The Big Issues in the Big City Schools

The great issues of our society reside in the big cities. Education lics close to the solutions of these great issues, if not absolutely uppermost. In my view, two of the great issues are (1) erosion of the power of boards of education by the organized teaching profession, and (2) the search for racial equality and uplift of our minorities.

First, the erosion of the board of education. There are several factors at work at the conscious or unconscious subversion of local boards of education and their authority in big cities. Not the least of these is the recent federal plunge into local programs and the increasing state legislation mandating services. And here I call attention to laws I think trespass against local boards by mandating some things that do not require mandatingcurriculum, salary, building standards and other conditions for learning and teaching.

But the most dramatic and significant force in the big cities is the swiftly emerging strength of the labor movement. The faculties of the big cities are now broadly unionized in America. Boards of education are committed to a course of bargaining in virtually all matters pertaining to teaching and learning.

Whether we accept the idea of organized labor in industry or not, we know it is here to stayin my judgment rightly so, for the good of both parties and for the good of society as it relates to industry. Admitting my bias as a teacher, I am compelled to point up some basic concerns over labor's success in winning support of many urban teachers. Big labor with its muscle, money and know-how has undertaken the task of organizing teachers in the big cities. This creates a three-way conflict, the adversaries being the National Education Association, the board of education, and the labor movement.

Boards of education are different from corporate boards in industry and that's the fundamental difference to which I would lift my voice in opposing the conventional labor movement in the teaching profession. Boards of education are the people; they are society. They have been established in the laws very specifically state by state, and they have been given very specific responsibilities. Our American design for control of the schools by the people is at the headwaters of our system of

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freedom. Public schools historically and literally are the chief instrument for our society as it seeks ever-increasing freedom for all through equality of opportunity. Still far from perfect, the design has served our people well and shows promise of increased effectiveness in the future if maintained.

The essence of the labor movement in our schools is that the establishment of school policies and programs, declared by law to be the responsibility of the people through the board of education, is now to be negotiated. This is the largest threat to the American design for free schools that I know of. It removes the school from the authority of the people and conceives of the process of policy determination as being up for grabs.

Given an honest and reasonable and representative board of education and given a body of professional staff who are worthy of their art and science, there is no significant and continuing

⚫ conflict between the two parties. Both parties, each in its own way, are concerned with the optimum fulfillment of each child in those schools. There's no basic conflict, unless by repetitious and skillful union declarations the notion becomes a self-confirming hypothesis that boards and teachers must quarrel, and, indeed, both parties do drift into the permanent posture of adversaries.

More conciliatory in style and more conscious of the responsibility of the superintendent and the board, the NEA has nevertheless formally and officially declared itself for the process of negotiated policy.

What does the chief executive of the big city schools do about this? Does he default and let either the union or the professional association take over? Does he hold to one and reject the other? Does he pretend there is no issue, that he is such a good leader that his teachers won't do this to him?

I know that boards of education and superintendents are not blameless in this rebellion. Unenli bḍap d new agement including intransigent boards and superintendents, has for too long given only lip service to freedom for the public school teacher and has held firmly to autocratic decisionmaking, offensive to the dignity of professional

people. Professionals cannot be subservient. In Pittsburgh, we have accepted neither the NEA nor the union as such. There is bargaining

or negotiating. We believe we have a better course of action for teachers as well as for the people; we call it the "Professional Advisory Commission." It is a body of 15 teachers, elected by their colleagues, who meet monthly or more often with the superintendent. It is working today. It could be de stroyed tomorrow either by the union or the NEA. But the teacher in Pittsburgh does not need to turn to the union or the NEA to struggle for a right to share in his own destiny. That right and indeed that responsibility have been declared by the boards of education and the machinery has been contrived for its fulfillment.

Our position is that no good solutions in education come about either for teachers or children from deliberations in which one party holds a pistol to the other. That is what has happened in the big cities of our land. That is what's tragie about the erosion of boards of education in Ametica.

I believe the struggle for racial equality in Amer ica is the largest of the many issues facing educa tion in the big cities; it is also the largest domestic issue facing our nation today. The problem is especially acute in our big cities because that's where most of our Negro children are. Cities are therefore the places where something good can happen if we are sufficiently determined that it shall.

As teachers by definition, we superintendents are dedicated to the fulfillment of all the children we serve. The superintendent is also a champion of the law and the law says now very clearly that segregated schools shall not be tolerated. Thus by law, and morcover by reason of deep commait ment to social justice, the school superintendent in big cities must believe in racial equality and racial integration. But it is one thing to believe and it is quite another to solve the real problems deriving from centuries of oppression It is one thing to le date equality and quite amodo, do dom a school system that honestly fulfills the intent of the civil rights law.

This aspect of the school's role in our zociety