Following the announcement of a new agreement between a Minneapolis teachers’ union and MPS, several citizens are furious. According to ABC 4 News reports, the deal protects minority instructors at the expense of white ones. If there are any future job cuts, the school district will be obligated to fire white instructors before minority instructors.
The contract will take effect in Spring 2023. The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and MPS reached an agreement after teachers went on strike for two weeks, successfully. The school district also agreed to policy reform to ensure that more black educators are hired and retained in Minneapolis classrooms as a result of the strike.
Teachers will be laid off or relocated in order of seniority beginning in Spring 2023 when the new regulation takes effect. However, if a teacher is categorized as being “a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the District,” the district may “excess,” which means lay off or relocate, “outside of seniority order.”
The new restriction will be applied to both layoffs and the return of teachers who may have been dismissed for reasons other than performance.
“[T]he District shall deprioritize the more senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population, in order to recall a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers,” the agreement reads.
The Minneapolis school district is one of the few in the country to have a “seniority-disrupting” policy that prioritizes race over how long someone has been in their job, according to the Star Tribune. After MPS was hit with a reduced budget, they were expected to make some layoffs, which will certainly go to white teachers rather than minority instructors.
“This is landmark language in a collective bargaining agreement,” Joseph Daly, an arbitrator with the state’s Bureau of Mediation Services, said. “I’ve never seen language like this.”
Minneapolis, where George Floyd was tragically killed by a white police officer, has unfortunately long been grappling with racism. In an attempt to lessen these issues, the school district there has enacted an “anti-racist” and “anti-bias” policy. This includes the creation of an “Anti-Bias Anti-Racist Staff Development and Advisory Council,” which will “focus on reducing inequitable practices and behaviors in our learning places and spaces as well as supporting educators, specifically educators of color, in navigating and disrupting our district as a predominantly white institution.”
A spokesperson for Minneapolis Public Schools told TND, “To remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) mutually agreed to contract language that aims to support the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups as compared to the labor market and to the community served by the school district.”
