Management 101

"Welcome to Management" was the headline over the last editorial we wrote about a dustup at the charter school being run by the United Federation of Teachers. At the time, December 2005, that involved an incident in which the school ordered pupils to clean up a restroom they'd allegedly soiled. We encouraged the union to support the principal. We had, we noted, supported the decision of the UFT's doughty president, Randi Weingarten, to test the charter movement by opening a union school in the first place. And one of the advantages of a charter school is that attendance is not mandatory. Parents who don't like it have the right to send their children to another school. So in the long run, we wrote, the principal, Rita Danis, and her colleagues in the UFT "will have to answer to a market, albeit a constrained one, in education."

Now the UFT is getting a new management challenge from some disgruntled parents. This was reported a week ago by our Elizabeth Green, under a page one headline that said, "UFT in a Race To Avert School Revolt." It seems parents have been upset about a variety of safety concerns and other issues, such as how the school is fitting into the building that is hosting it and how rapidly the principal responds to conflicts. Ms. Weingarten promptly sent us a letter emphasizing the speed with which management of the school — meaning, labor — reacted to parents' concerns, attending a PTA meeting in a spirit she characterized as "quick and cooperative." She said their concerns are being addressed and that, in the most recent survey of parents, 91% are happy with their child's experience at the UFT charter. And we're glad to hear it.

If we devote more of our news space to the story than do the other papers — and we would not be surprised to see more developments surface in the weeks ahead — it is because we think the union's experience in running its own school is an important one, both for the Union and for the rest of us parents with children in the school system. What we would like to see come out of the United Federation of Teachers Elementary Charter School is for the union to gain maximum sway in managing the institution. We have high confidence in the competence and idealism of the union's top brass. It has taken a big risk in the school and deserves the right to run it the way it wants to and to work things out as it sees fit with the parents who are, in effect, its customers. From that — and here is the essential point — it would be nice to see Ms. Weingarten and her colleagues gain an appreciation for the importance of Chancellor Klein and his principals having maximum sway over running the rest of the schools in the public system in the city. We'd like to think we don't have great illusions, but that's our hope.