Hartford Schools Vote to Change Teacher Seniority

Hartford teachers stood together on Tuesday night to fight to keep from changing teacher’s contracts and how seniority is determined.

The current system allows a teacher who is slated for layoffs at one school to bump someone with less seniority at another school, the Hartford Courant reports.

By the end of the night, the school board voted in favor of what the superintendent requested.

He asked that teacher’s seniority be based on his or her time in an individual school, not their time with the district.

Supt. Steven Adamowski also wants the state to protect specially trained teachers in the city's themed schools, the Courant reports.

Now it’s up to the state to approve the measure.

Andrea Johnson, president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers, argued that the change would be detrimental to experienced teachers who change schools.

"A 30-year teacher happens to come into that school … well that 30-year teacher would have the least seniority within the school," Johnson said.

For next year, Hartford could be looking at 180 job cuts, and school district officials said the change would help keep specially trained teachers in the district’s themed schools.

"If there are to be job cuts (we want) the bumping (to) take place within the school and not (be) system wide, where you have teachers coming into a school that weren’t trained in that theme," David Medina, spokesman for Hartford Public Schools, said.

But teachers worry about what that could mean for their jobs and for the students they teach, so they packed into Tuesday's Board of Ed meeting to voice their opinions.

"Let me put it this way, if you go to have open-heart surgery, would you like a brand new surgeon, or someone who had done it many times?" Katie Wood, a third-grade teacher, asked.

While many parents and teachers are against the school-based seniority, other parents are for it and want to keep specialized teachers in their schools.

"What’s in the best interest of children is to make sure they have stable teachers and that they’re able to have the best teachers in front of them, not just because they have the most numbers of years in the system, but because they are the best," Mayra Esquilin, a parent and member of Achieve Hartford, said.

 

Leave Comments