Certain schools in Los Angeles would gain new freedom to hire teachers, to avoid certain district directives, and to waive parts of the teachers’ contract, under an agreement brokered by the district and its local teachers’ union.
And the agreement would end the ability of charter-management organizations to bid to run low-performing schools.
The terms are set out in a memorandum of understanding signed by Superintendent John Deasy and United Teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher, but it still must be ratified by the district’s teaching force. The vote was scheduled to occur early this month.
The changes envisioned appear to continue a recent trend toward decentralization in the nation’s second-largest school district, which serves 678,000 students. The plan would presumably provide even more control to the school site councils over how discretionary school funds, and even some federal funding, are spent. The district and the union still have to work through other contractual issues, including the development of a new teacher-evaluation system and whether student achievement will be included in such a system.
