The Myth of the Independent School Contract
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The Myth of the Independent School Contract
When working in private and charter schools, March and April can be a stressful time of year. This is generally the time when “contracts” (or “employee agreements”) are proposed and signed for the following school year. Much artificial formality is conferred on the process by school leadership. These are documents that are supposedly the end result of a year-long evaluation process, and records the details of an employee’s role and how much their salary will be for the next school year. There is a one to two week long process of contract meetings and signing the agreements on DocuSign. Sometimes there is reference to a (never actually produced) salary schedule or banding system. At a charter school I worked at, the only time anyone would see the salary schedule was at the annual contracting meeting on the principal’s computer. I once asked if it could be emailed to me. She said yes, but of course, it never was. Another school maintained a vague banding system for several years, with a chart of early career/experienced/etc on one axis and proficient/highly proficient on another, with made up placeholder numbers filled in when the system was explained to us. The system eventually proved to cause so much confusion and consternation that it was dropped altogether.
The elision between “contract” and “employee agreement” is a useful strategic maneuver on the part of school management. I have heard coworkers worrying they won’t be “released from their contract” to take a job at another school. Legally, there is no such thing as being released from a contract under at-will employment. As a socially sanctioned agreement the contract has some meaning, but on this subject, it may as well say: “I pinky promise to work here next year.”
Of course, schools are fully aware of the implications of at-will employment, and will change or cancel contracts whenever it is in their interest to. I was recently handed a contract with about a 2% higher salary than it was intended to have. When I later received the “corrected” contract, there was little explanation and no apology. Management prefers for employees to think of these contracts as binding, thereby reducing the likelihood they will shop around for other offers of employment during the school year. Guilt can also be used as a tactic here. One of my contracts contained the clause: “The Employee hereby acknowledges and agrees that the School will incur costs and expenses, and the students, families, and the School will be disrupted, if the Employee resigns after signing this Employment Agreement.”
Along similar lines, every effort is usually made to prevent negotiating on the employee’s part. These arguments can range from the simple, like “the budget is already set,” to the more creative. I have heard this prohibition on negotiation framed as a matter of equity. A school communique I once received read “As a matter of both equity and ethics, we believe that these values—which form the basis for our salary banding—should be the determiners of compensation. With this in mind, we have decided to move away from a practice of salary negotiation. We do not believe that any one individual’s skill in negotiating should be more important in determining their salary than their performance, experience, and professional achievements.” While this has a certain logic to it, it completely ignores the realities of the labor market and the power dynamics at play. Teachers from the most disadvantaged backgrounds would likely have the highest need to negotiate. This move tries to take away that small power, unevenly distributed as it might be, and put it squarely in the hands of school leadership. Additionally, if there is no set, visible salary schedule, pay can be significantly influenced by personal opinions and biases of leadership. I have seen this play out first hand in situations where well-liked staff members are given more favorable treatment in the absence of more structured employment protocols.
In reality, in a “free” labor market, sometimes negotiation is required. There may be a teacher who wants to stay at a particular school, but needs to get a certain percentage raise for it to be worthwhile to stay with rising costs of living. Their options are to leave or attempt to negotiate. Where there is no collective bargaining agreement, individual bargaining is the only option.
All of this helps to put a maximum of bargaining power in the hands of independent school leadership and very little in the hands of teachers. In these highly favorable-to-management bargaining conditions, I have often seen schools rush employees to accept low salary offers. Employees are told to inform schools if there is a chance they won’t be returning and then are penalized for disclosing their plans early.
There are a variety of reasons why one might choose to work in an independent school rather than a public school: changing careers, different teaching models, and geography are only a few. Currently, teachers at these schools have very little democratic input into the functioning of their school or their work conditions. I applaud the efforts of the UFT and UAW Local 2110 to unionize charter and private school teachers, and would encourage any of these teachers in New York to reach out to these unions. In the meantime, it is important for teachers who work at the schools to know their rights and to never feel obligated to stay in a position because they signed one of these agreements.
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