Educators disagree with seniority rule

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - A national survey of local IPS teachers and administrators conducted by the New Teacher Project, concludes the employees themselves believe the caliber of teaching would improve if seniority wasn't the system used to determine who stays and who goes.

Last week, award winning IPS teacher Donna Pope Green was rehired after being laid off.

She and several hundred teachers with the least amount of seniority were first to get pink slips.

"We know for example that this spring, nine nominees for IPS Teacher of the Year were laid off," said David Harris, president of the Nonprofit Education Reform Organization, The Mind Trust.

He said in the recent survey of 1700 Indianapolis Public School teachers and principals, most of them overwhelmingly disagreed with the age-old system of letting the newest teachers go first.

The teacher’s union contract only allows IPS to lay off teachers based on seniority.

Union Vice President Rhondalyn Cornett, a teacher at IPS #39, says the union will fight to keep that policy in place.

"And the reason why we have that in place is so that people can't just make, or administration just can't make like subjective reasons for letting people go."

According to Harris, "We should never be in a situation where a group of kids could have a better teacher, but they don't because of a blind seniority system."

Cornett said school principals are supposed to evaluate teachers and recommend that ineffective ones be fired.

24-Hour News 8 asked her how often that happens and she said it probably doesn't happen as often as it should.