Rhode Island Teachers Terminated After Union Talks Fail

By: Bill Waters
02/24/2010 08:04 PM ET

Rhode Island teachers are losing their jobs after talks between the school district and the teachers union collapsed. The jobs will be cut by the end of the year for Central Falls High School. However, no more than half those instructors would be hired back under a federal option that has enraged the state’s powerful teachers union.

Teachers say they want more pay for additional work. The school district has implemented changes that include more after hours tutoring for students. Instructors aren’t happy about the longer work schedule.

“If it’s only an hour or two, I think teachers can afford to do that,” Robert Rivera, who worries about sending his 13-year-old daughter to the troubled high school next year, said in a statement. He dropped out of school as a teenager and works more than 60 hours a week as an appliance repairman. He’s determined to send his daughter college, but sometimes doesn’t feel the teachers are putting in the effort.

The new education commissioner, Deborah Gist, is pushing the state to compete for millions of dollars in federal funding to reform the worst 5 percent of its schools. State law requires schools to warn teachers by March 1 if their jobs are in jeopardy for the following school year. To get the funding, schools must choose one of four paths set under federal law, including the mass firings.

Central Falls

Central Falls is a city in Providence County, Rhode Island. The population was 18,928 at the 2000 census. It covers an area of only 1.29 square miles and is the most densely populated city in the smallest state. Central Falls takes its name from a waterfall on the nearby Blackstone River.

Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals Union

The Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals (RIFTHP) is a statewide federation labor union. The federation’s local unions represent teachers and other educational workers. It is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the AFL-CIO.

It was originally founded as the American Federation of Teachers on March 27, 1947. It started out as a union that included several local alliances. The federation changed its name again in 1958.

Public school teachers in the state were given the legal right to bargain collectively over “hours, salary, working conditions, and other terms of professional employment” in May 1966. State law also allows payment of unemployment benefits to public school workers if they went on strike for more than eight weeks. The union is considered to be one of the most active political groups in the state of Rhode Island.