Now A Dispute Over What’s Not In Teacher Contract
The Hawaii State Teachers Association has yet another complaint against the state, but this one isn’t about what is in the contract Gov. Neil Abercrombie imposed on teachers in July. It’s about what’s not in it.
The state promised in its Race to the Top application that it would implement evaluations for all the state’s 12,500 teachers by 2014. Toward that end, the Department of Education plans to pilot new teacher evaluation models in designated this year. The problem is that the new teacher contract — already controversial in its own right — makes no mention of the evaluation trials.
The union says they should have been negotiated, and the department says negotiations were unnecessary because the teachers affected are already on board. The pilot will have no bearing on their official records anyway, the department says.
Union President Wil Okabe is disappointed, he wrote in a July 25 letter to Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi, that the department plans to bypass the collective bargaining process in order to implement the pilot project. He said state law “requires that the terms of an evaluation system be collectively bargained,” citing of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, and requested that she reconsider the decision to implement the trial evaluations without negotiations.
“An effective teacher evaluation system requires a collaborative process that is based on trust and fairness,” he wrote.
Okabe told Civil Beat that the specific statute he had in mind when he wrote the letter was Section 89-10.8, part 3, which talks about the grievance procedure for employee failure to meet performance standards.
But Mataoyshi reassured him in her response, dated Aug. 2, that teachers participating in the pilot program will not face adverse actions.
“For school year 2011-12, we will not create a new evaluation system for the ZSI that will be part of the teachers’ personnel record,” she wrote. “We will continue to use the existing (model) under the current evaluation cycle.”
Her letter also focuses on the fact that the department has been and will continue to work with the teachers affected by the pilot program.
“As we have throughout this process, we will continue our collaboration and work with our ZSI teachers and principals to select a specific model to use in observing, supporting, and coaching teachers.”
Okabe said union leaders are not opposed to evaluations, but because the pilots will eventually determine the evaluation method for all teachers, they would like to be involved in the development process.
“We want to be accountable for teacher quality,” he said.
Read the letters:
