Did You Know the Union's "Partnership" Framework Doesn't Mention Students Once?
Did you know that the ATF-APS “Living Contract” — the soaring, multi-page vision document for how the union and district will work together for a better tomorrow — lists five joint goals, and not one of them is about students?
Pour one out, New Mexico children, because the adults who run your school system have established a formal, written, collaboratively-negotiated framework for their relationship, and you did not make the cut.
Behold the five Living Contract goals, reproduced here in their full glory:
Maintain open lines of communication between the District and the Federation
Conduct ongoing negotiations as timely problem solving
View collective bargaining as collaboration
Provide flexibility in dealing with issues as they arise
Discuss future district initiatives that have a potential impact on educators’ work and workload
Incredible. Five goals. Zero children. A masterpiece.
Goal 5 is our personal favorite: “discuss future district initiatives that have a potential impact on educators’ work and workload.” Not educators’ students. Not educators’ effectiveness. The workload. The concern is the workload. This is a document about two institutions and their feelings about each other, and someone slipped it into a public school contract and called it educational governance.
Now to be scrupulously fair: the preamble! There is a preamble! The preamble says — and we quote — that “providing a high-quality education for the children of Albuquerque is the paramount objective of the District.” Wonderful. Outstanding. Framed and hung.
That sentence is the last time students appear as the purpose of any of this. The remaining 124 pages are about the adults.
New Mexico is 50th in education outcomes. The union’s framework for change features students once, in a preamble, legally unenforceable, sandwiched between two more important sections about the union.