From ABC News
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4VIEW ALL PHOTOSFILE – Teacher and students in classroom. (Photo Credit: NTV News)
MINNEAPOLIS (TND) — An agreement struck between a Minneapolis teachers union and Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) now compels the district – in the case of any layoffs – to get rid of white teachers before any teachers of color.
The stipulation comes as part of a recent collective bargaining agreement between the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and MPS, which ended a two-week-long teachers’ strike. Among numerous provisions that were agreed upon between the two groups was a restructuring of the district’s recruiting and retainment of educators of color.
Effective in the Spring of 2023, teachers will be subject to job layoffs or relocations in order of seniority. However, in the case that a teacher is “a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the District,” the district may “excess,” meaning lay off or relocate, “outside of seniority order.”
The same measure applies to recalling, or bringing back, teachers who may have been let go for a variety of reasons. Sponsored LinksNew Palestine: Startup Is Changing the Way People RetireSmartAsset
[T]he District shall deprioritize the more senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population, in order to recall a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers,” the agreement indicated.
District and union leaders said the agreement makes Minneapolis one of the only school districts in the nation with a “seniority-disrupting” policy that can consider race over merit, according to The Star Tribune.
The move could be especially significant considering MPS expects to cut several jobs following a reduced budget that has come about largely due to a decline in enrollment, The Tribune reported.
This is landmark language in a collective bargaining agreement,” an arbitrator with the state’s Bureau of Mediation Services, Joseph Daly, said, reported the Minnesota Reformer. “I’ve never seen language like this.”
MFT and MPS’s agreement also included other “anti-racist” and “anti-bias” provisions, including an “Anti-Bias Anti-Racist Staff Development and Advisory Council,” which will “focus on reducing inequitable practices and behaviors in our learning places and spaces as well as supporting educators, specifically educators of color, in navigating and disrupting our district as a predominantly white institution.”
“To remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) mutually agreed to contract language that aims to support the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups as compared to the labor market and to the community served by the school district,” a spokesperson for Minneapolis Public Schools told TND in a statement.