Teachers stepping up behind Charter School principal
(Credit: Michael White)
More than a dozen Riverhead Charter School teachers and administrators have come out this week in defense of Ray Ankrum, the school’s principal and executive director, who’s facing “union-busting” accusations that include firings and intimidation tactics directed at staffers sympathetic to the school’s teachers union.
Mr. Ankrum’s supporters include six veteran teachers who are members of the school’s leadership team. The team is also being implicated for taking part in anti-union activities in violation of state labor laws, according to two complaints filed with the state Public Employment Relations Board.
(See the full complaints at the end of this story.)
But the News-Review has been in contact with a mix of other newer and veteran teachers, who say the picture painted in the complaints is not an accurate representation of the daily reality on the Calverton campus. A more accurate depiction, they say, is that Mr. Ankrum is a no-nonsense principal who expects the very best from his teachers — some of whom just can’t handle the demands.
The allegations are “totally untrue and false,” said physical education teacher Robert Cook, a member of the leadership team who’s in his ninth year at the school. “Mr. Ankrum doesn’t have a problem with the union; he has a problem with teachers who aren’t providing quality instruction for his kids.”
“He’s ensuring high-quality instruction for all students,” said director of curriculum Maile Madigan, who was hired just this school year. “Isn’t that what we all want?”
The two complaints against the school, filed separately by New York State United Teachers in February and last week and first reported last Thursday by news website RiverheadLocal.com, allege that Mr. Ankrum and leadership team members, whom the complaint describes as “middle management,” had taken various steps to “harass and retaliate against” faculty members perceived as supporting the Riverhead Charter School Employees Association union and to “foment a chilling effect” on that support.
All faculty members at the Riverhead Charter School are, by law, members of the union, including members of the leadership team.
NYSUT, a federation of more than 1,200 local teacher unions, is alleging several actions in recent months that violate sections of the Public Employees’ Fair Employment Act, commonly known as the Taylor Law. Among them are the mid-school-year firing of three teachers and retaliatory measures against two others for expressing union support.
“These were punitive actions that were taken against people who have either voiced support for the union or who were trying to support others who had done the same,” said Peter Verdon, a regional staff director for NYSUT. “Unfortunately, this new administration is quite clearly deciding they want to attack the union and take a voice away from the teachers.”
The Riverhead Charter School, established in 2001 as a tuition-free K-6 program, is in the process of a $14 million expansion that will enable it to accommodate students in seventh and eighth grades. It currently has 48 employees, including 40 teachers. Students this semester are 70 percent minority and hail from about a dozen different school districts. Before taking the helm in August 2012, Mr. Ankrum had previously held leadership positions at charter schools in Harlem, New Jersey and elsewhere.
As for its labor history, Mr. Verdon noted that Riverhead was among the first of only 20 charter schools statewide to unionize.
“Historically, this was not an acrimonious labor-management relationship going back over the years [in Riverhead],” he said.
The president of the school’s Board of Trustees, Zenobia Hartfield, released this statement on behalf of the board in response to the alleged labor violations:
“Mr. Ankrum is a strong instructional leader. He insists upon employing staff whose performance will best help our children achieve their full potential. He, and we as a board, will not tolerate mediocrity in our teaching staff, regardless of alleged union sympathies.”
Most of the Riverhead Charter School teachers who spoke to the paper this week did so after the News-Review asked Mr. Ankrum to allow interviews with faculty. The principal also contacted the school’s union representative for possible comment in the News-Review, but that rep did not contact the paper.
Other people who identified themselves as Riverhead Charter School teachers did contact the newspaper to speak out against Mr. Ankrum.
“I’m sure you’re getting phone calls from people who are telling you how wonderful our principal is,” said one caller, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. “And I’m sure at one time he was. He wanted to come in and do the right thing, but he hasn’t done the right thing in 18 months. I fear every day that I’m going to lose my job. I never open my mouth I don’t even give my opinion, but I cannot do my job and do the extent that I should be when I’m afraid.”
Another anonymous caller wanted to point out that the leadership team members “are paid additional stipends for their positions.”
Mr. Ankrum confirmed that leadership members do receive an extra $3,000 to $4,000 per year for their service as mentors and managers.
“It should also be noted that members of the leadership team are the highest-rated teachers in the school regarding their teaching performance,” he said. “My focus is on the top 10 percent of my staff, as I do not want to lose any of my top people. It’s the 10/80/10 rule of business; the bottom 10 percent will do whatever they can to cause disruption.”
Among newer charter school teachers who expressed support for Mr. Ankrum this week was second-grade teacher Jessie Duncan.
“This is my first year teaching and I couldn’t ask for a better experience,” she said, adding she didn’t think Mr. Ankrum was “too tough on people.”
“I think he has high expectations because he wants the best instruction that he can, which should be expected in any school, but especially in a charter school,” Ms. Duncan said. “This is an option; parents don’t have to send their kids here.”
The school’s charter was renewed for another three years just last month — and in that renewal the state education department criticized it for high staff turnover since 2010, test scores that slipped below new Common Core Learning Standards last school year, a lack of any formal evaluation of the principal and violations of state open meetings laws by the school’s board.
But it also praised the school on several fronts, finding that, “overall, the school climate and culture generally support student learning, development and achievement.” The renewal also mentions an October 2013 site visit, during which “all interviewed stakeholders — including staff and students — felt that RCS is safe and free of harassment or discrimination.”
Mr. Ankrum said he takes offense at the allegations of harassment and union-busting at the school.
“As soon as I got here and I found out teachers weren’t under contract and hadn’t been for almost three years, my first order of business was to make sure everyone was working under a current contract,” he said. “Within four months of my being here, the [collectively bargained] contract was signed and the back pay was paid out.”
He also noted that he had been a union representative during his time teaching social studies in Baltimore.
Any firings or non-renewals of individual teacher contracts that occurred since he’s taken over were done with the students in mind, he insisted.
Though Mr. Ankrum tried to distance himself from union activities during an interview — pointing to a divided faculty — evidence shows he was forced to cancel a planned meeting with union leaders in December over potential labor law violations.
The meeting agenda was leaked from the school to NYSUT, which then contacted the school’s lawyer, who told Mr. Ankrum he had to call off the meeting. Among the discussion questions on the agenda, according to a copy included as evidence in the complaint, were: “Are the executive members, members and non-members aware that unions can be decertified?” and “What is the process of decertification of a union?”
Further evidence in the complaint shows that Mr. Ankrum subsequently emailed staffers that “forwarding emails is ‘classless’ and ‘cowardly.’ … If folks put as much effort into improving and being better as educators, everything else would take care of itself.”
Mr. Ankrum told the News-Review he was only hoping to create an open line of communication with the school’s union.
“I was trying to have dialogue with them,” he said. “They hadn’t had a meeting in a year and people were asking what was going on.”
A petition to gauge interest in dissolving the union, which was acquired by the News-Review, was also circulated in December, signed by 25 teachers and submitted to the state by a student support manager. However, it was later deemed deficient by the state.
Unlike teachers in public school districts, charter school teachers are not granted tenure and thus don’t have the protections state law affords tenured faculty. But under the school’s collective bargaining agreement, employees of four years or longer are entitled to appeal a dismissal to an independent arbitrator, explained Mr. Verdon.
“Places that don’t have unions, you’re not going to find those protections there,” he said. “And [school leaders] do want that control.”
Only one of the three fired teachers mentioned in the complaints had been with the charter school longer than four years. She is contesting her dismissal, as well as pursuing the labor complaints through NYSUT.
Jaclyn Scoglio-Walsh is a veteran teacher who was fired Dec. 20, according to the complaints. The two other dismissed teachers, identified as Ray Patuano and Brandon Lloyd, were first-year teachers and part of a group of 18 new teachers this school year.
Ms. Scoglio-Walsh, who declined comment for this story citing the pending legal action, is described in the first complaint filed with the Public Employment Relations Board as the school’s “‘reigning’ School Teacher of the Year” who was “publicly known for maintaining the highest student achievement grades in the school for approximately the past five years.”
Mr. Ankrum and other teachers told the newspaper there is no such thing as a Teacher of the Year award at the school.
The complaint asserts that Ms. Scoglio-Walsh was fired solely “because of her public support of and participation in the association.”
The second complaint, filed with the state last week, claims that Mr. Patuano and Mr. Lloyd were both fired shortly after being questioned by leadership team members and expressing support for the union, with Mr. Lloyd questioning the legality of the petition circulated last December. Neither former teacher could be located for comment.
Mr. Ankrum, while saying he couldn’t divulge specific personnel details, said all three teachers were fired for just cause, showing the newspaper a list of teacher evaluation scores that did not contain names but did label the two employees who received the lowest scores as falling “well below” school standards. Those rankings, and the charter school’s teacher evaluation process, are internal, Mr. Ankrum said, and are unrelated to teacher evaluations linked to Common Core.
He pointed to those scores as examples of teachers who wouldn’t be retained by the school, even for a full year. “If they’re not showing improvement, is that fair to kids?” he said. “That kind of thing is not going to go a whole year for me.”
Mr. Ankrum challenged the teachers who were let go to allow the release of their personnel files to the public.
“If you can get permission from them to release their employment records then that will tell the story,” he said. “Then all this would be a moot point.”
Mr. Verdon laughed at his suggestion, saying only that NYSUT looks forward to an upcoming May hearing to present its evidence against the school to an administrative law judge assigned to hear the complaint. The second complaint is still being reviewed, state officials said.
When asked what the union and the employees hoped to gain, Mr. Verdon said, “Any and all relief that’s just and proper.”