Maybe Leslie Jacobs can be on this task force too. (She's already on the "economic development task force") Jacobs has already combined both of these areas of expertise in advocating for a system of education which squeezes the maximum output out of its labor force.
Sean Gallagher, Akili's principal and founder, said his teachers are paid to work 50-hour weeks, but often put in 60 or 70, particularly during their first months. He and Stephanie Lyon, the director of curriculum, post about 80 hours a week on a routine basis. In its first year, Akili's salaries ranged from $41,500 for novices to $52,000 for the school's most veteran teacher, who had seven years of experience. Like others at charter schools, Akili's teachers are at-will employees, without the collective bargaining or tenure of teachers in many traditional school districts.
With dozens of lesson plans and a year under their belts, the teachers work less now than when they first started. But Gallagher said the school still must do more to make work conditions realistic. Akili, located in Gentilly, opened in 2008 with kindergarteners and first-graders, and plans to add a grade each year.
"You're going to run out of people willing to work an 80-hour week," he said. "Everyone here is single; no one has a kid. That's just not (replicable). I want us to look like something any school in New Orleans could do. Right now, we're not there."
Update: Landrieu's task force has been named and, like the economic development task force, it's a mish mash of established players and stakeholders from the Charters, NOPS, RSD, UTNO, etc.
What the Mayor-elect is doing with these task forces, is little more than playing the "bringing people together" game at the start of a new administration. And that's quality political warm-n-fuzziness but don't look for anything substantive to come out of it.
Meanwhile, please see Editor B's personal take on the T-P story I linked above.
The cruel practice of denying teachers their basic right to live their lives is actually part of a larger tendency of shunting responsibility for institutional failures off of management and onto the least powerful participants in the labor force. And that trend isn't going to reverse itself any time in the near future. The current environment is loaded with biases against unionization, against institutional memory, and, in a lot of cases, against native New Orleanians in general, all of which enables this kind of situation.
Upperdate: I know it's a day later but I just noticed dsb has more detail on the Task Force (particularly the number and names of those tied to the Charter movement)
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