Educators are experts in the classroom, but we don’t have all the answers that will make public education in the District of Columbia Public Schools the best it can be. We need partners to do the hard work of fighting for the public schools DC’s community deserves.
With major changes on the horizon, the Washington Teachers’ Union is increasing our efforts to partner with the broader community, starting with a series of community conversations in every ward of the District. We will convene parents, students and other community members to build a collective vision for DCPS and the top priorities to achieve it. The best way to find out what needs to be fixed, jettisoned or included in our schools is to work with the very people who have a stake in our kids’ education: our parents, students, educators and concerned community members.
There’s no shortage of things that kids need to make our schools better suit their needs. Educators, parents and students have come forward and testified at the DC Council and DC State Board of Education on a wide range of issues: from less time preparing for and taking standardized tests, to ensuring our special education students are receiving their full complement of services, to questions over how we integrate technology into our classrooms. But we want to engage with the DC public school community, especially our parents and students, to get a sense of what we all feel our schools need the most to ensure our students have the educational experience they deserve.
This community strategy also will be part of our contract negotiations. Because we do not have a school board running DCPS, there are few opportunities for the public’s voices to truly be heard as equal partners when it concerns how our schools are run. One way is to use the collective bargaining process and take a “bargaining for the common good” approach, where the union and community collaborate to achieve benefits for our educators and the broader community. For instance, if the union and community agree that we need more community schools, where students and their families can receive particular resources to improve their lives, like tutoring, mentoring, health and dental clinics, or food banks, we would advocate for that in our contract negotiations. Educators’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions, so it is imperative that we are all on the same page when fighting for what we need from the district government.
Another part of our community conversations will be discussion around what qualities we are looking for from the next DCPS chancellor. There’s actually a D.C. law that sets out how the appointment process will go that has been repeatedly flouted by previous mayors. It includes a review panel of parents, students and teachers and specifically names just one organization—the WTU—as having “great weight” in the recommendation to the mayor as to who the next chancellor should be. We are anxious to roll up our sleeves with the next mayor and make that process a reality alongside our community partners so that we get a chancellor who will be committed and experienced enough to see our community’s vision through.
When a new mayor and chancellor are in place, there is no doubt that we will once again press to overhaul the way teachers are evaluated. The long-used, long-reviled, discredited IMPACT system uses unfair criteria to evaluate teachers, resulting in good teachers being fired, failing to provide the necessary help for teachers needing assistance, discouraging teachers to stay in the system and failing to improve student outcomes. It overemphasizes test scores to evaluate a teacher, which may not reflect a teacher’s sincere efforts or any progress being made for students in difficult circumstances. The WTU has been clear that when it comes to how our educators are evaluated, we need to be partners at the negotiating table in the creation, implementation and enforcement of the evaluation system so that it is focused on improving teaching practice and student learning, not just on punitive ratings.
We intend to work with the DC community so that, as partners, we create a public education system that’s accountable to the public and then support and build a public school system that our students need to grow and become well-educated citizens. We cannot wait to join with you in this work.
Laura Fuchs is president of the Washington Teachers’ Union.
