Alameda has been home to an increasingly bitter contract dispute between schools Superintendent Kirsten Vital and the district’s teachers. Teachers say they get no respect from district administrators, and they’ve cited dozens of grievances alleging contract violations over Vital’s three-year tenure to prove it. District officials have since released the grievances to this reporter and a local blogger, and they’ve posted a summary of the grievances on their website.
The grievances, which offer a sometimes unflattering portrait of Alameda’s teachers and its schools, detail what until now was a largely behind-the-scenes battle over apparent changes in the way teacher performance is evaluated and addressed. In some cases, the union claimed that active members were targeted for retribution through the evaluation process, a claim district administrators have denied. They said the evaluation changes offer a better picture of the quality of the district’s teachers.
The teachers union has proposed new contract rules that would limit the number of observations school administrators can make and the type of information that can be included in evaluations, and ones that spell out protections for teachers facing complaints. Those proposals do not yet appear to have been discussed at the bargaining table.