Charter School Unions – An Analysis of the UNO and ASPIRA Contracts
In 2013 the UNO and ASPIRA charter school networks independently unionized with ChiACTS (a branch of the AFT affiliated with and partially funded by the Chicago Teachers Union). ChiACTS is the same organization that is attempting to unionize Noble through UNE. Below is a comparison of these contracts to better understand what a contract for Noble could look like. This analysis was done almost entirely by Jake Lessem, a 11-year veteran teacher at Rauner College Prep, and reviewed by teachers from We Believe in Noble. The data comes from the most recently available contracts from both organizations.
UNO Collective Bargaining Agreement
ASPIRA Collective Bargaining Agreement:
Compensation
Good news and bad news here. UNO teachers have relatively high salaries, ASPIRA teachers do not. It is also important to remember that under our current Noble structure, teachers receive a large performance bonus at the end of the school year, that is not seen in our base salary and we allocate a large section of fund to keep positions like a school social worker and a culture team.
Both schools also have negotiated percent increases built into their contracts. It can be concluded that there is a good chance that teachers would make more money with a union, but it’s not a guarantee. Also, the UNO schedule looks similar to the Distinguished Teacher Pathway that James Troupis has been working on(with values obviously TBD).
Union Dues
If we have a union, we all owe union dues. Illinois is a “closed shop” state which means that even if you choose not to be in the union, you still must pay dues. According to the UNE website, current dues for ChiACTS unions are $693.50 per year(?)
It is worth noting that the AFT and ChiACTS would receive a major influx of capital if Noble unionized. These dues then go towards funding the state level IFT and the the national level AFT. According to the U.S. Department of Labor – Office of Labor-Management Standards, in 2015 the National-Level AFT alone spent over 37 million dollars in “political activities and lobbying.”
Teacher Retention
Despite unionization teacher retention is still low for UNO and ASPIRA. Since 2014 (the year after UNO and ASPIRA unionized), UNO’s staff retention has been between 24 and 48% every year. ASPIRA’s staff retention was 52% during the one year of available data. As a basis for comparison, Noble’s staff retention has been between 69% and 80% during the same time period.
UNO Illinois Report Cart: Teacher Retention (Click on “View Trend”)
ASPIRA Illinois Report Card: Teacher Retention (Click on “View Trend”)
Noble Illinois Report Card: Teacher Retention (Click on “View Trend”)
WBIN is skeptical of claims that unionizing at Noble would have affected staff retention over the last few years. Teachers in Noble tend to leave for major life events. They go to grad school. They change careers. They move to other states. They leave to start families. Speaking from the perspective of several Noble veteran teachers, all of whom have five or more years at Noble, very few people have left to teach elsewhere, and those that do seldom go to make more money. Teachers unions typically do help increase teacher pay; however, that doesn’t seem to be the crux of Noble’s teacher retention issue.
Bonuses
Unionizing likely means the end of performance bonuses. A quote from the ChiACTS website:
Broadly speaking, union leaders have fought against “incentive pay” in that it is often either arbitrary or based on an over-reliance on high stakes standardized testing. FAQs: UNO
UNO once had bonuses but there is no mention of bonuses in the union contract. The only bonus that ASPIRA offers is a signing bonus.
Exclusive Bargaining
Unionizing means that we give up a lot of our individual rights to the people that run UNE and ChiACTS. From the UNO contract:
The Employer hereby recognizes the Union as the exclusive representative of the following bargaining unit employees for purposes of collective bargaining
As a union employee you forfeit the right to negotiate anything on our own. This may prove to be a problem if your square peg doesn’t fit in the round hole of the union contract.
Although it has been said that UNE negotiations would be conducted exclusively by Noble employees to advocate for Noble voices, that does not appear to have been the case in the UNO and ASPIRA contracts. A contract negotiated through a ChiACTS union will be negotiated using the same lawyers that negotiate the CTU contract and all ChiACTS contracts. Although UNE members will be directly involved, influence from the AFT, IFT, CTU and ChiACTS will be present. WBIN is concerned with bringing in an outside organization negotiate to a contract here at Noble.
Union Priorities
Teacher pay and work time are the chief reasons for negotiations and threatened strikes.
UNO very nearly went on strike earlier this school year over teacher pay and work time:
Class sizes have been capped at 32 students, and employees will have shorter days and a shorter school year, with the work year for teachers down to 196 days from 201 days, union members said at an early morning news conference. Students’ school year will be 183 days.
There tentative contract also includes “substantial” protections against layoffs and recalls, and teacher’s seniority rights have been recognized for the first time, said Robert Bloch, an attorney for the teachers union.
Of note, the parties reached their agreement at 3 AM the day the strike was scheduled to begin. UNO Charter School Teachers Strike Averted With 3 A.M. Deal (Ward).
The union at ASPIRA agreed on a new contract in early March after threatening to strike: As with UNO, the result was more money and less work time for teachers.:
A two-year agreement includes annual raises of 3.25 percent and 3 percent, a union attorney said. The charter network would also continue to pay the bulk of teachers’ pension contributions.
The charter network’s school year would be reduced by four days, and the network’s school day would also be trimmed by half an hour. Deal Reached by Aspire Teachers (Perez)
Overall, teachers unions tend to prioritize the needs of teachers over the needs of students.
Student Outcomes
Data trends from ASPIRA and UNO have shown mixed results since unionization. ACT scores have remained relatively static at both networks:
UNO Illinois Report Card: ACT Results
ASPIRA Illinois Report Card: ACT Results
And student graduation rates have fallen at UNO and fluctuated wildly at ASPIRA:
UNO Illinois Report Card: Graduation Rates
ASPIRA Illinois Report Card: Graduation Rates
Evaluation
Both ASPIRA and UNO contracts call for formal written and scored evaluations between 1 to 3 times per year. These evaluations become the basis for hiring and retention decisions (see the second bullet point under seniority). This is due to the very nature of collective bargaining – the same policies must be formalized and applied equally to everyone. WBIN is concerned about being evaluated in an overly prescriptive and formalized manner.
Seniority
Both the ASPIRA and UNO contracts have multiple provisions that prioritize the interests of veteran teachers over new hires:
Provisional Years
All first year employees at either network work on a provisional basis and may have their contracts terminated at any time without cause during the first 365 days of their employment. More veteran employees can only be fired after a principal goes through a series of formal steps and performance improvement plans. This is significantly more protection than we have now as “at will employees,” but this could have a negative effect on teachers in their first few years at Noble.
Layoffs
Luckily, Noble has been very fiscally responsible and has not overly stressed our budget, allowing the network to have savings, just in case funding doesn’t come through. Given the recent financial climate, this became very helpful, allowing the network to avoid laying off any teachers, as both CPS and UNO have had to do. We were also able to keep the doors of our schools open for our students, while CPS has had to take furlough days this year. However, given the current financial climate, layoff policy cannot be ignored. UNO has two distinct layoff plans for instructional and non-instructional staff. Non-instructional staff is strictly “last in, first out,” meaning the most recent hire is the first one to be laid off.
The system for instructional staff works differently and involves something called the “Honorable Dismissal List.” WBIN encourages you to read this specific section yourself, but basically all staff members are ranked into tiers based on the results of their formal evaluations. UNO chooses which subject area(s) are subject to layoffs and then lays off the teachers with the least seniority in the bottom tier first and then works their way up the list (exhausting the most senior teacher in the bottom tier before moving to the least senior teacher in the next tier up). One interesting caveat rule to this is the so called “Bumping Rights” policy, which, means that if a teacher teaches math and another teaches science, the math teacher can take the science teachers job if the network decides to layoff math teachers, as long as the math teacher has a higher evaluation score than the science teacher.
The layoff system at ASPIRA is strictly based on positional need and your most recent evaluation score.
Pay
How years of experience affect pay is not entirely clear in the ASPIRA contract, but the primary way to advance pay in the UNO contract is through seniority (there is a $2000 bump for earning a master’s degree). This contrasts with the proposed “Noble Distinguished Teacher” program recently rolled out, which allows teachers to elevate their pay through exemplary performance and not just years served.
Conclusion
ChiACTS is not right for Noble. Forming a union might help veteran teachers make more money (though that is far from sure), but it will hurt newer staff and the students. Unionizing will not fix teacher retention or give teacher’s voice. This proposal means handing over control of our professional lives to an organization that prioritizes teachers over students. That is not why we chose to teach, and that is why we will not make that bargain.