Teachers should give new bonus system a chance

The chaos that erupted in some Denver Public Schools during the first day of the teachers strike Monday was to be expected.

Without seasoned professionals holding their classrooms together and promoting an orderly environment for learning, of course, these schools (particularly the city’s largest high schools) fell apart. Our educators are smart, talented and their positions are irreplaceable.

However, we are dismayed it has come to this.

The final offer from Superintendent Susana Cordova was an 11 percent raise bringing the salary for a first-year teacher (base pay) to what the union was demanding, $45,800. That offer put $55 million over the next three years toward teacher’s base salaries and much of that money has come from cuts proposed for the central office.

But that’s not what this strike is about. This strike is about bonuses the district offers to teachers who work in difficult to fill positions (math and science teachers) or at low-income or high priority schools. The union and the teachers it represents say those bonuses are ineffective and should be redirected to base salary. We disagree.

Those bonuses represent a chance for Denver to attract some of our best and brightest teachers to the schools where they are needed most. The gap between Denver’s low-income and more affluent students is growing, but not for the reason you might expect. The achievement gap is growing because our students of means are improving their test performance at a rate greater than students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.

Cordova has proposed a new bonus system and we would urge teachers to give that a chance before they demand the entire professional compensation system be abandoned.

We support those bonuses because we believe in teachers. We believe that it takes a talented, dedicated professional to keep a classroom focused and learning. We believe that a teacher has a profound impact on students and that there is no better way to try and close the achievement gap, in Denver or in any other district, than ensuring our students who are struggling the most also have excellent teachers.

Those bonuses are also an acknowledgment that it is more difficult to teach in a chronically under-performing school. We should reward teachers financially for taking on these challenging positions.

We also give the Denver Classroom Teachers Association members credit for what they have accomplished. Their activism shone a bright light on the fact that Denver Public Schools had become a top-heavy organization.

Cordova’s last offer included about 150 positions that would be cut in the central office. Those cuts clearly need to be made, however, we do not appreciate the union’s demonization of those hard-working individuals.

We hope the negotiations Tuesday are more civil, more productive and less theatrical.

If those attending cannot comport themselves in a dignified way adhering to decorum appropriate for negotiations, then we would urge officials with the union to ask those making a ruckus to watch the proceedings from another location where they will not distract from the critical work of getting teachers back into the classrooms as soon as possible. Members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are Megan Schrader, editor of the editorial pages; Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor; Justin Mock, CFO; Bill Reynolds, vice president of circulation and production; Bob Kinney, vice president of information technology; and TJ Hutchinson, systems editor.