BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cincinnati Public Schools teachers turned down a plan for cash incentives this week.
A majority of the teachers' union voted to reject a plan -- jointly proposed by union leaders and district administrators -- to give teachers up to $1,400 each when their schools significantly raise student achievement and cut dropout rates.
The vote was 1,160 to 804 against the School Incentive Award program. The district has 3,447 teachers; most are voting members of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers (CFT).
Under the plan, full-time teachers and administrators would get $1,400 and full-time, non-teaching staffers would get $700 in schools that significantly raise proficiency scores, reduce high-school dropout rates, increase student and staff attendance and decrease student transfers from magnet schools to neighborhood schools.
Union leaders say some teachers expressed philosophical objections, saying any "reward money" should support schools rather than beef up teachers' paychecks.
Other teachers said the plan contained some glitches. For example, some worried that long-term, illness-related teacher absences would count against schools. Others said the process for appealing award decisions wasn't clear enough.
"We still stand by our commitment to get this done," CFT bargaining chairman Rick Beck said. "We need to go back and explain this some more, maybe tweak it a little over the summer."
CFT leaders plan to poll teachers during the next several weeks to learn their objections. They hope teachers will support a revised plan that could be implemented this fall.
They aim to encourage Superintendent J. Michael Brandt to continue investigating private funding sources. The program is estimated to cost $400,000 the first year; it would cost $4.1 million a year if all schools won.
