy, and idealism to work on a big stage while they are “too young.”

Of course, the truth is they are not too young. Last week, FedEx founder Fred Smith was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “The riskiest strategy is to try to avoid risk altogether,” said Smith, who was five years out of Yale and a year out of the Marine Corps when he founded Federal Express.

In The Wall Street Journal last week, there was a story about the American soldiers who are running counterinsurgency classes in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of them is Capt. Dan Helmer, a former Rhodes scholar. He is 26 years old.

Our best and brightest and bravest can start companies and fight wars and command armies, and they can run our failing school systems if we let them.

I have had the pleasure of getting to know several Teach for America teachers working in Memphis since the program came here in 2006. Most of them got placed at the toughest schools, not the optional schools with college-bound students. The good news is that almost all of the corps members are still working here and making a difference. The bad news is that some schools are worse than most people know unless they have close contact with teachers and students.

I often think about getting them to tell their war stories to the Flyer, but that might make their jobs harder. And these young teachers aren’t seeking sympathy anyway. They plug away in classes for five periods a day — often classes without textbooks for the first two weeks of school, classes with 40 students and only 30 desks for the first five weeks of school, classes where they are under pressure to get 80 percent of their students to pass the Gateway examinations, classes where a terrified teacher locked herself in her closet.

A “too young” superintendent and staff would make mistakes, but veterans make mistakes too. Look at the MCS transportation mess, the spoiled-food mess, and the grand jury investigation of construction contracts. But a young superintendent with recent classroom and administrative experience in Memphis or similar schools would make a lot of smart decisions too and grow into the job.

Willie Herenton became superintendent of MCS in 1978 when he was 39 years old. Within three years, he closed underused schools and helped start the optional schools program. Name a successor who accomplished as much.

As Fred Smith told Chris Wallace, you can’t be afraid to change, because if you are, then inevitably something bad will happen. In Memphis, it already has.

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News The Fly-By

The City Schools’ Surplus Adds Up

About 115 Memphis City Schools teachers are being temporarily laid off until they can be reassigned to new schools as the system adjusts for overcrowded and underutilized facilities and an overall decline of nearly 3,000 students since last year.

Teachers call it “being surplused.” MCS officials call it “staff readjustment.” Either way, it adds uncertainty to what has already been a confusing and, in some cases, chaotic year.

Renee Malone, spokeswoman for MCS, said the surplus of teachers is mainly at middle and high schools but could not identify specific schools. The surplus teachers include both first-year teachers who were the most recent hires and veteran teachers who volunteered to take new assignments.

The teachers will continue to be paid until new positions are found for them. Depending on their certification, surplus teachers can be assigned to elementary or secondary schools in their subject area. Malone said the school system typically hires about 70 new teachers each year between September and December because of vacancies that occur for various reasons.

“Even though a teacher may not be needed at one school, they may be needed at another one,” she said.

With the first six-weeks grading period coming to an end this week, MCS enrollment is 117,283 — a decline of 2,864 or 2.3 percent from the enrollment of 120,147 at the end of last school year. Student enrollment is the primary driver of state funding under the Basic Education Program. The complicated formula has 45 components, and local districts supplement their basic allocation differently. Katharine Mosher, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Education, said funding is determined by the previous year’s enrollment. When there is a decline, funds are stabilized for one year and lowered if the enrollment decline continues for a second year.

There is obviously an incentive for school districts to report the highest accurate count in order to maximize funding. Counting students in a large urban system is complicated and inexact. There are nine reporting periods, some of which are weighted more heavily than others, to come up with what is commonly called “the enrollment.”

“Keep in mind that enrollment typically increases as the school year goes on,” Malone said.

The most recent enrollment reports for individual schools show wide variations at the secondary level. The largest high schools are Cordova (2,350 students), White Station (2,330), Whitehaven (1,847), and Wooddale (1,666). The smallest are Manassas (391), Westside (491), Westwood (504), and Southside (554). Efforts to close schools meet with powerful community and political opposition, and school board members have given in to it in some notable cases. Manassas, for example, is getting a new high school next year, and Douglass High School, closed in 1981, is being reopened in a new building at the old location.