The Rochester City School District and the Rochester Teachers Association have negotiated a tentative new contract and some of the deal’s contents are catching people by surprise.
A section concerning personal injury benefits, in particular, is receiving a lot of attention: “Crimes committed in schools will be pursued as crimes committed elsewhere to the extent the District has the right to press charges for those crimes,” it says. “In all other events, the District will fully support the teacher who chooses to press charges on his/her behalf.”
The strong language comes despite efforts by several groups to change the way that the district handles discipline. They criticize the district’s high rate of suspensions and say that the district tends to criminalize student behavior.
The Rochester Community Task Force on School Climate, initiated by former superintendent Bolgen Vargas with the help of the Rochester Area Community Foundation, Metro Justice, Teen Empowerment, and several other education and community groups worked together to come up with a set of recommendations that steer the district away from “zero-tolerance” approaches to student conduct and discipline and more toward restorative justice practices.
The Task Force strongly advised that the entire district undergo anti-racism training and use suspensions, expulsions, and arrests as a last resort. The groups urged the Rochester school board to approve a new Code of Conduct policy that encourages a more nurturing approach to student behavior issues.
But the board never approved the draft policy and it was never clear why.
The language in the proposed teachers contract seems to reflect old thinking, according to some members of the Task Force.
“I think we were all taken aback,” says Jennifer Banister, development and collaborations manager with Teen Empowerment. Banister says that the students, teachers, administrators, and community leaders working on changing school climate have been transparent and inclusive. So the language in the new agreement was a surprise, she says.
But Adam Urbanski, president of the Rochester Teachers Association, insists that the new contract does not conflict with the task force’s objectives.
“We shouldn’t criminalize student misbehavior,” he says. “But surely that doesn’t mean that if a person commits a serious crime that it not be treated as a crime.”
Urbanski says that the contract is referring to crimes such as rape or assault with a deadly weapon.
“It’s not criminalizing because it’s already a crime,” he says.
Banister says that the task force is working to improving the school environment for teachers, as well as students.
And some of that work has already begun with some schools using restorative justice approaches to student discipline. But Banister questions why the board would approve a new contract before approving a new Code of Conduct policy.
But the bigger problem of how to address student misbehavior and classroom disruption may be broader and more complex than the school board and administrators know how to address.
The issue was put in stark terms at a recent meeting of the Association of Supervisors and Administrators of Rochester with school board President Van White. In a room of about 100 principals, supervisors, and administrators, many said that they need more effective ways to deal with children who have serious mental health diagnoses. Addressing the growing number of children with social emotional needs as young as 3 and 4 is one of their biggest concerns, they said.
Some administrators said that they could observe pre-kindergartners and tell which children will have problems with violence and other behaviors if they don’t receive help.
One administrator said that she spends as much as 80 percent of her time dealing with those problems in older children. And keeping those problems from interfering with their peers’ learning is becoming increasingly difficult, she said.
Finding alternative ways to help city school children before they get into serious trouble is something that both Banister and Urbanski agree on. Certainly not every kid in city schools who misbehaves has a mental health problem, and we know that many children who live in poverty are resilient and overcome their situation.
But many cannot, and that is leaving the Rochester school district to once again come up with the answer.
This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2016.
You have it wrong; teachers do not criminalize all student behavior. Some of the student’s display” criminal behavior” and that should be addressed and dealt with as it is, outside of the school setting. The safe haven of a school enables those few students who display thug, criminal behavior to feel free to carry on in their ways because they know they can get away with it.
Why not try visiting some city schools for a day and experience, first hand, what goes on; then you’ll have a better handle on how these few students can make the school environment unsafe for other students, teachers and staff, as well.
The issue is not some teachers or all teachers criminalizing student behavior. The issue is that the contract leaves open a huge loop hole that can seriously endanger students based on one teacher’s, or a few teachers, inability to properly assess and solve problems with students.
Again, this is about the contract language, not the “few students” that this could effect for creating an unsafe school environment. Essentially, this big downside to this is that it can further reinforce the school-to-prison pipeline in Rochester.
Don Sherman,
If the case is that, we are only discussing a “few students who [so-called] display thug, criminal behavior” — then your statement corroborates the findings contained in the report at the link below, which is indicative of the FACT that many teachers and administrators are utilizing inappropriate, subjective, and frequently racist criteria to determine so-called “criminal,” and suspendable behavior.
http://www.aqeny.org/wp-content/uploads/20…
CommenterR,
In accordance with information in the report, at the link below, the “issue is [necessarily about, at least] some teachers criminalizing student behavior, [and]
teachers’ inability to properly assess and solve problems with students,” which is what leads to the students being CRIMINALIZED. It all fits together like a puzzle.
http://www.aqeny.org/wp-content/uploads/20…
Howard Eagle, would you feel more comfortable with the contract language saying the few students who display “inappropriate, unacceptable societal behavior”, rather than using terms such as “thug” or “criminal” behavior?
That’s ok but your next question would be “how do you define “inappropriate, unacceptable societal behavior”? Now we get into a semantics game.
I think most people know what “thug” or “criminal” behavior is, as a descriptor of inappropriate unacceptable behavior in society.
So, if the “thug” or “criminal” descriptors were left out of the contract language and replaced by “inappropriate, unacceptable societal behavior”, do you think that would that work for you?
Don Sherman,
It’s not about me “feeling more comfortable,” or what “works” for me. On the contrary, it IS about Urbanski and company unnecessarily injecting racist, criminalizing, language into their new Contract. Even they admit that the language does not change anything regarding rights that they already had. So then, why was it necessary to add it?
Background Information:
As you have probably heard, on March 23, 2016, Rochester Teachers Association voted to approve a new Contractual Agreement with the Rochester City School District. The new teachers Contract contains inflammatory language, which appears to be supportive of the reality that many Rochester City School District teachers routinely display harsh, punitive attitudes, and behaviors toward our students, which in turn, greatly exacerbates the long-standing problem, and serious issue of unacceptably high rates of out-of-school-suspensions, and often, criminal charges are filed against our students for relatively minor, non-violent, infractions (see RCSD teacher Brandon White’s letter to his colleagues below, prior to the Contract being approved).
Needless to say, Mr. White’s letter fell upon deaf ears, as 98% of more than 2,000 RCSD teachers voted to approve the new Contract (http://13wham.com/news/local/rcsd-teachers…) .
This problem and issue takes on added significance when considering that a broad-based group of community members, including RCSD teachers, top level administrators, and a member of the Rochester Board of Education, known as the Community Task Force on School Climate, have been working in conjunction with the Rochester Community Foundation (for more than a year-and-a-half) to develop comprehensive solutions, aimed at helping to address the problem and issue outlined above.
The Community Task Force has been aware of the fact that RTA’s top leadership, particularly their president, Dr. Adam Urbanski, as well as many rank and file teachers have concerns, and potential disagreements, regarding the direction in which the Task Force is attempting to move, i.e., away from unnecessarily harsh, punitive, disciplinary measures, and toward more humane approaches, with an emphasis on the philosophy and practice known as “restorative justice.” Task Force members had been meeting with RTA’s leaders and members to address their concerns, and were apparently under the impression that progress was being made, which is why a number of Task Force members who signed up to speak at a March 24, 2016 Board of Education meeting, referred to the new, seemingly criminalizing language in RTA’s Contract as “a slap in the face.” During the Board meeting, at which the majority of Board members voted to approve the Contract, Commissioner Mary Adams (the Board’s representative on the Task Force) declared: “The added contract language, and emphasis on crime in schools, has caused me to conclude this is about something other than teacher safety. One must consider why RTA leaders would choose to launch that missile at our community when the contract offers many other significant elements: financial and other benefits to “teachers…”
One reason why this issue is so important is because Adam Urbanski, and other education leaders are quick to talk about the need to develop stronger partnerships between schools (teachers, administrators, and support staff) vis-a-vis parents, families, and the broader community. We believe that it is potentially hypocritical to make such assertions, while at the same time engaging in, and/or supporting tactics, attitudes, and behaviors that clearly serve to drive deeper wedges, promote deeper discord, deeper division, and ill feelings among all involved.
We also believe that the time has come to send Adam Urbanski and others a clear message, i.e., that we will not sit idly by as observers, while education leaders continue to unilaterally develop, support, and enforce harmful policies, and practices that lead to unnecessary criminalization of our students, many of whom end up as causalities of the school-to-prison-pipeline. (http://www.aqeny.org/wp-content/uploads/20…) .
Additional Background Information:
RTA prez: ‘Where is the outrage?’
By EDUCATION and BY TIM LOUIS MACALUSO
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/roch…
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Sea change in student discipline
By Tim Louis Macaluso
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/roch…
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Open Letter to RCSD Teachers Regarding Contract: Voting “No” Tomorrow for Students
Editor’s Note: This letter was originally drafted March 22nd, the day before RCSD teachers had to vote on the approval of their contract. It attempts to explain how approving the contract under a few suspicious circumstances is harmful for our students.
Hello Fellow Panthers and Teachers,
As you all know, tomorrow we are to vote on whether or not we approve of the newly drafted RTA contract. What I am about to say isn’t a condemnation of the union that is fighting to increase my pay and bring stability to my school schedule by defining the length of the school day, establishing common planning time, and promoting early student release for teacher meetings. These are all things that I would obviously want as an educator and appreciate as a union member. However, it is also my responsibility as a union member to voice with a corrective love things that startle me. There is a clause in our contract that states the following:
Crimes committed in schools will be pursued as crimes committed elsewhere, to the extent the District has the right to press charges for those crime. In all other events, the District will fully support the teacher who chooses to press charges on his/her own behalf.
We all know how wild some students can be, but we also can’t ignore the fact that the vague nature of this teacher contract clause can be easily abused by professionals. I say that for anecdotal and statistical reasons. I was at a dinner seminar where an educator’s response to the suggestion that pre-K-4thgraders shouldn’t being arrested for assault was “a crime is a crime, and those students should get the same punishment as they would if they did it in the streets.” This man’s statement about criminalizing elementary kids for wrong doing was met with considerable applause. The Advancement Project did an independent study about the disciplinary practices of our district, and the results were staggering. The study (found here) shows how we already disproportionatelysuspend kids for minor infractions, and nationally we disproportionately suspend black, latino, and sped students for the same infractions that other students commit. Imagine how much more malpractice will happen with a clause that provides carte blanche for some of our colleagues that subjectively label our student’s behavior as criminal without an objective process of determining the validity of the accusation. Youpersonally may not participate in inappropriately pursuing charges for students, but that doesn’t mean other teachers haven’t and/or won’t with this vague clause that specifies no grade/age limit, specific misbehaviors, etc.
As I previously stated, there are elements of this contract that are amazing for us, but as I illustrated in the previous paragraph, voting “yes” to this contract as it is currently written would be serving our best interest at the expense of our students. Some of us understand this already, some of us are still comprehending this reality, and some of us may downright disagree with this truth. Disagreeing is a right, and so is a right to discourse, which had been clearly stunted because so few of us as teachers had anything to do with the formulation of this contract and were left with so little time to analyze it before we were instructed to make a quick vote tomorrow morning. I believe we can draft and inform a contract that can equitably serve teachers and students at the same time. Until then, my vote is “no,” and I hope you share these values.
Your Colleague,
Brandon White
Restorative Practices
NW & NE Jr./Sr. High @ The Frederick Douglass Campus
940 Fernwood Park
#: 585-324-9273 ext. 3230
Twitter: @ClassroomB
http://www.twcnews.com/nys/rochester/news/…
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/roch…
http://wxxinews.org/post/community-task-fo…
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/…
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/News…
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/…
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/News…
https://www.facebook.com/13WHAM/videos/101…