In coming weeks, school board members are poised to vote on proposals to create two schools that would operate largely outside the district bureaucracy.

One, a K-12 science program to open in 2011, would be operated by a nonprofit charter management organization headquartered in Chicago. The other, a K-5 French immersion school to open this fall, would be run by the teachers who staff it.

The idea met with enthusiastic support from the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, school board members and state lawmakers, who last session passed a law giving school boards more freedom to create new kinds of schools. With the new law in place, a committee of district, union and community members last spring invited proposals for new schools, eventually awarding grant funds from the state to four groups to allow them to work up full-scale proposals over the summer.

Minneapolis teachers union praised
Wedl credited the leaders of the Minneapolis teachers union with steadily advocating for new schools with district brass. "The union has really been champing at the bit to do more," he said. "Because of the MFT [Minneapolis Federation of Teachers] Minneapolis is probably in a better position than anywhere in the country to do this."

Eighteen charter school educators from across the country met at AFT headquarters in Washington, DC for the first meeting of the AFT Charter School Educator Advisory Group. With representatives from Boston to Los Angeles and other locations in between, the group came together to network, help shape charter school organizing strategy, and learn more about AFT resources, professional development and local media strategies.

AECI Educators Seek Formal Voice in School Policy & More Collaborative Work Environment

Teachers and staff at the NYC Charter High School for Architecture, Engineering and Construction Industries (AECI) in the Bronx today announced their intention to join the United Federation of Teachers as a new collective bargaining unit.

The AFT has developed a series of brochures, called Teacher Tips, to assist teachers in the classroom and beyond. These concise publications are an effective and useful addition to your back-to-school and throughout-the-year planning.