Klein Says Principals’ Union Is Cause of Contract Impasse


By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: November 9, 2006
Two days after the city reached a tentative contract with the teachers’ union, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein sent the city’s principals a blistering letter yesterday blaming their union for the fact that they have gone more than three years without a contract.


In the letter, included in a weekly e-mail memo to principals, the chancellor said that the deadlock was “not about money,” and that the city had offered the union raises “comparable to the very generous package” that the teachers’ union received in its previous contract, reached last year.

Rather, the chancellor attributed the deadlock to the refusal by the union, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, to budge on proposed changes to work rules, particularly regarding assistant principals who lose their jobs because of budget cuts, enrollment changes or school closings.

The chancellor said that he had agreed to give such assistant principals six months to find new posts, but that the union insisted that the city either “force” them on schools that did not want them, or “create make-work positions.” He said the teachers’ union had agreed to analogous changes in work rules.

As principals, who have more responsibilities now than ever, grow increasingly frustrated with the lack of a contract, Mr. Klein in recent months has departed from his policy of not commenting on contract talks. He has publicly criticized the union work rules and has noted that he is interested in changes that would benefit principals, if not assistant principals. The union represents 1,490 principals and more than 3,100 assistant principals, and Mr. Klein has repeatedly pointed to ways in which their interests diverge.

Yesterday, he was unusually direct on this point, saying the “conflict of interests” between principals and assistant principals had “become increasingly clear during these contract negotiations.” He said, for example, that the city had offered principals larger raises than those offered to assistant principals and other supervisors who are also represented by the union, and that the offer was refused.

In a letter to members yesterday, Jill S. Levy, president of the principals’ union, said Mr. Klein’s account of the deadlock was inaccurate. She said that the chancellor was intent on changing work rules for all members, not just assistant principals, and that he had never offered larger raises to principals.

“Klein is using this as another divisive method,” Ms. Levy wrote, to create an “inherent conflict where there is none.”

“It is unfortunate that he continues to be divisive, punitive and inconsistent,” she added. “As a result, he has made this negotiation into a lengthy and unyielding situation.”

After the new agreement with the teachers’ union was reached — 11 months before the current contract expires — Ms. Levy sent her members an e-mail message saying that they must feel “upset and frustrated,” and that the teachers’ deal “might have been designed to put additional pressure on C.S.A.”

In that mailing, Ms. Levy defended what she described as the union’s unwillingness to relinquish certain fundamental rights, saying the Department of Education saw the union members “as cogs in the wheel and pieces to be moved around at will.”

The supervisors’ contract expired on June 30, 2003. While some members have blamed the chancellor for the stalemate since then, others have directed their frustration at Ms. Levy. Last month, she announced that she would step down when her term ended on Jan. 31. She said her departure was long planned, but the announcement was made about a month after a small group of principals wrote a letter citing “grave concerns” about the union’s “ineffectiveness.”