To the editor:

I read Mr. Marra's impassioned op-ed piece. He equates layoff procedures with dismissing teachers. They are not the same. One is for lack of work to be performed and one is for poor work. The administration has a procedure for dismissing poorly performing teachers. The fact they have not chosen to use it, is not the fault of the seniority system.

In paragraph eight he asserts that unions do not seek what is best for the students. It seems that he is uninformed that unions that fight for limits to class size, mandatory professional development, appropriate working and learning conditions, adequate materials and many other student benefits. I would say unions are very concerned about students. He goes on to imply that the union protects unprofessional teachers. Again he confuses dismissal and layoff procedures. Further he shows a lack of familiarity with that actually happens when administration tries to dismiss a teacher. I have often heard the union leadership say that they do not defend a teacher's conduct or performance, that is up to the teacher. What the union is there to do is to insure that the procedure, negotiated, administered and controlled by the administration is followed. They are there to ensure that federal and state law are followed, that the teacher has received prior notice of what exactly needed to be changed and that they were provided the necessary professional development to effect the change. They are there to ensure that unsubstantiated allegations are not used to dismiss a teacher. They are not there to defend poor performance.

Later in the article he asserts that teachers claim that seniority is the only way to determine quality of a teacher. He may have heard it, but I have never heard a teacher argue it. The professional teachers I know resent poor or lazy teachers because of the inequity of effort, they are presumed guilty by association and it makes it harder to run their own class and the entire school. Ascribing a weak argument to your opponent is a classic debate technique used to distract from some other point.

From reading Mr. Marra's opinion you would assume that poor performing teachers are a wide spread problem. If I remember correctly the RI Department of Education put out statistics last year that said over 90 percent of teachers performed in the top two categories on the evaluation system they designed and something like 1 percent were in the category that was poor performing. Any teacher that is performing poorly needs to be developed or dismissed but that is the administration's job, not the union's and certainly not the seniority system's job.

Now that we have separated the dismissal and seniority systems let's actually look layoffs. No administrator or school committee I have had contact with wants to layoff effective, well liked teachers. But for financial reasons or declining enrollment they have to. I can see where Mr. Marra and a young teacher might feel they are doing a better job than some senior teacher and that it is "unfair" they are getting laid off.  But they may be confusing personal loss with unfair. Over time their opinion will change. So what is a "fair" way to choose between valuable, well liked teachers? In RI it is seniority.

Mr. Marra also seems to be unaware that as municipal employees, teachers have to be laid off based on seniority because it is the state law. Seniority is not subject to administrative favoritism, it is "simple" to administer, it avoids abuses of power, it avoids litigation, and it helps retain experience teachers. All of these are good things.

Seniority is not the perfect system. But it is not the blight Mr. Marra makes it out to be.

Bryan Cooper

Barrington

Mr. Cooper is a teacher in the Warwick School Department.