FOCUS
No place for reform
By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Page Editor
It seemed like a happy ending to what had been a most traumatic event: The state, represented by a smiling Gov. Ben Cayetano and his buddies, Neil Abercrombie and Charles Toguchi, and the teacher's union, represented by a smiling Joan Husted and Karen Ginoza, announced they had finally found a way to settle a bitter two-week statewide teacher's strike.
Families across the state breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, their kids would be back in the classroom.
Except.
Except the deal almost fell apart because the two sides could not agree on a critical, if somewhat peripheral part of the contract. The union believed it had won a special differential for teachers with advanced degrees for both years of the contract.
The differential, soon to become known as the "P-Track" (for professional track) plan, was just part of the union's longstanding struggle to "professionalize" the teaching trade and its compensation system.
But the state was equally insistent the agreement was for just one year of extra money. And it insisted on calling the money a "bonus," not a differential.
Advertiser library photo • May 4, 2001
The dispute over one-year versus two-years was almost comic. A labor board that later was asked to sort out the dispute described the situation as "Rashomon-like." The state negotiator, Davis Yogi, was reduced to insisting his view was supported by some scribbles on a flip chart used by negotiators during late-night talks.
HSTA members walk the line during last year's teachers' strike: Can reform occur in a collective bargaining environment?
But, whoops! The chart was missing. It walked out in the hands of union negotiators and somehow became misplaced.
Still, it looked like another battle over money — the bread and butter of any labor negotiation. But in truth, the fight was really over something far more fundamental, far more important to public education in Hawai'i.
It was a battle over the very essence of school reform, or renewal if you will, and whether any kind of meaningful reform can be accomplished through the collective bargaining process.
And as in any battle, lines are being drawn. Management, including Paul LeMahieu, who was superintendent at the time of the strike, and Cayetano himself, believes that true reform will be difficult if it has to be pushed through the traditional collective bargaining process.
But the union, says Husted, not only believes that reform can be accomplished across the bargaining table, but that it has to be.
"Absolutely!" she declares. "Our collective bargaining law says that collective bargaining is the modern way of operating government because it consists of joint decision-making," she said.
"Otherwise, there's no buy-in from the teachers."
How this plays out in Hawai'i will say a lot about the future of school reform in today's unionized environment. If a way can be found to "reform" public education within this system, then change is possible that would work for the benefit of teachers, families and students.
Industrial union model
But there is a danger that the two sides — despite their rhetoric — remain locked into what is often called an "industrial model" of labor-management relations, where the workers' focus is on better wages and working conditions and management's focus is on productivity and control.
Under that scenario, everyone loses.
Husted says the thinking of Hawai'i's teachers has come a long way from 1961 when the charismatic New York school teacher Albert Shanker kick-started the modern teachers union movement.
Teachers, she says, are focused on shifting from a trade union approach to a professional craft association approach. Think the American Medical Association rather than the Teamsters or the United Auto Workers.
"We need to get away from the industrial model of the union," Husted contends.
"Why," she asks, "would good teachers want to protect bad teachers? Why is the current system better where nothing happens?"
The problem, she says, is that management fears cutting teachers in on the true work of educational reform in the classroom:
"Too often teachers are treated as if they are tall children."
Her example is the push by teachers for a peer assistance and review program, in which teachers would be directly involved in evaluating the performance of their colleagues.
It would be a process similar to that used by nurses, doctors and other professionals, Husted says, but management resisted, fearing it was nothing more than a teacher protection movement.
"They only want us to go so far," she said. "But I say it's a crock when they say we can't get rid of bad teachers because 'the union won't let us.'
"It's tough to get a good working relationship and get them to believe you and trust you," Husted adds. "We say good teachers don't like bad teachers. This is not a trick. We really believe that."
But frustration, suspicion and distrust run both ways.
LeMahieu came into office brimming with confidence that he could establish a new, collaborative relationship with the teachers that would quickly move forward on his standards-accountability reform agenda.
But he said he quickly became frustrated in his efforts to get teachers involved .
They were reluctant to come to the table, he said, because they feared they would be — in effect — co-opted into "buying in" to management changes that might not be to the liking of the rank-and-file.
"I guess they just have to trust us," he said. "If they did this, they would be members in that conversation. What's wrong with that?"
LeMahieu said he understands why unions are jealous of their standing, the "history of abuse" that led to their organizing. And he said there is a role for collective bargaining in such areas as job protection, academic freedom and carving up the bucks for salary.
But that process is not suited to educational change, he insists. That conversation between teachers, management and other stakeholders should not take place in the win-lose environment of collective bargaining.
"I'm not saying to the unions that all of this is out of your hands," he insists. "It's just that we should take it out of the (collective bargaining) process.
In other words, LeMahieu says that reform and change can (indeed should) come within a unionized environment, but not across the collective bargaining table.
It is a curious thing. Both sides want more professionalism, higher standards and (presumably) a better educational product. But neither side seems entirely comfortable pursuing those goals on the other's turf.
A California proposal
While this tension became vivid in Hawai'i because of the heated strike, it is not unique to the Islands.
California, for instance, is at this very moment debating a proposal in its state Assembly that would put teachers — and parents — very much at the table where educational decisions are made.
The measure, pushed ardently by the 300,000-member California Teachers Association, expands the agenda open to union-management negotiations far beyond the fairly limited issues of wages, hours of employment and so forth.
The new law would open up union representation on a broad range of education issues such as school evaluation, content creation, textbook selection, local educational standards and — effectively — the entire smorgasbord of education "reform" ideas.
At first glance, it would appear to be LeMahieu's worst nightmare. Rather than simplifying the collective bargaining experience to the basics, it appears to open it up to the entire educational experience.
That's certainly the position of the California State School Boards Association.
"By design, collective bargaining is an adversarial process, by which teachers represent their own self-interests," the association wrote.
"Now, the (teachers association) is asking for the right to represent not only their own interests, but also the interests of students, parents and others in the education community at the bargaining table, behind closed doors. What would happen in this adversarial, give-and-take process, when teacher's interests come into conflict with students interests, as they are sure to do?"
This is precisely the kind of suspicion that makes union leaders like Husted so frustrated.
"Why would we not want the best?" she asks.
Yes, Husted admits, getting reform that improves the lot of the students also means improving the lot of the teachers, i.e., better pay. But what's wrong with that? she asks.
She envisions a salary system that retains traditional steps for longevity and professional advancement, but which also rewards performance by creating new, highly paid, "senior" and "distinguished" teachers.
LeMahieu, reflecting the approach pushed by Cayetano, said he would prefer a system that sets enough of the pay package aside to keep teachers whole — keep up with inflation — and then spend the remainder on "results."
"This money we'd use to promote change, to produce learning in kids," he said.
In truth, there is a concept buried in the California proposal that may be a way out.
That plan does not say that issues such as classroom standards and accountability must be decided over the collective bargaining table.
Rather, what it says is that union and management can collectively agree to put any or all of these issues to a larger partnership of stakeholders, including parents. Once that agreement is struck, the actual work of creating a reform structure could take place in an open and collaborative environment.
This might be the best of both worlds solution that gets around what otherwise seems an intractable and impossible deadlock.
Something, surely, must happen. Both sides want reform, in that basic sense of improving the teacher-student experience. But neither side is entirely comfortable allowing the other to take the lead in pushing through the changes such reform demands.
As long as they remain in that mode, they are like Sherlock Holmes and professor James Moriarty in "The Final Solution," locked in a vicious embrace on a ledge at the top of Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Neither will release his grip, causing them both to tumble to their doom.
Of course, Doyle was unable to keep Holmes dead. The public demanded more. And so, too, does the public demand more of their teachers, school boards, administrators and other public officials.
Step back from the ledge. Trust each other and work, cooperatively, for true reform and improvement in our public schools.
