EXAMPLE OF: HEAVY LIFTING "Paying Off"

Editorial

DPS future seems brighter as Bobb, DFT near deal

This is not a typo: The Detroit Federation of Teachers is close to forging a new contract with the Detroit Public Schools that would include peer review and merit pay.

Getting either in place would be a major accomplishment in a district where both con cepts have long been anathema. Getting both would be a sign that the district’s teachers are truly embracing reform, and understand that it can’t happen without them.

So congrats are in order for the two leaders involved here: emergency financial manager Robert Bobb and DFT President Keith John son.

Just a few months ago, Bobb saw union trouble on the horizon. He needed major con cessions from teachers to continue his fight to balance the district’s books. And for long-need ed educational progress, he needed the unions to accept some modifications to the current tenure provisions, which, in the harshest terms, protect bad teachers from consequence. But Bobb didn’t wage a big, public anti-  union campaign. In fact, it’s difficult to recall him ever disparaging the unions. Instead, he stayed at the bargaining table, extended the contract after he hit an expiration deadline, and worked to get what he needed.

Bobb wields extraordinary powers as an emergency manager and is here, at least in part, to run roughshod over old processes that didn’t produce desired results. He could have thrown up his hands at his inability to simply wipe out collective bargaining agreements.

Instead, he seized the opportunity to build trust and credibility with the unions, whose members are so critical to education reform.

Johnson deserves credit, too, for even in dulging Bobb’s advances in this regard. Detroit teachers have struck in the past over these very issues, and national unions continue to be slow to embrace substantial changes to tenure.

But Johnson properly recognizes that the status quo is a disaster for Detroit’s students, even if it provides temporary security for teachers. He has embraced Bobb’s invitations to see how peer review and merit pay work in other cities. And he has kept an open mind at the bargaining table. Hence the announcement this week that both sides are close to a deal.

None of this is to say that all disputes be tween DPS and the unions have been resolved.

There is disagreement about the role seniority should play in layoffs. Down the road, more far-reaching reforms (especially ones that make it even easier to identify and get rid of bad teachers) will cause friction.

But this is a huge step forward. Bobb contin ues to impress. Johnson is making his bones as an innovative, forward-thinking union leader.

The children of Detroit will be the beneficiaries.