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A powerful group of teachers more concerned with kids’ futures than with the fine print of their labor contract is making leaders of their union very nervous.
The nonprofit Educators 4 Excellence — which just doubled is membership to some 1,300 after landing a $160,000 grant from the influential Gates Foundation — has become such a force that UFT President Michael Mulgrew was spurred to meet its members last night.
The group favors several proposed changes that have made labor leaders gag, including:
* Awarding merit pay to individual teachers, rather than all teachers in schools that improved their performance.
* Toughening the requirements for tenure — so the lifetime job guarantee doesn’t go to educators who hang on for years doing the minimum to avoid being fired.
* Getting rid of the seniority system — so layoffs can be based on teachers’ effectiveness rather than on how long they’ve been working.
At the meeting in Chelsea, Mulgrew spoke little about E4E’s agenda, but tossed a bombshell accusation at former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.
“Klein told me before he left, ‘I’m going to pit new teachers against older teachers and I’m going to do it by trying to make it look like we’re doing layoffs,” Mulgrew said.
Department of Education spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz responded, “That’s a lie.”
One E4E teacher, Michael Loeb, 25, told Mulgrew that he felt “like a cog in the machine” with the current system.
E4E has come a long way for a group that started last March with a handful of Bronx teachers sitting around a kitchen table discussing ways to improve schools.
“Major changes are happening across the country and . . . teachers need to be the driving force behind those conversations,” said Sydney Morris, 25, who founded the group with a PS 86 colleague, Evan Stone.
E4E says it used the bulk of its Gates funding to pay for events with education honchos such as Mulgrew and former District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
In order to join E4E, teachers must sign a Declaration of Principles and Beliefs, which reads like a UFT agenda flipped on its head.
E4E — most of whose members are in the UFT but include a handful of educators who teach elsewhere in the state — will publish its first two policy briefs next month.
They include a report describing an alternative to seniority-based layoffs, commonly referred to as “last in, first out.”
Critics of the state’s layoff law — including Klein and Mayor Bloomberg — say it could force the system to jettison thousands of new teachers this fall, even if they’re among the best educators in the city.
Stone said his motive in fighting seniority is not protecting members of his group — half of them have four or more years of teaching experience.
Morris and Stone, who teach part-time, are both untenured after working for just three years at PS 86.