On basics, Ackerman & PFT on same page

Despite recent tough talk between the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers and Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, the two sides share common ground in fundamental areas, PFT President Jerry Jordan said yesterday.

"Nobody wants a bad teacher in the classroom," he said during a meeting with the Daily News editorial board.

"We're very focused on strategies for turning around low-performing schools, which is why the issue of recruitment and retention [of teachers] is on the top of my list," added Jordan, who estimated that about 800 new teachers would be hired for the fall.

Still, Ackerman and the PFT have major differences on reform strategies, as they attempt to negotiate a contract for the 16,000-member union.

Ackerman has questioned why just five teachers and no principals were fired for bad job performance in 2007-08, and pledged to terminate employees whose performance is unsatisfactory.

Jordan said he had not been formally presented with the proposals that Ackerman shared with the paper's editorial board on Tuesday, including her wish for a school day that is longer by perhaps 24 minutes, more flexibility in assigning teachers and rewarding accomplished teachers with increased pay.

"I only learned about it from reading about it," Jordan said. "I have not seen the data that the superintendent and her staff are using in order to say we really need these 24 minutes."

Just adding 24 minutes, which Ackerman said would bring district schools in line with the average school-day length statewide, would not improve education if instruction were not also changed, Jordan said.

"The time has to be used based on the overall needs of the school and the kids in that school," he said.

Regarding the possibility of the district gaining greater flexibility in transferring teachers regardless of seniority, Jordan said he was concerned that some teachers would be moved unfairly for punitive reasons.

Ackerman's desire for every school to use the practice of full-site selection - teachers interviewing at the schools where they want to work - is not likely to make much of a change, he said.

Jordan said that faculties at 88 schools use site selection, as opposed to filling vacancies by seniority, and that the rest fill about half their vacancies through site selection. But, he said, large numbers of vacancies persist at many of these schools.

He said greater attention must be paid to making schools safer. Layoffs of 15 nonteaching assistants this month will not help matters, Jordan said.

"What we have to grapple with is, what is it that needs to be there to make kids feel safe? You can even tie it in to the poor attendance and dropout rates," he said.

"If kids don't feel safe when they walk into a building, especially as they get older, they're not going to go."

The dropout rate across the district is close to 50 percent. *