Schools need ability to override teacher seniority

Mount Tahoma’s loss will be another Tacoma school’s gain.

Ronnie Gordon, a beloved English teacher at the South Tacoma high school, is leaving his alma mater and first teaching gig for a new school come September.

The reason: Mount Tahoma’s student enrollment is falling, and the school needs fewer teachers. Gordon is among the newer faculty members who will be transferred elsewhere.

Seniority is a common element of teacher union contracts. From the union’s perspective, tenure is an objective means to settle possible conflicts between union members.

As Tacoma Education Association President Darreck Hartman told reporter Debbie Cafazzo: “You bargain a contract for 2,400 people, not 2,400 individual contracts.”

But putting too much stock in seniority can pose problems for the other party to the teachers’ contract, the district and the students it’s charged with educating.

Time on the job sharpens some teachers’ skills and dulls others’. Some young teachers, whether through better training, enthusiasm or innate ability, demonstrate an exceptional ability to reach students.

Gordon’s students say he’s one of those teachers. The 27-year-old, himself a Mount Tahoma graduate, has made a big impression in the four years he’s taught there.

It helps that he seems to possess boundless energy: When not teaching class or advising the Key Club, Latino Club and junior class, Gordon mentors students at First Creek Middle School.

But he also seems to have a way of connecting with kids. Students voted Gordon most inspirational male teacher last week. Some of them also showed up at a Tacoma School Board meeting to plead that Gordon be allowed to remain at the school.

Teacher transfers happen every year, but school board member Jim Dugan said he couldn’t remember such powerful appeals for a teacher in his five years on the board. He also suggested that the school district should have the ability to override seniority in individual cases.

Dugan’s right. Staff assignments should be a matter of matching teacher strengths with classroom needs. Sometimes, that will argue for keeping a favorite teacher, sometimes it won’t. But school officials should beware of anything that interferes with their ability to make that determination.

Thanks to pressure from the feds, the state is finally moving – haltingly – toward a system that evaluates and rewards teachers based on their ability to teach. It’s only logical that teacher contracts also embrace the same criteria for teacher placement.

The good news is that the same contract that is bumping Gordon also ensures that he isn’t out of a job altogether. He’s leaving Mount Tahoma, not the Tacoma School District. Some lucky students somewhere in the district have a great teacher headed their way.