Bloomberg Reaches Deal With Principals

This is GREAT news on many dimensions: it puts to rest a huge issue that could have interfered with the big reforms underway (which depend in many ways on principals), it gives principals a well-deserved raise, and most importantly, completely reforms their contract, allowing the DOE to identify, rate and reward the best principals and have stronger tools for deal with the bad ones.

The Bloomberg administration and the union representing New York City school principals and assistant principals reached a tentative contract agreement yesterday that would offer bonuses of up to $25,000 a year to select principals who agree to spend three years in troubled schools.

The deal would increase base pay by 23 percent, compounded over nearly seven years, and add 15 minutes to principals’ and assistant principals’ workdays. The contract would also revamp how principals are rated on their performance each year, discarding the blunt thumbs-up or thumbs-down system under which they are labeled either satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

It would be replaced by a more nuanced review, aligned to the Education Department’s new accountability system, which grades schools from A to F based on students’ progress.

The contract, which must be ratified by union members, would also end seniority rights that allowed veteran assistant principals without school assignments to force their way into certain vacancies, even over principals’ objections.

The change has long been sought by Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who argued that “bumping rights” saddled principals with unwanted staff members.

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Bloomberg Reaches Deal With Principals

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: April 24, 2007

www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/nyregion/24principals.html

The Bloomberg administration and the union representing New York City school principals and assistant principals reached a tentative contract agreement yesterday that would offer bonuses of up to $25,000 a year to select principals who agree to spend three years in troubled schools.