Dissent among teachers union over charter fight

The Boston Globe
February 5, 2016

The Massachusetts Teachers Association has positioned itself as perhaps the most aggressive foe of a charter school expansion in the state.

Barbara Madeloni, the fiery president of the union, has pledged an all-out fight. “We’re going to put everything we’ve got into it,” she said last month.

But the union is not quite ready to make the full investment.

Over the weekend, the union’s board of directors slowed approval of an aggressive, $9.6 million plan to fight legislation and a related ballot measure aimed at lifting the state’s cap on charter schools.

Instead, the panel provided interim funding to get the grass-roots portion of the campaign started, pushing a decision on the larger budget to a much bigger body — the MTA delegates, who will hold their annual meeting in May at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston.

The move set off a round of recriminations within the union. Deborah McCarthy, chairwoman of the MTA’s government relations committee, took to Facebook to excoriate the board for making the decision in executive session, out of public view.

“I was crying as I shared with you how embarrass[ing] it was to be thrown out of the room,” she wrote. “At a time when we needed to push internal politicking aside and fight tooth and nail for our teachers and students, we were acting like a superintendent or Charlie Baker were running our board.”

Janet Anderson, a member of the board who is challenging Madeloni for the union presidency, replied in her own post that she voted against going into executive session. But she wrote that the plan approved by the panel, pushing the final decision to the MTA delegates, “is an example of democracy at its best.”

And while the panel instructed the MTA to participate in legislative negotiations over charter schools, she wrote, that does not mean a retreat from the union’s hard-line opposition to lifting the cap. “I want to make clear that the Board’s decision . . . does not include a call for a compromise. Period.”

The debate over funding the anticharter campaign comes as the US Supreme Court is deciding a case that could significantly weaken public-sector unions, eliminating requirements that workers join the unions and pay fees.

Madeloni, in an interview this week, declined to speak directly to the impact of the Supreme Court case on MTA’s decision-making. But she said the best way to maintain solidarity is to be a “fighting union.”

“We’re doing well,” she said. “We’re strong.”

She also voiced confidence that the MTA would fully fund the anti-charter campaign.

David Scharfenberg

A fight Rosenberg didn’t need

Senate President Stan Rosenberg thought he was heading back to his Western Massachusetts district to meet with constituents and talk about charter schools. Little did he know he was walking into a buzz saw.

Before it was all over, a local charter school principal was charging that he had been barred from the meeting. Rosenberg had to scramble to distance himself from the gathering — and he canceled his appearance at a follow-up meeting scheduled for this Friday.

It all began when word got out in the local media that Rosenberg was meeting in Greenfield Jan. 22 with educators and education activists to talk about the controversial push on Beacon Hill to lift the state cap on the number of charter schools. He had been invited by an anticharter group — Public Funds for Public Schools — to meet in a private home.

When Peter Garbus, the principal of the Four Rivers Charter Public School, showed up at the private residence where the event was to take place, he said he was told “that I was not welcome” and attendance was by invitation only.

He said he was led to believe — in part from statements made by Rosenberg’s office — that the Senate leader was coming to his community to have an open and frank dialogue.

“However, what happened in Greenfield . . . was a partisan, closed-door meeting to organize opposition to charter schools,’’ Garbus wrote to Rosenberg the day after the meeting.

Rosenberg, realizing he had been unwittingly caught up in a conflict he didn’t need — particularly as he is trying to craft a consensus in the Senate to deal with the red-hot education issue — moved quickly to distance himself from fray.

He immediately canceled his appearance at follow-up session in Amherst. And his aides quickly got the word out that his office had nothing to do with organizing the sessions.

His chief of staff, Natasha Perez, insisted Rosenberg was not aware that the Greenfield meeting, which had been touted in the local media as a public session, was private.

“He obviously doesn’t want to be in a public meeting in which people are excluded,’’ Perez said. “But he also will meet with either side privately if that’s the forum they want.’’