MTA responds to editorial

As the representative of the teachers targeted by your May 4-5 editorial on “Local control of education,” the Maine Teachers Association would like to correct the record on our positions and offer our perspective on two legislative proposals we are pursuing.

(1) The MTA does not advocate scrapping the Maine Education Assessment exam for students.

The MTA supported the adoption of the MEAs as part of the education reform movement and we value them as a diagnostic tool. Although we are concerned over their cost — $1.1 million — and their predilection toward establishing a state-mandated curriculum, we recognize their worth in finding the strengths and weaknesses in a curriculum. What we object to is the use of the test results by newspapers as if they wre sports scores between competing schools.

(2) The MTA is asking that school boards provide written reasons for not renewing the contract of a probationary teacher.

It should be noted that under the current law, teachers serve a two-year probationary period, much longer than any public or private employee, at the end of which they can be released without any statement at all by our public officials. In a number of recent cases popular, parent-supported teachers with excellent evaluations have been denied renewal of contract without any expressed reasons. We think this is patently unfair. What is wrong with asking public officials to make a record of their employment decisions so that the people who elected them can see what is happening?

(3) The MTA is seeking to negotiate with school board members over a broad range of school activities.

When the Maine Labor Relations Law was presented to the Maine Supreme Court for review, Justice Sidney Wernick prophetically noted that the concept of managerial prerogatives “… must not be permitted to operate as an instrument by which all practical substance may be scooped out of teacher working conditions to transform teacher collective bargaining — in contradistinction to the collective bargaining of all other public employees — into a litany noble in sound but hollow in reality.”

Since those words were written, the balance between teacher interests and school board interests has been lost. Because of a mangerial tilt by the Maine Labor Relations Board, teachers have lost their previously held rights to negotiate over the length of their workday, the length or scheduling standards for evaluation, use of planning periods, attendance at any supervisory activity during the workday, academic freedom, the right to personal privacy, the right to religious and political activities, and much more.

In an age when education reform is seeking to empower professional educators and involve them in the decision-making process, Judge Wernick’s warning has special meaning. School officials have been so busy building legal barriers to maintain their power that they have shut teachers out of the policy-making process. The MTA’s bill would reopen some of those lines of communication which have been blocked by short-sighted bureaucratic decisions. Ann Anctil, president Maine Teachers Association Augusta