Quality of language-immersion school is threatened by teacher-contract provisions 

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

8/21/2007

Editorial

Teacher contracts often are blamed for impeding the ability of school administrators to manage their districts efficiently and innovatively. A case in the Columbus City Schools illustrates the point.

Ecole Kenwood, a French-language immersion school, has been one of the district’s most successful and popular programs, exactly the sort of alternative it needs to offer families who otherwise might choose private or charter schools.

Now parents are justifiably upset by the news that four teachers assigned to the school for the coming academic year don’t speak French.

Two are math and science specialists and one is at the middle-school level of the K-8 school. Parents are most upset, though, about a third-grade classroom teacher, because at that level, students are supposed to receive 70 percent of their instruction in French.

Kenwood’s principal will try to make do by having the new third-grade teacher split her time with another third-grade teacher who is a native of France, but that leaves neither classroom with more than half of its instruction in French.

How can parents be confident their children are immersed in the language, as the school’s philosophy promises?

Superintendent Gene Harris’ explanation is simple: Living within the district’s budget required teacher layoffs for the past two years, and the teachers’ contract requires that any vacancies be offered first to teachers who were laid off.

Her commitment not to exceed the district’s self-imposed cap of 3 percent spending growth per year is appropriate, but failing to ensure that specialized programs such as language immersion are staffed by teachers with specialized expertise is a glaring flaw in the contract.

Surely, the provision requiring that openings go to laid-off teachers with appropriate certifications could further stipulate that positions in specialized programs must be filled with people who have the qualifications required by those programs.

While defining specialized might require some negotiation, language-immersion programs clearly ought to qualify.

This is an area of the contract in which school management should reclaim its rights. Administrators and teachers with students’ best interests at heart should not knowingly undermine a successful program in the name of teacher seniority.

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