Kelsey Vokmann, The Examiner
2007-10-26 10:47:00.0
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BALTIMORE -

After four months of battling over a 45-minute planning period, Baltimore city teachers and the school system have reached an agreement on contract negotiations.

Mayor Sheila Dixon “believes that after days of conversations and negotiations, something positive is about to happen,” said Anthony McCarthy, a spokesman for the mayor, said Thursday night.

“She is very serious about coming to a resolution very quickly. She wants both sides to push through.”

Dixon’s labor commissioner, Deborah Moore Carter, has been working with the Baltimore Teachers Union and the school system to help them find a compromise, he said.

Teachers have argued that their planning time is already too limited and oppose school Chief Executive Officer Andre Alonso’s request that they spend 45 minutes a week planning with colleagues, saying they need time instead to work alone on lesson plans and to grade papers.

Alonso, who previously served as New York schools’ No. 2 leader before coming to Baltimore, says successful schools rely on collaborative planning.

Angry with the threat to reduce individual planning time, teachers have taken to the streets to protest, rallying outside schools throughout the city and marching outside a city school board meeting, often interrupting it with their loud chants and calls for the ouster of Alonso.

During a recent interview on the Marc Steiner show on WYPR, Alonso defended his push for shared planning time among teachers of the same disciplines, saying he had come to Baltimore to make changes and that he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t upset people in the process.

The teachers union has been without a contract since July 1 – Alonso’s first day on the job.

Marietta English, the president of the teachers union, could not be reached for comment.

More than 6,000 teachers belong to the union.

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com