Teachers at Grand Center Arts Academy move to unionize
by Elisa Crouch
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
September 2, 2015
Teachers at Grand Center Arts Academy gathered at an undisclosed location Tuesday and started down a road that staff at only one other charter school in the city has attempted in more than 15 years. They moved to unionize.
The St. Louis chapter of American Federation of Teachers announced Wednesday morning that the “overwhelming majority” of the 64 eligible teachers and staff had signed union authorization cards. Teachers are partnering with AFT Local 420 in hopes of quickly negotiating a contract with the school’s governing board.
Grand Center Arts Academy is a performing arts middle and high school in Grand Center, around the corner from the Fox Theatre. It’s one of five charter schools that make up Confluence Academy, a cluster of charter schools whose campuses are scattered throughout the city. Grand Center Arts was opened under its own charter. Teachers want to maintain the school’s independence from others in the Confluence cluster.
“We look forward to having a voice in decisions that are made regarding our students learning environment,” said Fredrick Warren, a science teacher at the school.
By the end of the work day Wednesday, union officials had not received a response from Confluence.
Charter schools are tuition-free public schools that operate independently of school districts. There are 32 operating in St. Louis. Some proponents say they need autonomy for success — freedom from regulation, red tape, and often, union contracts.
The Missouri Charter Public School Association has never taken a position for or against unionization.
NATIONAL PUSH
Nationally, unions don’t have much of a foothold in charter schools. The percentage of unionized charter schools dropped to 7 percent in 2012 from 12 percent in 2009, according to the Center for Education Reform, a research and advocacy group based in Washington.But in the past year there appears some recent momentum toward charter school unionization. Efforts to organize in Chicago and Detroit charter schools have been successful. Teachers are pushing to organize a Los Angeles–based charter school chain that’s within the nation’s second-largest school district.Unlike district schools, teachers at charter schools usually work with little job security and on year-to-year employment agreements. It’s an arrangement that gives administrators more freedom to make mid-year staff changes and respond to student needs without having to increase staff pay.
