A Minneapolis union has reached a settlement that will see white teachers lose their jobs first.
White teachers will be the first to be fired if job cuts are required at public schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota – regardless of their seniority or effectiveness in the classroom, according to a new collective bargaining agreement that the local school district signed with its union.
Non-white teachers in Minneapolis Public Schools will have protection if funding cuts such as the ones related to falling enrollment result in firings. Last March saw the end of a three week strike by Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. However, the local news outlet Alpha News exposed the racist provision in an article published on Sunday.
“If excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the district shall excess the next least senior teacher who is not a member of an underrepresented population,”The new labor contract is available here. “Excessing”This refers to reducing the number of staff members when there is a decline in enrollment at one school.
These dismissals are usually based upon seniority. The last teacher to be hired is the one who will be let go. The new labor agreement not only exempts non-white teachers from that threat – at least until the district runs out of white employees to fire – it also stipulates that previously laid-off staffers from “underrepresented populations”You will be the one who is hired back first if there are reinstatement opportunities.
Teachers fired based on skin colour were justified by the school district as well as the union, who suggested it would make amends for previous wrongs.
“Past discrimination by the district disproportionately impacted the hiring of underrepresented teachers in the district, as compared to the relevant labor market and the community, and resulted in a lack of diversity of teachers,”According to the contract.
Fox News Digital spoke to an MPS spokesperson Monday, stating that the MPS district was in agreement with its union “mutually agreed”To the updated contract language “remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination.”According to the union, race-based preferences could improve education quality in Minneapolis schools.
“Students need educators who look like them and who they can relate to,”The MFT stated in the summary of contract. “This language gives us the ability to identify and address issues that contribute to disproportionately high turnover of educators of color.”
According to demographic data, the school staff’s racial composition is approximately the same as the Minneapolis population. Whites account for 63% of the city’s population and hold less than 67% of jobs in the school district, according to US Census Bureau and MPS figures. Blacks comprise 19% of the city’s population, and 18% are school personnel.
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