Teachers’ advocates bludgeoned Gov. Mitt Romney’s proposal to allow superintendents and principals to more easily remove teachers in underperforming schools at an Education Committee hearing Tuesday at the Statehouse.
The committee redrafted Romney’s bill and made it part of an existing senate bill, removing the sections that gave power to principals and superintendents to fire teachers but including provisions to increase community involvement in underperforming schools.
Massachusetts Federation of Teachers President Kathleen Kelley lambasted the original proposal, saying it would infringe on teachers’ rights by giving superintendents and principals the power to fire staff without proper evaluation and review.
“The solution is not dictatorship,” Kelley said. “This bill dishonors and disrespects educators.”
Rep. Steven Walsh (D-Lynn) agreed with Kelley.
“This bill is a Trojan horse that takes away rights,” Walsh said, adding that teachers are not the source of the problem.
Kelley said the bill does not address the real problem of poor funding and that teachers are not to blame for underperforming schools.
“The reality is that the city of Lynn closed three schools [and] laid off 100 paid personnel … closed all-day kindergarten and cut the supplies and books budget by 50 percent,” she said.
Romney’s proposed education bill was created based on feedback from a task force he created.
The task force’s goal has been to create reports and give recommendations that can be used “to figure out tactics to intervene in districts declared as underperforming [by the Board of Education],” said Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor and task force member Robert Schwartz.
But the power to fire teachers in underperforming schools was only a portion of a larger bill, which would also improve underperforming districts by increasing community involvement, said Paul Grogan, the task force chairman and president of The Boston Foundation.
Ann Reale, Romney’s senior policy advisor, also said the community involvement aspects of the bill were more important than the expanded power to fire teachers. She said the bill would establish Turnaround Partners, firms and nonprofit organizations within and outside the community that would supply resources to underperforming schools.
Committee chairwoman Rep. Marie St. Fleur (D-Boston) questioned whether the $2 million set aside for bill would be sufficient, while representatives from the governor’s office said the money would be ample.
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