Detroit Public Schools may have to stretch to meet new contract provisions

Question: Where does the rubber meet the road for Detroit Public Schools now that the beleaguered district has a newly ratified three-year contract with its teachers that emphasizes financial stability and new accountability measures?

Answer: The dreaded “rubber room.”

According to Detroit News editorial writer and columnist Amber Arellano, the contract that was ratified on Friday — by a 3,578 to 2,031 vote among the 7,000-member Detroit Federation of Teachers — is reason for seasonal cheer.

“This is the time of year to count our blessings,” she writes in her column published today. “The new contract is certainly one of them.”

Among other things, the new contract also requires salaried teachers to loan $10,000 to the school district over a period of 40 paychecks, forsakes pay increases until 2011, and includes $28 million in employee health care savings. Meanwhile, the contract’s academic reforms range from new teacher evaluations to performance bonuses for schools to a system of priority schools.

For the column, Arellano interviewed the Detroit Public Schools emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb, as well as the district’s academic chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett.

New “high priority” teachers will be newly evaluated (the process won’t be set until early next year though), and there’s an unwelcome designation for those teachers who don’t earn a passing grade. From Arellano’s column:

For teachers who do not make the High Priority schools’ cut, Detroit is creating what is called a “rubber room” — a room where teachers found unfit to teach children are paid to hang out and mostly do nothing.  These teachers will be called Detroit’s new “teachers-at-large.” In New York City, they call them “rubber room” teachers.

Arellano describes the new reality for those instructors as “a purgatory for low-performing teachers,” and asked Byrd-Bennett if it’s accurate that they will be deemed “teachers at-large.”

Arellano: “Is that accurate?”

Byrd-Bennett: “You mean a rubber room? I think there’s a place for a rubber room. I’ve had this conversation with Michelle (Rhee, who leads the Washington, D.C., public schools). … The question is, what do you do with bad teachers? 

Bobb: “We had a huge debate internally about this. At the end of the day, we don’t expect a lot of ‘at-large teachers.’ … They will only be able to apply for a position if there is a vacancy. They cannot bump someone else out. I consider this an evolutionary contract when you compare it to other district nationally. … But for Detroit — and I emphasize this, for Detroit– this is revolutionary.”

Even as Bobb continues to make the case for more control over academics within the school district, it appears that the new contract already gives him some of the “revolutionary” changes he believes are necessary.