***César Chávez High School Case Study***[^1]

Victor Forberger

Center for Urban and Regional Policy

Northeastern University

# Introduction

All across urban America, public schools are under attack. Low test
scores, low graduation rates, and high dropout rates are taken as *a
priori* evidence that public school bureaucracies and teachers' unions
have stood in the way of reform and the future of American children.
And, no where is this attack against public education stronger than in
Arizona and the urban schools of Phoenix.

The high school district for Phoenix, however, is responding to these
criticisms, and the teachers, support staff, administrators,
superintendent, and school board there are determined to improve the
education available to their students. They understand that there are
three basic challenges confronting their schools. First, the schools in
the district must provide their students with a solid education and a
set of skills and abilities that today\'s employers expect from their
employees. Workers in today\'s labor market must possess a range of
problem-solving abilities and communica­tions skills so that they will be
self-sufficient in tackling new issues and problems as they arise in the
workplace. Whether laboring on production lines among heavy machinery or
developing new customer contacts within a workgroup, the new economy
requires that employees think for themselves and not simply take
directions from others. To meet these new job requirements, Phoenix high
schools have to teach their students both necessary skill and also an
outlook for lifelong learning.

In this booming southwestern metropolis, education leaders recognized a
second challenge facing the Phoenix public schools. With one of the
lowest education budgets in the nation, the district still had to
provide schooling comparable to what was available in other more endowed
school districts. This task was particularly difficult because most of
the district\'s students were not from wealthy homes, and just a small
percentage spoke English as their native language. Hence, the schools
faced a series of economic and educational challenges that schools in
other districts did not. Not only were ESL classes a regular part of the
curriculum for many students, but students most likely lacked the
financial and social support available in many middle-class households
in the suburbs.

This economic gap led to a third challenge confronting education
officials in Phoenix. Because of dissatisfaction with the public
schools, the city\'s schools faced competition from charter schools
endorsed by the state government. Public officials believed that charter
schools promised a better education because of the flexibility they
permitted administrators and because of the alleged greater role
teachers themselves played in such schools. Free from some of the
bureaucratic constraints of traditional public schools and from the
presumed constraints of collective bargaining, schools could adopt a
wide range of learning strategies, could choose the best teachers, and
could more easily dismiss those who do not perform well. The problem was
that as more parents opted for charter schools, the funds for
traditional public schools decreased, leaving public schools with less
resources while needing to do more.

To meet these three challenges, the teachers, support staff,
administrators, and superintendent in the Phoenix Union High School
District (Phoenix Union) decided to try something quite novel. First,
they turned to Interest-Based Bargaining (IBB) in order to end what had
been antagonistic contract talks and, in their place, develop a mutual
dialogue on education reform. That effort largely succeeded, as the
association presidents and the superintendent completely transformed how
their labor agreements were negotiated. In addition, the relationship
among these district leaders changed from being combative to being
cooperative.

Second, in an effort to expand their friendly relations to the local
governing structure of a school, these district leaders decided to apply
the enterprise compact model of the Saturn car company to the planning
and operation of a new school being opened by the district in 1999 --
the César Chávez High School. Similar to Saturn\'s Committee of 99 which
guided the development of this revolutionary relationship between the
autoworkers and General Motors, a design team was formed in the Phoenix
schools, comprised largely of association members. This group was
charged with determining how the school would operate \-- from the
adoption of specific education programs to the hiring procedures used to
staff the new facility. The core group also designed and prepared a
compact that would serve as the general set of principles for how the
parties would work together.

The goal of this effort was a school not seen before in the district \--
one where teachers, support staff, and administrators worked together on
common problems regarding the education of the school\'s students
refrained from fighting over parochial issues regarding whose legal or
contractual \"rights\" had been violated. In place of reacting to events
and emergencies, the staff at César Chávez would purposefully work
together on addressing problems before they arose.

Unfortunately, things did not work out as well as the originators of
these plans hoped. Budgetary constraints, too little time, as well as
the failure to address some outstanding tensions between labor and
management leaders on the design team meant that some key disagreements
about the nature of the joint relationship at the school were never
addressed. These problems in creating a joint relationship were not
unique to César Chávez. What was different, however, was the combination
of these factors. When one party to the relationship tried to address
one of these weaknesses, other weaknesses created obstacles to those
efforts. To address the mistrust among the participants meant delaying
the opening of the school. To remedy some participants\' lack of
authority only magnified the mistrust of other participants. And, the
mistrust and lack of authority among participants prevented the parties
from assessing how important it was to keep on schedule. There simply
was no mechanism or even opportunity for the parties to revisit past
decisions and iron out differences as the relationship evolved. Even
third parties brought in to assist the participants found their efforts
frustrated because of these factors, especially their mistrust. As a
result, the problems that cropped up early on could not be resolved, and
members of the AdA, CTA, and CEA began pursuing their own agenda at
times even as they worked together on other issues. Their cooperation,
in other words, was hollow. Indeed, the kind of turf warfare that
district leaders had hoped to eliminate became the dominant agenda for
the school\'s labor relations.

At the end of the first year, basic institutions specified in the
compact were in place. They might have flourished into what district
leaders had originally hoped if the parties at the school embraced those
institutions. But, too many people at the school had either given up on
the joint relationship, grown frustrated at the delays and confusions
surrounding it, become cynical at the political intrigue among the
associations, or simply did not know enough about it to care. As a
result, the joint relationship became simply one of many kinds of
educational programs at the school. In such circumstances the joint
relationship was crippled: there was no longer any way to develop a
cooperative conception of school governance and stop squabbles over who
had what authority to decide which issues.

What follows is the story of this novel attempt to build a new school
from the ground up based on the principle of joint decision-making and
the problems that arose as that effort proceeded. Structural limitations
within the district in joining labor and management together along with
the failure of the parties themselves to appreciate those limitations
and directly confront the problems dividing them led to the collapse of
this experiment. The problem was not so much the initial mistakes in
setting up the design team or in the rush to complete the plans for the
school. Any joint labor-management relationship will have numerous
obstacles to overcome, and César Chávez was no different in that
respect. The real weakness here was the participants\' lack of authority
to address and resolve the problems as they arose. *They were
responsible for meeting deadlines and developing programs, but they had
no authority to determine whether the objectives and deadlines they were
striving to meet were appropriate and why*.

Yet, however significant these limitations were, much was accomplished.
Administrators, teachers, support staff, and parents had come together
to design how a high school using the best practices in education should
be run. Moreover, despite tremendous odds they managed to put into place
some of the basic institutions of the joint relationship and to see
those institutions start affecting school governance. So, while the
experiment ultimately was not successful, it managed to set up a model
from which others will learn.

# The Phoenix Union High School District

In the open land of the west the problems of inner-city, urban schools
seem distant, almost other-worldly. Yet, in the suburban tracts and
fancy malls of Phoenix there are too many drop-outs, too much white
flight, and too many failing test scores. Similar to the embattled
schools of the northeastern or rust belt cities, school expenditures are
too low for a student body near or in poverty. Moreover, Phoenix has at
least two problems traditionally urban school districts do not. One is
explosive growth. Phoenix is a booming metropolis, and the schools are
overflowing with students. Second, the state government is openly
hostile to traditional public education. Arizona is the leading state
for charter schools, and those schools are providing stiff competition
for students to traditional public schools.

## The district

The Phoenix Union High School District itself is governed by a
seven-member Governing Board, elected in staggered intervals for four
year terms. The Governing Board appoints the Superintendent who manages
the school district. The current Superintendent is René Diaz, and he has
held that position since 1995. In 1971, he began work in the district as
a school counselor, and he eventually served as a principal for several
of the area schools, including an evening school (that he also helped
develop). Before being selected as Superintendent, Diaz served as
Assistant Superintendent for Employee Relations and as Deputy
Superintendent.

Over the past several decades, the city of Phoenix has been growing
rapidly because of the excellent business climate in the area. From 1980
to 1998, the population in the city of Phoenix itself increased by 35
percent, rising from around 790,000 residents in 1980 to just under
1,221,000 in 1998. Communities in the surrounding county have witnessed
even more rapid growth, with some neighboring towns almost doubling in
size and almost all increasing by at least a third during this period.

Education in the city of Phoenix is divided between elementary school
and high school students. There are 13 separate elementary school
districts, and after those students graduate from eighth grade they then
enter Phoenix Union. Each of the elementary school districts has its own
educational agenda and its own resources, and so students arrive in
Phoenix Union high schools with a wide range of learning skills and
knowledge. The high school district has to adapt its own educational
mission to what these various elementary school districts provide their
students.

The district has responded to these variations in ability and knowledge
among incoming students by establishing a plethora of programs. Besides
the comprehensive high schools in the district, there are two
alternative schools and numerous other educational programs including
magnet schools, vocational programs, and special education programs. To
run all these programs, the district has a host of administrative and
support staff and, of course, hundreds of teachers. A few administrators
are located at each school (a principal and three to five assistant
principals), and several dozen administrators are located at the
district\'s central office in downtown Phoenix. Support staff are
located at both the schools and the central offices. They have a range
of jobs, from maintenance of school grounds, preparing and serving
meals, and doing janitorial services to developing computer networks and
providing medical care. Understandably, teachers are all located in the
classrooms of the various schools. There is roughly one teacher for
every 17 students in the district. That ratio is two students less than
in the state as a whole which has a student-teacher ratio of 19-1, fifth
highest in the nation.

The student body is quite diverse, more so than in the general
population of Phoenix. The majority of the students in Phoenix Union are
of Hispanic descent (slightly more than 60 percent). Only a little more
than 20 percent of Anglo origin and slightly more than 10 percent are
African-American. About five percent are Native Americans. Such
diversity is also found in the over 40 languages spoken in the district.
This diversity of race, ethnicity, and native language stands in stark
contrast to that found in the metro-Phoenix area including the city's
suburbs. Here, over 80 percent of the population was Anglo in 1990, with
only 16 percent identifying themselves as Hispanic. Just three percent
were African-American and two percent Native American, respectively. In
1996, those numbers were still much the same.

Such diversity in the central city means that the district must provide
not only educational initiatives that will work, but those initiatives
must be adaptive to a wide range of students and the numerous languages
they speak. Phoenix Union receives supplemental funds not available in
other school districts to assist in these efforts, funds that total
nearly a third of the district\'s budget. These funds come from a
desegregation order in the late 1980s. Throughout that decade, white
students largely left the school district for the suburbs. That drain
led to the closing of two schools, and the schools remaining open became
either largely Anglo or largely Hispanic. Several students and parents
sued the school to desegregate, and the district responded by securing
increased funds that it used to start up magnet programs at various
schools. These magnet programs attract students who might not normally
attend that school, giving the school a more diverse student body. Even
with these additional funds, however, per pupil spending is still quite
low. Furthermore, these programs do not offer much assistance to
marginal students since magnet programs, by their very nature, cannot
develop into large programs that enroll thousands of students.

Given these difficulties, it is not surprising that only about one-half
of the students who enter the high schools in the district ever
graduate. A good percentage of those not graduating from Phoenix Union
are those who transfer out of the district (over 12 percent in the
1998-1999 academic year). But, most of the students who do not graduate
are simply those who do not succeed at the school. In the 1998-1999
academic year, over three percent of the students dropped out because of
excessive absences while over ten percent of the students simply dropped
out of classes on their own initiative. Indeed, roughly nine percent of
enrolled students are absent on any one school day.

## Labor relations in the district

All administrators outside of the Superintendent and the Assistant
Super­intendents are represented by the Administrators\' Association
(AdA). The more than 1,200 teachers in the district are represented by
the Classroom Teachers Association (CTA).[^2] The support staff,
numbering slightly more than 900, belong to the Classified Employees
Association (CEA). Both the CEA and CTA are affiliated with the National
Education Association (NEA) and the Arizona affiliate of the NEA, the
Arizona Education Association (AEA). All three associations \-- the AdA,
CEA, and CTA \-- have almost all their members in the Phoenix Union
school system, as none has made a concerted effort to organize members
in charter or private schools in the area. Almost all school
administrators belong to the AdA, and membership in the teachers\'
association usually hovers around 75% of those eligible (the association
includes not only teachers but any personnel in the district who are
certified and who use that certification in their work, such as
counselors and social workers). The CEA has the lowest percentage of
members signed up, as around half of those eligible have joined the
association. These membership figures may seem low, but in a
"right-to-work" state as Arizona is, all of these figures are actually
quite high.

Of these three associations, the CEA is the most ethnically diverse.
Leadership in CTA is less so, largely because most teachers in the
district are Anglo. Both the CEA and CTA, however, have as part of their
constitutions a requirement for diverse representation, and elections
are held for a person of color when the leadership lacks such a
representative. The CTA used such a procedure in 1999. Both associations
find it difficult to attract minority candidates for association office
largely because those available are often committed to a variety of
causes. Representation from both genders poses a different kind of
problem for both associations. There are times when the leadership of
either the CTA or CEA is mostly all men or mostly all women. Such
turnover largely reflects the short tenure of association leaders in
their positions rather than any difficulties between male and female
members, however.

With the AdA drawing its membership mostly from the top of the education
hierarchy, it is not surprising that most of its members remain Anglo
men. Still, African-Americans and Hispanics of both genders have more
than a token presence. Indeed, in 1999, two school principals in the
district were white women and two other principals were Hispanic men.
Moreover, almost every school in the district has a person of color
among the assistant principals.

These three associations,[^3] together with the superintendent\'s
office, make labor relations in the district into a triangular
relationship rather than the bilateral relationship common in most
labor-management settings (see Figure 1, below). Of all the parties, the
associations affiliated with the AEA are the most similar to a
traditional union. The issues they address and how members become
involved closely mirror what exists in unions throughout the country.
For example, wages, benefits, and working conditions are always a part
of contract talks and members voice their concerns at the schools
through a panoply of committees and representatives based within each
school. The Administrators\' Association, on the other hand, lacks much
of the formal structure found in the CTA and CEA. Its members tend to
resolve issues through informal contacts and by placing a great deal of
trust in their president to identify and follow-up on issues important
to the membership. Moreover, the administrators hold themselves as
separate from the other associations, and many have close working
relations with the superintendent and his assistants because their work
requires frequent dealings with these individuals. For instance, the
president of the AdA when much of this study took place, Linda Goins,
was also head of Human Services for the district. She spoke with
Superintendent Diaz on a weekly if not daily basis. Yet, the AdA is
still much like the other associations in that issues regarding wages,
benefits, and working conditions are of great interest to members, and
they are at times just as concerned as the teachers and support staff in
getting their fair share from the district.

As a result, the AdA remained a separate entity from the
superintendent\'s office and the district. Understandably, contract
negotiations could be extremely difficult as all too often the district
found itself trying to satisfy both CTA and CEA demands on one side
while also meeting objections from the AdA on the other. In part, the
creation of a Presidents\' Council (discussed below) served to
ameliorate these contract negotiation problems by turning the
confrontational negotiations among the parties into a dialogue in which
all parties gathered to find common cause and resolution of issues to
their mutual benefit.

Figure 1: The structure of labor-management relations in Phoenix Union

![](media/image1.pct)

Prior to 1995, labor relations in Phoenix Union revolved around the
issues raised during yearly contract talks. As those talks heated up the
relationships between the various associations and the district broke
down and some kind of mobilization usually ensued. Relations inside the
schools soured, and teachers and staff might even conduct an
informational picket or threaten a slow-down. For the most part, during
these contract talks the CTA was the lead negotiator. The CEA would then
follow the general gains won by the CTA with adaptations and
modifications to meet the specific needs of its members and their
various work situations. The AdA largely negotiated an agreement
informally with the district that maintained wage and benefit levels
above those won by the teachers and support staff.

Surveys of teachers and support staff during those negotiations revealed
members had underlying concerns about making a difference in the
schools. In part, they looked for recognition of their efforts in the
status and compensation they won in collective bargaining. But they also
sought recognition for the successful development of new skills and new
ideas in their students. They believed few people \-- from the
superintendent\'s office, the general population, or even from within
the associations themselves \-- recognized the important work they were
doing. All they heard, and all they continued to hear for the most part,
was how public schools were failing children, especially the public
schools in the city of Phoenix.

In some measure, the difficulty in attaining such recognition arose
because of the traditional role teachers were expected to play in their
jobs. In the past, teachers arrived at a school, lectured for four or
five classes, 35 students per class, 180 days a year, and then went
home. Today, teachers now needed to work with numerous other staff in
schools and to take account of situations and events in students\' lives
outside of school. This was particularly true in an inner city school
where children often had to face the harsh reality of poverty, family
dissolution, and crime-filled neighborhoods. Teachers had to adapt to
such conditions in their students' lives with a flexible learning
approach and an ability to tap into the resources other staff at the
school provided. These added responsibilities, however, could not lead
to neglect in presenting the required curriculum to students.

While CEA members were also concerned with the educational attainment of
students in the district, two other issues also greatly influenced their
actions on school campuses. First, unlike teachers and administrators,
support staff were almost all paid on an hourly scale and so subject to
the Fair Labor Standards Law that regulates hourly pay. As a result,
support staff had to be careful when doing volunteer work in the
district and make sure such work was not similar to the regular work
they did. If it was, then the district had to compensate the staff for
work done. Similarly, any training or meetings support staff went to
outside of their regular work hours required additional compensation.

Second, support staff in the district traditionally had second class
status relative to teachers and administrators because, unlike the other
two groups, they had seemingly lacked the \"professional\" status the
other two groups possessed through their certification. Support staffers
resented such a distinction, however, because many possessed a great
deal of expertise and knowledge in their respective fields. How
chemicals interacted, how fumes dispersed, and how to cook nutritious
meals for several hundred people were not abilities that come in a few
hours or even a few days of on-the-job training. Indeed, security
personnel, book store managers, registrars, and nurses required
extensive training and expertise in order to do their jobs. Officials in
Phoenix Union, along with leaders in all three associations, made an
attempt to increase awareness of the important work support staff did in
the schools and the need for teachers and administrators to work with
these staff to resolve issues where such staff could be helpful.
Unfortunately, the traditions of teachers largely operating by
themselves in a classroom, of administrators unilaterally directly
school personnel, and of support staff quietly working in the background
without attracting attention were extremely difficult to overcome.

## The Need for Change: Public education under attack

In 1994, Arizona passed a charter school law that turned out to be one
of the most liberal in the nation. The next year, nearly 100 charter
schools opened, and by 2000, the number of charter schools in the state
numbered around 350, enrolling about 15 percent (over 45,000) of the
state\'s eligible public school students.

The goal is that these charter schools, with their freedom from school
district rules and their smaller size, will introduce new educational
practices that can then be spread to other schools. Because students now
have a choice where they can go to school, district schools and other
charter schools see themselves as having to compete for students who
will select the schools that adopt the best educational practices. In
other words, as charter schools expand, a market for educating students
is coming into existence. Many believe that only those schools that
provide the best education available will survive as students flock to
those schools and abandon those seen as failing.

Arizona law allows the state Department of Education and a special State
Board of Charter Schools to sponsor up to 25 charter schools every year.
Each school district in the state can also sponsor charter schools, and
they can sponsor as many charter schools as they want. With all these
agencies available for sponsoring charter schools, those opening these
schools have forum-shopped for the administrative body most likely to
sponsor them.

Once a charter school exists, it is under the same obligations as a
public school to report on student performance and its financial
management. That requirement is less stringent than it seems, however,
because there are few mechanisms for enforcing it. There are currently
no requirements that the agency sponsoring the charter school follow-up
on the performance of that charter school or even inspect its records
and facilities. Anecdotal evidence reveals that numerous charter schools
do not provide for disabled children nor offer needed instruction in
English-as-a-Second-Language. With such limited supervision, charter
schools are relatively free to do what they want, and those outside the
school district that chartered them are likely to have almost no
supervision at all.

This lack of supervision is not a major problem in the eyes of
supporters of charter schools. Many of those starting charter schools
openly acknowledge that they lack the financial acumen and resources
available to public schools for meeting public reporting requirements.
That lack of educational professionalism hardly detracts from the
charter schools because they rarely market themselves as competitors to
public schools. Rather, they offer to parents and school-aged children
smaller classes and specialized education programs in developing
artistic skills, in addressing the needs of emotionally disturbed
children, in assisting problem youth, or in preparing students for
college academics. Their expertise in these kinds of programs and not in
running a generalized school curriculum is what attracts parents and
children to them.

The effect charter schools have had in Phoenix is apparent in the
declining enrollment during the 1998-1999 school year. While the number
of students attending classes always declined as the school year
progresses, the drop was especially sharp in the 1998-1999 school year.
In September 1998, slightly over 21,500 students attended Phoenix Union
schools. By May 1999, less than 18,100 students were attending classes
in Phoenix Union schools. Of the 3,400 students leaving the school
system, over 1,800 of those requested releases to attend charter
schools. That number was up from the previous academic year when only
slightly more than 1,100 students switched to charter schools.[^4]

Still, the threat of charter schools at least in Phoenix Union is still
much less than it could be. Despite the support charter schools have
gained as alternative education vehicles for traditionally educationally
under-served populations, most of the charter schools in the state have
opened up in school districts serving middle-class and higher Anglo
students. A study by Gene Glass and Casey Cobb, both of Arizona State
University, found that most of the students in the metro-Phoenix area
enrolled in charter schools were in schools that were over 70 percent
Anglo.

A potential threat exists for Phoenix Union, however, inasmuch as the
elementary school districts are free to open their own high schools as
charter schools. Several of the wealthier elementary school districts
that feed into Phoenix Union are planning just that. Not only will these
charter schools be entitled to the per pupil funds from Phoenix Union to
which other charter schools in the area are entitled, but they will also
have access to the elementary school districts\' ability to fund school
construction by issuing bonds and raising property taxes subject to
voter approval. It is feared that these district-run charter schools
will accelerate the shift of middle-class Anglo students from Phoenix
Union to majority white districts and further aggravate the racial and
economic segregation of the city of Phoenix.

Arizona\'s various state educational agencies have not paid much
attention to these kinds of problems and have at times been extremely
solicitous of schools outside of the traditional public sector. In 1994,
when the state passed its charter law, the Arizona Department of
Education released a detailed handbook that covered all relevant
legislation and steps for creating a charter school. It even included a
list of vacant buildings available for possible use by charter schools
and instructions for keeping financial records. Over the past five
years, the current state school superintendent, Lisa Graham Keegan, has
sponsored or publicly advocated a host of laws, regulations, and
initiatives that encourage charter schools and private schools. Among
these are laws that would do away with a school district\'s ability to
raise building funds through bond measures (a sales tax would became the
avenue for such funds), regulation reform that would allow non-certified
teachers into district schools (charter schools already can hire
non-certified teachers), and changes in tax law that would allow
charitable contributions to private schools to become tax deductible. In
1997, this last initiative became law and survived challenges in the
courts. As Keegan told a reporter from the *Arizona Republic* shortly
after the Arizona Supreme Court\'s decision upholding the statute,
\"\[T\]his decision is good for every child in Arizona. When the
philosophy is that the money belongs to a child and follows the child,
that improves education for everyone.\"

Such an attitude understandably explains a further problem public school
districts in Arizona confront: the low priority of education funding. A
1998 study by the Arizona Education Association revealed that in the
1996-97 academic year Arizona ranked near the bottom in state spending
per pupil. After numerous tax cuts in the 1990s, Arizona provides just
over \$4,000 a year for the education of each student, a figure nearly
one-third less than the average of what other states provide their
students and 7 percent less than what Arizona provided its students in
1991. Indeed, of the fifty states in the union and the District of
Colombia, only Utah had lower per-pupil expenditures.

Phoenix Union has additional funds available to it because of a
court-ordered desegregation plan, and so is not in such a dire situation
as other school districts in the state. Under the desegregation plan,
each school in the district is to reflect roughly the ethnic make-up of
the population within the city. Rather than busing students to and from
schools, Phoenix Union developed magnet programs at each high school in
order to attract students of under-represented ethnic groups to the
schools in question. Students who want to transfer to another school may
be blocked from doing so if that move will jeopardize the ethnic and
racial distribution of the student\'s current school. In addition, the
district used the funds available for desegregation to build César
Chávez High School. The area where the school is located is
predominately Mexican-American, and the one other high school in the
area, South Mountain, was already extremely overcrowded when César
Chávez was built.

On top of the challenges from charter schools and state education
authorities, Phoenix Union is facing a challenge on behalf of its
students from a future exam called the Arizona Instrument to Measure
Standards (AIMS). Arizona students will soon be expected to pass this
exam as well as their courses to receive a diploma. Unfortunately, most
students did poorly on this exam. In 1999, 95 percent of the students
taking the exam failed the math portion. Students did better on the
reading portion as only 63 percent failed that section, but 87 percent
failed the writing portion of the exam. Students in other schools
districts fared only marginally better. Test scores in 2000, moreover,
offered little encouragement, especially for Phoenix Union students. For
the reading portion of the exam, only 56 percent of students did not
score a passing mark. The writing portion of the exam saw almost no
change at all, as 86 percent of the students failed that section, down
only one percent from the previous year, and 94 percent of those taking
the math portion failed that section as well. Even if these scores were
to improve dramatically by the time AIMS became mandatory, it is still
likely that one out of every two students taking the exam will fail some
portion. Even more troublesome is the recognition that these numbers do
not include the students who drop out of school and never take the exam
at all.

As these failure rates reveal, all Arizona schools are facing a stern
test with the AIMS exam. The extremely low scores of students in Phoenix
Union, however, suggests that they will have an even more difficult time
than their counterparts in other school districts or charter schools in
preparing their students for the exam. The plethora of languages spoken
in the district, the diversity of the students, and increased rates of
poverty within the district most likely explain a great deal of the
difficulty Phoenix Union students are having with AIMS. But regardless
of how difficult the exam may be, state officials are reluctant to make
any exceptions to the requirement that students must pass the exam if
they expect to graduate from high school.[^5]

#  Best practices: Enter the Saturn Model

César Chávez High School was a response to this wide array of pressures
and concerns at Phoenix Union. School leaders from the administration
and the associations realized that something drastic needed to be done
to save the city's public schools and better serve its students. Even
before planning for the new school had begun, association and district
leaders had turned away from a typical collective bargaining
relationship and adopted the cooperative processes associated with
Interest-Based Bargaining. The relationship among these leaders was
transformed, but they all realized Interest-Based Bargaining alone could
not fundamentally change labor relations throughout the district.

To that end association and district leaders took the revolutionary step
of turning to Saturn and the model of an enterprise compact to provide
the governing structure for the new school. As with Saturn, a select
group of teachers, support staff, and administrators gathered together
before the school opened to plan out the kind of educational and
business practices to be used at the school. This group also did some of
the initial hiring of school personnel, including the school\'s
principal, and established procedures for how others were to be hired at
the school. More than a few people in and out of the district had
doubted that the school could even open on time, but the participants
\-- many of whom had volunteered their time and energy to the planning
team -- succeeded in doing just that.

Unfortunately, the school did not achieve everything participants had
hoped it would. As they worked, tensions between school administrators
on one side and teachers and support staff on the other developed. None
of the participants had the authority to resolve these tensions.
Moreover, the pressure to open the school on time discouraged the
participants in the joint relationship from even exploring the growing
rifts within their ranks. The kind of trust and confidence that existed
among association leaders never did find its way to the school as
originally hoped. And when the school opened, more than a few of the new
teachers and support staff at the school had no idea about the nature of
the joint relationship. The institutions and programs planned for the
new school that only haltingly appeared did not raise confidence in the
joint relationship. There was still no mechanism or set of institutions
withthe authority to resolve the continued differences or command the
attention of participants away from the traditional mechanisms for
running the school.

## Interest-Based Bargaining

The history of these developments is worth considering. Back in the
summer of 1995, contract talks had been especially difficult because of
teachers\' growing concern over swelling class sizes. When that issue
was not addressed to their satisfaction, the teachers rejected an
agreement negotiated between the association and the district. They
began an informational picket line after the school year ended, and
threatened to strike in the fall if no new agreement on the issue was
reached. With the teachers and the district attracting a great deal of
unwanted publicity, Superintendent Diaz imposed a settlement on the
parties that only partially addressed the problem of class size by
specifying the hiring of more teachers.

Complaints in the media and from the community about district schools
continued, however, and so the following school year all sides were
looking for a better process for resolving their disputes. The NEA
UniServ director at the time, Mike Viliborghi, approached Doug Kilgore,
then a UniServ director for another district, about the use of
Interest-Based Bargaining[^6] (IBB) in public schools. In response,
Kilgore went to the executive boards of the CTA and CEA in Phoenix and
described how IBB might get the associations and the district out of a
cycle of good relations-bad relations. This could permit all parties to
address concerns they had about the educational accomplishments of the
schools themselves. In IBB, Kilgore explained to CTA and CEA officials
and the UniServ director, all the parties in negotiations present their
interests and then attempt to find common ground to their concerns.
Rather than opposing each other and seeking to win bargaining
\"victories,\" the parties would work side-by-side solving problems for
each other. They would share information and work collaboratively to
find options that satisfied all concerned. In the process, the
relationship among the parties became as important as the bargaining
issues themselves. The power each party had at its disposal was to be
used in ways that reinforced the relationship among the parties rather
than undercutting the trust and confidence they had in each other.

The associations supported the use of IBB as well as the
superintendent\'s office. Kilgore, a group of administrators from other
school districts who had already adopted IBB, and a consultant from the
California Foundation for the Improvement of Employee and Employer
Relations set up a team to run a four day training session. Diaz and his
immediate support staff, the leadership of the AdA, and the bargaining
teams and Executive Boards of both the CTA and CEA attended all the
sessions, and members of the district\'s Governing Board dropped in on
various sessions. During that training, the facilitators conducted
several exercises to get them to think beyond their immediate issues and
see options they might not normally have seen. The process of exploring
the different options also helped to develop a working relationship
among the representatives attending these training sessions. By the
third day everyone was ready to apply what they learned to their own
contract negotiations within the district, and the facilitators led a
kind of miniature interest based-bargaining session for the
participants. That session proved to be extremely informative and even
inspiring to those involved. The IBB process brought the parties into an
awareness of each other as people representing a variety of legitimate
interests over which everyone needed to have some concern. Largely gone
was the notion that the parties were in battle with each other.

In 1996, when Kilgore became the UniServ director for Phoenix Union,
hundreds in the district were trained in the use of IBB. Further
negotiations among the parties expanded on IBB principles, and almost
all the association leaders in the district and the superintendent\'s
office credit IBB with significantly improving both the bargaining
process and the relations among the parties. CTA and CEA leaders could
now get on the phone and call Superintendent Diaz directly (just as he
could now call them) about some issue and resolve it to their mutual
benefit. They even began having weekly breakfasts together.

Indeed, the trust that existed among the parties went so far that Diaz
instituted a bi-weekly meeting between Kilgore, the association
presidents, and himself where they could raise and discuss together any
issues arising in the district. This Presidents\' Council became a forum
by which all the parties could address any issues they considered
important and work out solutions together. Association and
superintendent representatives now worked together on addressing issues
such as teacher and staff training, school collaboration, collective
bargaining, and community involvement, and the Presidents\' Council
served as the supervisory body for all these discussions.

The success of IBB, however, was limited to contract discussions and the
improved relationship between the association presidents and the
district. All sides found it difficult to push IBB outside that realm
and into the everyday issues and discussions occurring within the
schools. For the building representatives and the unit chairs that
represented the AEA-affiliated associations at the schools, the use of
IBB challenged their authority. Their ability to control what issues
were discussed and how issues were raised turned on their knowledge and
control of the contract and the grievance process. By transforming the
labor-management issue into a community discussion, IBB undercut the
ability of these people to control the conversation at a time when
control was increasingly becoming a precious commodity.

During the 1990s school management fractured into three different
realms. First, parents gained a voice in school decisions through
site-based councils that the state legislature had mandated for all
public schools. While these parents had no voice over day-to-day
decision-making at a school, they could \-- depending on their effort
and time \-- develop some influence over school policy-making and
supervise how those policies were carried out. Second, in an effort to
push school management from the district and into the local schools,
Phoenix Union implemented a series of reforms \-- at the behest of the
legislature again \-- to give school administrators, leaders, and staff
a greater voice in school governance. These efforts took two forms. One
was site-based management. Here, CTA and CEA members and administrators
worked together on addressing the educational problems of departments.
The other was school improvement teams that were similar to the
site-based councils staffed by parents except school employees held
these positions.

The third and final area that touched on school management was campus
committees and unit chairs for the CTA and CEA representatives for that
school. These representatives tended to adopt a kind of policing
function over the other committees: they made sure the other committees
did nothing that violated current labor agreements. Such a tactic was
relatively safe to adopt because they could claim to be doing nothing
more than defending a labor agreement that protected the membership as a
whole. Unfortunately, that stance did nothing to encourage the kind of
school-based change many felt was needed if the schools were to adapt to
the new educational challenges in the state.

Figure 2: School-level decision-making committees

![](media/image2.pct)

All these committees and their corresponding responsibilities created
three separate fiefdoms, the owners of which jealously protected in the
name of improving educational opportunities for all students. Thus,
while the introduction of IBB tremendously improved contract
negotiations and the relationships among the leaders of the respective
associations and the district, it did not lead to a similar change
within the schools themselves. Before the introduction of IBB, for
example, most grievances were over class size, job transfers, and
procedural violations in the discipline or evaluation of members. After
IBB, those subjects continued to be the subject of most grievances.
Within the schools themselves, the collaboration required under IBB was
either limited to a few who developed a friendship with each other or it
did not exist at all. To get the kind of change within the schools that
association and district leaders wanted required something more than
IBB.

## A new kind of school

The inability to make IBB work at the local school level was, for some
of the CTA and CEA leaders, only a symptom of larger problems related to
the public perception of teachers and schools in the area. The press and
many in the public policy circles within the state understood the AEA
and its affiliated associations as barriers to change and reform. The
CTA, CEA, and AdA needed to answer those charges by showing how their
members were vitally concerned about improving education and not simply
interested in promoting a parochial, self-serving agenda. As one
association president described the situation, the association had long
ago moved beyond how it would contractually survive, but its members had
not convinced the public of their good intent. They had expertise
regarding education issues, and they looked to their association to
advocate on such issues because of their importance to American
families.

One way to show how the AEA-affiliated associations were concerned with
improving education and area schools was to develop benchmarks for
educational practices in the district. Schools in and out of the
district were provincial institutions, with teachers and staff largely
acknowledging educational routines developed within each individual
school. These school-based practices rarely took into account wider
community notions about what students needed to learn, nor did they lead
to teachers and staff building on educational models that existed
outside the school. With their affiliation with the NEA, however, the
AEA-linked associations had access to a wide range of resources about
teaching and support services that worked at other schools in the
nation. The associations could help bring those practices to the schools
in Phoenix Union in an organized, district-wide program.

A second concern all association officials had \-- one shared with
district officials \-- was to make educational decisions closer to the
children who were directly affected by those decisions. While officials
at association and district offices were certainly knowledgeable and
skilled in education matters and attempted to promote the best interests
of children, most recognized empowering those on the \"front lines\" of
education -- teachers and staff \-- was critical. The issue for both
association and district leaders was to get a cohesive group in place at
a school without the fractured policy-making and oversight found in
current school management policies (see Figure 2, above). They wanted to
make their schools competitive with the charter schools that proclaimed
\"classroom-based\" learning environments as their unique advantage.

At the same time that the AEA-affiliated associations were wondering how
to enter the debate over education reform with benchmarking, Diaz and
other district officials learned from the city and its planning boards
that huge tracts of farm land and desert in the southwestern section of
the city were in the process of being sub-divided into massive tracts of
suburban housing. The one high school in that area, South Mountain, was
already at capacity and then some and could take no more students.
Another high school was needed in the area immediately.

The opening of a new high school, the first new high school in the
district in twenty years, presented an excellent opportunity for the AEA
associations to take the high ground in the education debate and develop
some of the ideas they and district officials had wanted to implement.
In the spring of 1997, in response to a request for proposals about how
to improve the quality of education in the district, Kilgore proposed a
plan whereby the new high school would have a different governing
structure from the other schools in the district. Under Kilgore's plan,
administrators, support staff, teachers, students, and the community
would work together in partnership and collaboration in deciding and
producing a successful education for students. Specifically, the
proposal was based on a labor-management partnership modeled after the
Saturn Automobile Company and the \"enterprise compact\" as described in
Barry and Irving Bluestone\'s *Negotiating the Future*. Current
agreements between the associations and Phoenix Union would not exist at
the new school. Instead employees would create their own set of
governing documents reflecting the partnership between them. Second,
Kilgore proposed that students and parents be included in the
administration of the school through the involvement of a group called
the Valley Interfaith Project. That group, one of many throughout the
United States developed by the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago,
sought to inspire people\'s faith-based concern for others into social
activism that reached across faiths and political boundaries.

These innovations, Kilgore hoped, would lead to a co-mingling of
personal and institutional concerns that would herald a new kind of
education for in the Phoenix Union schools. Unfortunately, with the
crush of work needed to open the new high school, the proposal generated
little response at first. However, when a member of the Governing Board
pushed the Superintendent\'s office to devise new school administrative
structures, Kilgore\'s proposal received a new lease on life.

By November 1997, Kilgore was meeting with Mary Ann Gwinn, Toni Kirby,
Linda Goins \-- presidents respectively of the CTA, CEA, and AdA \-- and
Superintendent Diaz about this new \"Saturn\" concept for César Chávez
High School. He discussed with them the idea of an \"enterprise
compact\" and how such a compact differed from the current relationship
established through the various labor contracts in the district. Not
only would there be no employee handbook or professional agreements at
the school, but new kinds of educational practices previously considered
as limited experimental initiatives would become part of the mainstream
curriculum. All the participants would have a chance to try new
educational approaches, to assist in the design of those new approaches,
and to try any other mechanisms for doing their work in order to have a
better school and better-prepared students.

Kilgore also obtained funding for this program from the NEA, \$30,000 in
seed money to support further research and exploration of the idea. With
that money, in February 1998 Superintendent Diaz and the association
leaders as well as a number of other key personnel visited Saturn to see
firsthand how labor-management collaboration was working in the
automobile plant. The several days they spent there included a full tour
of the facility, training sessions in how the United Auto Workers union
and General Motors had developed Saturn Motors together, and meetings
with those involved in the joint relationship. All the parties came away
impressed with what had been accomplished at Saturn and a belief that a
similar relationship could exist at César Chávez. Several association
leaders, skeptical of the idea before the trip, became firm believers
that administrators, teachers, and support staff could learn to work
together and move education-related decision-making from the district
headquarters down to the school itself.

As one association leader described their newfound awareness, here was a
chance to develop a relationship based on a shared commitment to
improving schools for the children attending them. Yes, all the
association leaders admitted, Saturn made cars, something much different
from educating children, but the lessons learned there about employee
morale applied to any workplace. Furthermore, the concerns association
and district leaders had about using the practical knowledge of teachers
and staff \-- of getting them more involved in school decision-making
\-- and of moving the locus of decision-making from the district to the
schools paralleled what Saturn had already accomplished. The work
setting between a factory making automobiles and a school may have been
completely different, but the ideas about how employees could contribute
and why they should were nearly identical. A classroom where the quality
of the education offered was constantly being scrutinized and improved
could only come when teachers and support staff had the opportunity and
the mechanisms to take part in the administrative issues that shaped the
broad outlines of educational content.

Moreover, empowering workers to have a voice and a responsibility in the
governance of a business directly answered one of the main criticisms
supporters of charter schools were making against district schools. At
charter schools, the line between the governance of the school and the
classroom was blurred and even erased. Many charter school teachers and
staff could immediately develop and employ new ideas and techniques
without going through layers of administrative protocol and delays. Now,
Phoenix Union teachers and staff could have the same degree of control
and authority as their counterparts in charter schools. Moreover, at
César Chávez the freedom to innovate remained connected to the school\'s
governance structure, providing a check against teachers losing their
focus on student achievement and insuring that others in the school
could learn and build on those ideas that appeared fruitful. No longer
would classrooms be operating as tiny kingdoms isolated from each other
by the cinder block walls separating them. Teachers could begin to learn
from the practical knowledge they possessed as a whole and even begin to
incorporate ideas and projects that other staff at the school could
contribute. Just as Saturn was a new kind of car company so César Chávez
would be a new kind of school.

While the participants on this trip came away convinced that the Saturn
model could work at César Chávez, other association leaders who had not
visited Saturn as well as the membership at large remained skeptical,
and they ultimately had to approve of this approach if Phoenix Union was
to adopt it. The school board needed convincing as well. Kilgore, with
the support of Diaz and the AEA-affiliated association leaders, began a
series of presentations about the idea of a joint relationship. Barry
Bluestone was called in for two days of meetings with the local leaders
and a presentation of the enterprise compact concept. These
presentations helped relieve a good deal of the apprehension in the
district. In early March, all the respective associations and the
Governing Board for the district approved the use of collaborative
approaches at the new school.

Approval did not resolve all issues related to the joint relationship,
however. Some members of the CTA were concerned that the teachers who
went to the new school would lose all the protections available to them
under their current labor agreement. Others worried the development of
an alternative set of labor relations would create a kind of company
union atmosphere that would undermine what the CTA was doing. New
language and assurances by those involved largely resolved these
concerns.

A third major concern expressed by both CEA and CTA officials, however,
was never fully resolved \-- working out the physical design of the
school with district officials. Ground had already been broken, the
building already designed, and construction already begun. There was
little the association members could do about the design and
construction of the school, and in the end their input in these matters
was marginal.

What created the greatest problem, however, was the pressure the
school\'s imminent opening placed on getting issues addressed and out of
the way. Decisions had to be made reasonably quickly, some believed,
regardless of whether all the participants were ready to make that
decision. Unlike Saturn, which literally had years to develop the new
relationship through jointly planning the new factory where none
currently existed, the school was already designed and construction
already begun. As a result, the time spent working together for
developing deep trust among the participants was not available at the
new school, and that lack of trust proved to be a major stumbling block
in the development of the joint relationship.

With the limited time available, the leaders in the district still
wanted to plunge ahead to create radical change in the administration of
the school. What mattered to the AEA-affiliated association members was
how the joint relationship presented for the first time the chance for
association representatives to begin actual participation in the
designing and running of a school. They recognized that the district\'s
support of this initiative was the culmination of changes in the
superintendent\'s office and with the Governing Board of Phoenix Union.
For Diaz, school managers should become less an authority who needed to
boss and control underlings and more a coordinator of resources and
people. His office explained that the joint relationship changed \"the
existing relationships among adults in order to create a unified
organization \[that operated\] as a team \[and\] that generates a
significant increase in student success and the capacity to continue
generating success.\" For teachers and support staff, this initiative
provided the opportunity to design new educational practices without
first having to meet numerous bureaucratic challenges. In short, César
Chávez offered an exciting opportunity to build on developments in the
district and create not just a new kind of school but new kinds of
relationships as well. The question remained how district and
association personnel in the trenches would respond to this opportunity.

## Designing the school

District and association officials reasoned that as Saturn had been
formed by a group of workers and managers, so too should this new
school. Thus, what was needed next was to form a design team comprised
of representatives from the three associations, obtain funding for the
effort, and develop community contacts for the new school. The first
objective was left to each association to resolve. Each used a different
process from simple selection by the association president to an
electoral process in which members volunteered or were nominated from
their respective units and then elected by their fellow members in that
unit. By the end of the 1997-1998 school year, the design team was in
place.

This still left the problems of funding the design team and developing
contacts between the school and the community. Funding of the joint
initiative was the more serious of the two. The district was legally
restricted from spending any extra money for funding the joint design
team effort. In the end, the district did manage to squeeze some support
money from discretionary funds and to shift funds from traditional
expenditure categories to new categories representative of the joint
relationship. But, these funds were quite limited given the needs of the
design team.

Fortunately, the NEA -- national parent of the Arizona Education
Association \-- agreed to chip in \$140,000, on top of the \$30,000 it
had originally donated to the effort. Much of this was used to pay for
release time for association staff. The other associations also provided
modest funds to support the experiment as well as a considerable amount
of donated time from association officers. Still, the combined amount
offered only partial funding for the thousands of person hours dedicated
to the project. As a result, almost all the design team participants
worked as volunteers rather than as paid staff. They never hesitated to
commit numerous hours to this project and to follow-up on their work.
But, they could not as volunteers check-up on the work of others or
dedicate weeks of their time to the joint relationship. They still had
other jobs in the district to do.

The involvement of the community also failed to reach the level
association and district leaders originally expected. Phoenix Union and
AEA officials had joined with community leaders to win an initial
\$75,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to develop the community-school
partnership. Unfortunately, further funds from Ford did not arrive as
the school\'s links with the community never really fully developed.

The Valley Interfaith Project, initially brought in as a community
representative, was largely unknown to many of the people active in
Phoenix Union. Recently begun in the Phoenix area, the group was still
organizing its support among local churches and synagogues, and so could
not bring the kind of community involvement association leaders had
originally hoped for. In addition, some of those involved in the school
had questions about the Valley Interfaith Project and did not want other
community groups to be blocked from participating. It was also true that
the largely Mexican-American community to be served by the new school
was one that usually did not spend a great deal of time at schools
volunteering their services. Cultural differences and economic barriers
\-- many households could not afford the kind of volunteer time more
common among wealthier Anglo households \-- had long existed in the
district and could not be erased quickly. A final problem was how to
encourage students to participate in the joint relationship. Children,
after all, lacked crucial information about school operations and
community concerns. They might understand what they wanted as
individuals, but such concerns did not help the joint relationship
except to provide a kind of \"student voice\" that school personnel
could turn to. With constraints on their time and their limited ability
to attend meetings, students ended up playing only a peripheral role in
the joint relationship.

Despite the precarious funding of the design team and its reliance on
volunteers from within the district and from the community, the team set
out to accomplish its first task, the hiring of a principal for the
school. Past district policy had been to hire a principal for a new
school two years before the facility was to open so that he or she could
assist in the opening and planning of the new building. Hence, the
design team began immediately interviewing candidates for the position.
One stood out in this process, Jim McElroy, and was hired soon
thereafter. He had previously been a principal at another school in the
district, Carl Hayden High, and many teachers and administrators in the
district credited him with turning that school around. At Carl Hayden,
McElroy had been one of the few principals in the district to develop
teacher and staff participation in school governance. During the
interview process, McElroy presented himself as an advocate for teachers
and students \-- it would be they who would lead the charge for change
while he simply worked on making operations at the school as efficient
as possible.

The hiring of a principal was critical, but only a small step relative
to the work needed to open the school. Indeed, it may have been
premature as the members of the design team barely understood exactly
what they would be doing in developing this new kind of school and how
teachers, support staff, and administrators would work together. Tasks
that still needed to be addressed such as scheduling the academic year,
coordinating educational goals among the as-yet-to-be-hired staff,
developing peer tutoring and cultural awareness programs, selecting the
staff and establishing their training, and developing communication
avenues with the community served by the school were just part of the
planning they needed to do. Indeed, at the very heart of those decisions
were issues over how the joint labor-management relationship at the
school would be structured and how it would affect school operations.
Without even beginning to address such a fundamental question, the
design team had already begun to act because they were under pressure
from association and district leaders not to \"waste\" time if the
school was to open on schedule.

### **Task 1: Writing the School Compact** {#task-1-writing-the-school-compact .unnumbered}

One of the first design team functions was to write a charter or
"compact" for the school. Participants believed that many of the thorny
issues of working out the joint effort could be resolved in the course
of writing the charter document. This turned out to be much more
difficult than anyone imagined. For the first few months there simply
were too many people to work with and too many issues to resolve. After
weeks of wrangling about what exactly should be in the compact, design
team members suggested that the District Superintendent and the
association presidents form a subcommittee of the design team to work
out an initial draft of the compact. A local attorney invited by a
member of the district\'s governing board assisted the members by making
certain the language would pass legal muster. Together, this group
worked through several drafts, slowly moving from a model that
duplicated the compact of Saturn to one more appropriate for a school
environment. In the Fall of 1998, the charter drafting subcommittee
continued to produce new drafts as the rest of the design team went
ahead with its own work.

When finished in early 1999, the compact divided school governance
between three bodies: an Education Action Council (EAC), a Professional
Unit Council (PUC), and Professional or Specialty Units (see Figure 3,
below). As one of the association presidents explained, the governing
bodies created by this compact each had its own responsibilities.
Administrators still had the final say on educational issues, but they
had to obtain input from these decision-making bodies before making any
decisions.

Figure 3: Governance structure of César Chávez High School as defined in
the compact

![](media/image3.pct)

The Professional/Specialty units were the basic building block for
school governance. Within these units all educational matters at the
school would be implemented. As the compact explained, \"The
Professional/Specialty Units, because they are closest to students, will
decide primary educational issues such as designing class structure,
producing student schedules, and Unit Member task planning and
scheduling. Professional/Specialty Units may also manage educational
support and campus operational services such as housekeeping/custodial,
health/counseling/safety, maintenance of CCHS physical and material
resources, and inventory control.\" How each unit would be defined was
left to the staff at the school to decide.

Representatives of these units would serve on the PUC, which would meet
at least weekly. In theory, the PUC coordinated the actions of all the
various units, provided budgetary analysis, and developed various
school-wide requirements such as guidelines for teacher and staff
evaluation. In essence, the PUC served as a coordinating device and
informational resource for all the various units at the school.
Everything at the school would be done through the various Professional
and Specialty Units, and it would be the PUC that provided oversight and
coordination of those activities.

The EAC was a separate body from the PUC and the Professional/Specialty
Units. It consisted of three representatives, one each from the three
associations with the school principal (called the Education Team Leader
in the compact) being the AdA representative. It was the job of this
Education Action Council to provide resources and information for the
Professional/Specialty Units and the PUC.

A fourth entity, the César Chávez Council, included the EAC members
along with members of the Presidents\' council. This body provided
overall supervision of the joint relationship and assessed what
resources were needed at the school to maintain its operations. In
practice, the distinction between the César Chávez Council and the
Presidents\' Council was not very important.

Almost all involved took pride in the compact, and it is indeed a
remarkable document. It turned inside out a legalistic relationship
defined via the traditional labor contract and created a new structure
whereby everyone at the school shared responsibility and worked
cooperatively. Any one could look through this document and immediately
see how the school was different from other schools in the district.
Yet, the success of the compact was also its greatest weakness: as a
general document nothing was precisely explained or defined. Issues such
as how Professional and Specialty Units were defined or how staff could
be promoted or demoted were not specified in the compact. Nor was it at
all clear how the bodies specified in the compact would function
together. Guidelines, similar to those developed at Saturn, were to
follow and provide the kind of detail for identifying what
responsibilities went to which teachers, support staff, and
administrators and how these parties were to handle those
responsibilities. But, without such guidelines, the compact remained an
abstract description of commitments and not a document people could use
to encourage any particular kind of behavior or specific kind of
relationship. Such a weakness turned out to be a serious problem in the
joint relationship as the compact proved to be incapable of bringing the
parties together when disagreements arose.

### **Task 2: Planning school operations** {#task-2-planning-school-operations .unnumbered}

Creating those guidelines had to wait, however, because other issues
surrounding the opening of the school required the immediate attention
of the design team. The hiring of teachers and support staff had to
start in early 1999, if not sooner. Protocols for such hiring were
needed as well as information about the educational mission of the
school. Moreover, links to the community needed developing. Indeed, the
design team had to ascertain the kind and quantity of school equipment
to order. Hence, the drafting of guidelines and other labor-management
concerns had to wait as the design team worked out these fundamental
issues related to the opening of the school. Still, the joint
relationship was never far from school planning. The difficulty was that
design team members could not spend much time or effort directly
addressing issues connected to labor-management relations. Only when the
issue was unavoidable or directly related to school planning did it
receive attention from the group.

As the design team got down to work, two issues immediately cropped up
regarding the participation of the school principal in design committee
meetings. The first was the preeminent role the principal began to play
in the meetings. McElroy was one of the few personnel from César Chávez
already involved in the design and development of the school \-- indeed,
for the first few months the only one \-- plus he was the only one being
paid for his participation. Moreover, as an experienced school
principal, McElroy held considerable authority when describing what
issues and concerns principals traditionally pursued when running a
school. As a result, McElroy wielded a powerful voice in design team
discussions, a voice that others often resented. For these critics,
McElroy was not following through on the promise of true
labor-management collaboration or working with design team members as
co-principals.

A few of those who resented McElroy\'s influence created a second and
more difficult problem in design team operations. They asserted that the
joint relationship precluded the hiring of any assistant principals at
the school. For them, teachers and support staff would handle the duties
administrators formerly did. Some even suggested that the two
AEA-affiliated association representatives on the EAC could be the
assistant principals at the school. In essence, they argued that the
joint relationship should expand from questions of school governance and
cover daily management of the school. McElroy and other representatives
from the AdA opposed such an idea. They wanted to collaborate, but such
collaboration could not and should not do away with professional
management of the school.

This idea of replacing or eliminating assistant principals at the school
did not last through many meetings. CTA and CEA representatives realized
that administrators were as necessary to the school as the teachers and
the support staff. Still, the conflict released by the proposal among
design team members would not disappear. Some of the AEA-affiliated
representatives perceived McElroy as having too much influence on design
team deliberations, while AdA members feared that they were being
targeted for elimination from César Chávez and perhaps even other
district schools if the experiment was successful. With this distrust
within the design team, a few participants began to think of how best to
\"win\" this situation or at least not lose. So, while all the leaders
of the associations and the district whole-heartedly supported the joint
relationship and were committed to full cooperation with each other,
their representatives on the design team followed at times an agenda to
protect or expand their \"turf\" at the expense of other association
members. Indeed, a few of the AEA-affiliated association members of the
design team informed McElroy that they were \"keeping a book\" on him
\-- a threat that they were looking for grounds for his dismissal.

This gamesmanship drew the notice of some. One of the original
organizers of the joint relationship wrote in September 1998: \"It seems
to me that some of these key constituents do not know how, or choose not
to get their interests met through the President\'s Council \[where the
joint relationship was flourishing\] and instead are trying to get their
needs met through informal structures which rely on misinformation and
the coercive use of power to influence.\" The writer requested that they
take advantage of the facilitators and consultants currently available
to explore some of these issues dividing the group. Unfortunately,
others in positions of leadership did not think the problem that serious
in light of the more pressing problems of getting the school open on
time, and so no direct action at resolving these growing conflicts was
taken. The problems that existed among members of the design team had to
be worked out in the course of finishing the detailed plans for the new
school.

With the start of the new 1998-99 school year, work on the new school
began in earnest. Discussions and planning had been slow-going during
the summer, and those involved wanted to put the process into high gear.
In part to rectify some of the growing tensions between McElroy and the
AEA-affiliated association members, and in part to begin putting the
joint relationship into action, a leadership team consisting of the
school principal representing the AdA and representatives from the other
two associations on the design team was put in place by the end of
September. These two representatives \-- Duane Webb from the CTA and
Dean Walker from the CEA \-- were given special leave from their current
positions in the district and together with McElroy took on their team
work on a full-time basis. It was their job to support the work of the
design team by coordinating the efforts of the various members, provide
communication between the design team and the Presidents\' Council in
the district, and in general make sure that the design team not only
accomplished its goals but that those goals became the governing
structure of the new school. In addition, together with McElroy, they
also oversaw the design team\'s budget.

To carry out its work, the design team itself divided into three
distinct groups, each addressing a specific element in the school\'s
design. One group focused on the "learning systems" at the school \--
the curriculum and programs at the school and any possible educational
innovations that might be developed at the new school. Another group
called "people systems" determined staffing needs, hiring criteria, and
the hiring process for the school. The final group, "business systems,"
worked on the administration of the new school \-- how educational
technology and such basic services as grounds-keeping and security would
be organized on the campus \-- and developed community and business
partnerships with the school. Each of these three groups surveyed what
best practices existed in and outside of the district and then developed
plans for implementing those best practices at César Chávez.

The nature of the joint relationship was not completely forgotten during
this period. Design team members also began planning for a return trip
to Saturn in October. Not everyone would be going on this trip, as there
were not enough funds available to send everyone. This visit, similar to
the visit in early 1998 by district and association leaders, was to
educate the design team on some of the concepts and ideas the leaders
wanted to put in practice at the school. Issues and questions design
team members wanted to explore included how much training and planning
had gone into the creation of Saturn, how the people at Saturn kept a
\"happy\" relationship with General Motors, how the team approach was
managed to prevent the return of top-down management, and how work was
made more efficient and effective.

Those returning from Saturn found that they now had a much better
appreciation of what the joint relationship between labor and management
should look like. Yet, the parties could not spend much time applying
what they learned on the trip to their own relationship because of the
pressure they were under to complete plans for the new school. What the
trip did accomplish was replenish the parties\' faith in the process and
to some extent in each other. With renewed vigor, the design team
returned to their work at a feverish pitch.

By early December 1998, all three groups of the design team had
completed a basic description of their work, and all the involved groups
\-- all three associations and the Governing Board for Phoenix Union \--
approved those plans as well as a draft of the compact. Most agreed that
whatever happened at the new school could only improve their own jobs. A
flyer advocating approval of the compact explained how the compact could
only have a positive effect on the other schools in the system.

> A fundamental belief of the [CCHS Compact]{.underline} is that all
> people want to be involved in decisions that affect them, care about
> their jobs, take pride in their accomplishment, and want to share in
> the success of their efforts.... Our [Professional
> Agreement]{.underline} exists for a different purpose. In a top down
> structure we need protection from the administration who manage the
> education business.... Unions for the past 40 years have been
> empowered under law to bargain and defend personal and professional
> rights. The law leaves all other decisions, in our case educational
> decisions, to management. The [CCHS Compact]{.underline} is an effort
> to empower the union to make educational decisions in partnership with
> other employee groups and management.

Approval of this experiment, however, left a number of outstanding
questions unresolved. Much work had been done on putting the school
together but not how the parties themselves would work together at this
new school or assess their productivity. For instance, it remained
unclear how student achievement was to be measured. The procedures by
which staff and teachers could transfer from César Chávez to other
schools in the district were unknown. And, much of the substance for how
the parties worked together depended on the creation of guidelines by
the decision-making bodies specified in the compact but which did not
exist. Only the overall structure of the school\'s decision-making
bodies was in place. The process of putting the prodigious work of the
design team into action would have to occur as new staff and teachers
were hired.

### **Task 3: Transition: Putting the plans into action** {#task-3-transition-putting-the-plans-into-action .unnumbered}

It was here that the first schisms in the joint relationship began to
appear. The most common and most serious problem was the failure to
include all the stakeholders in the interview process. As people were
hired, design team members learned that only a few people were
interviewing numerous candidates and that those individuals \-- believed
to be school administrators by CEA and CTA representatives \-- were not
employing the interview protocols intended for the positions in
question. Some of the AEA-affiliated design team members even alleged
that the administrators had subverted the hiring process so that they
could hire whomever they personally wanted.

Unfortunately, there was never a way to resolve these suspicions as
there was no one who could address these problems. The Professional Unit
Council, the final authority for decisions within the compact, did not
yet exist. The Presidents\' Council, which did exist, was a high level
body that did not and could not micro-manage the affairs of the design
team. Self-governance had to come from within the team rather than
imposed from above by the superintendent\'s office and the association
presidents. As volunteers, however, many of the design team members
lacked both the authority and the responsibility to demand an open
airing and accounting of these suspicions. Instead, both administrators
and CTA and CEA representatives retreated from the joint relationship
under claims that whatever they were doing was the best for student
education. McElroy and the other administrators at the school began
charging that those involved with the joint relationship held their
primary responsibility to their associations, and, as a result,
\"adult\" issues were detracting from the more important \"student\"
issues. For the teachers and support staff, the changes in school
governance wrought by the joint relationship were the best mechanism for
changing school management and so for improving student learning.

These now open disagreements remained unsettled when the design team
dissolved in March 1999. A transition team made up of those design team
members who were taking positions at the school started meeting, but the
same problems related to the operation of the design team remained. For
instance, many still had jobs at other schools and simultaneously needed
to prepare for their new jobs at César Chávez. Moreover, administrators
at the school did not participate in these discussions. While those
meetings were beneficial to those attending, they did not lead to
anything that could be extended to other personnel at the school.
Planned seminars on team-based management never took place. Instead,
staff development followed the model of a traditional school opening. A
staff developer was hired, and that person supervised development of
teachers and support staff.

With such inactivity by the transition team, the responsibility for
coordinating the opening of the new school fell to the Education Action
Council \-- Jim McElroy, Duane Webb from the CTA, and Dean Walker from
the CEA. Unfortunately, this preliminary version of the EAC was not
functioning as it could have. The tensions between school administrators
and the CTA and the CEA representatives were palpable, and there was no
mechanism for addressing those tensions. As a result, there was little
Webb and Walker could do regarding the joint relationship. Walker
largely became a quasi-administrator supervising the school\'s
construction while Webb found himself butting heads with McElroy more
and more as the two struggled over what they were to do \"jointly.\"

To perhaps repair the fissures in the joint relationship or at least
take stock of where the parties stood in relation to each other, an
outside consultant, Robert Fritz, met with a number of representatives
of all stakeholders in mid-July. Fritz worked with the participants to
inculcate in them a sense of collaboration and a responsibility for
making the school operational. In the process he identified a series of
issues (\"tensions\" in his report) that needed to be resolved during
the school\'s first year along with specific dates for when to expect
resolution. These issues included such basic concerns as developing
communication within the EAC so that all members understood their roles
in the governing body and such complex problems as the extremely
complicated and important problem of coordinating teacher schedules so
as to maximize their common planning time. Almost every aspect of school
operations was covered, and Fritz left the group with a protocol to use
in resolving these issues/tensions.

Unfortunately, the enormous amount of the work to be done and the small
number of attendees (16 out of several dozen design team members and the
more than fifty people who would be working at the school) limited the
impact of Fritz\'s work. Moreover, responsibility for following up on
these projects was placed in the hands of just a few individuals. If any
one of them failed to follow-up on their responsibilities, a significant
amount of work would go unfinished. So, while Fritz\'s effort provided
the parties with a plan for accomplishing their goals, it left unsettled
[how]{.underline} the parties were to put that plan into action. And,
with the school to open in August, there were not enough days left to
work out such kinks in the plan.

### **Task 4: The school opens: Instituting the compact** {#task-4-the-school-opens-instituting-the-compact .unnumbered}

Not until July 27 were the campus buildings themselves (at least the
ones needed for the first students) fit for habitation. That left just a
few weeks before students would arrive. The classrooms still needed to
be stocked with supplies, and assignments needed to be made about who
would be where. While the next few weeks were as hectic as any, McElroy
and other administrations called on numerous teachers and support staff
to assist them, especially in determining what equipment and supplies
were needed and where all those materials had to go.

Complaints emerged, however, around the lack of time and effort being
spent on the joint relationship and specifically in developing the
decision-making bodies specified in the charter. Many of those from the
design team at the school were confused about the seeming absence of the
Education Action Council and the Professional Unit Council from the
daily business of the school, and they began to demand that those bodies
come into action immediately. They were especially upset when they
realized that at least one-third of the personnel at the school had no
idea about the nature of the compact and the joint relationship that
separated César Chávez from other schools in the district.

In those early months, members of all three associations admitted that
cooperation did not seem to exist at this compact-based school. The
continued fears and general mistrust among the personnel at the school,
previously in the background, now reached center stage, especially
within the EAC. This was true despite the addition of new people from
the CTA and CEA, Gary Raether and Deena Pollack, respectively.[^7] The
first few months of school saw outside facilitators hired to assist EAC
members in deciding exactly what they were to do and how to go about
accomplishing their tasks. They brought expertise in team building and
helped train EAC members in their new job responsibilities \-- including
training for administrators to adjust \"their \'mental models\'
surrounding their role in this new partnership.\" Unfortunately, the
facilitators did little more than coordinate EAC meetings, and they
largely remained confused about their objectives. They even returned to
the Presidents\' Council in November 1999 to receive instruction about
exactly what they were supposed to be facilitating.

Within the EAC, relations between Deena Pollack and McElroy were
especially fragile. Pollack, the CEA representative to the EAC, had
served on the design team, and so had worked with McElroy from the start
of the joint process. She believed that McElroy had sidestepped
procedures in the past, and she was determined that he should not do so
with the school now running. McElroy, however, largely saw her acting
almost entirely under the direction of Kirby, the CEA\'s president.
Already fearing that CEA members were plotting his dismissal, the last
thing McElroy was going to do was invite Pollack into his confidence. In
other words, the EAC members did not trust each other, and so the EAC
could not function. All three members looked to people outside the EAC
in getting what they wanted accomplished rather than looking to and
standing by each other.

The initial failure of the EAC not only meant problems in developing the
Professional Unit Council and improving the teaching environment at the
new school, but it also contained a direct challenge to why the CEA had
originally signed on to the project. A joint relationship offered an
opportunity for CEA members to be full and equal participants in the
governance of a school rather than the second-class citizens support
staff had historically been within district schools. Now, second-class
status was re-asserting itself throughout school operations. While the
teacher's CTA representative Gary Raether and other teachers at the
school were sympathetic to the plight of the support staff, none of them
made equal treatment of support staff a condition for their own
participation. As several CTA representatives explained, a dispute
between administrators and school staff did not involve them or there
was nothing they could do to resolve the issues.

One example stands out. Just before the school opened, teachers and
administrators met for orientation while support staff labored
throughout the school preparing the building and getting materials in
order for the students. While such work needed to be done, there was no
effort made to include the support staff in the orientation being
conducted. Staff meetings during the first few months of the school year
also saw support staff dismissed because the topics were not deemed
\"germane\" to their responsibilities. For many within the CEA, these
actions indicated that the decision-making hierarchy that placed them on
the bottom was still largely in place.

CEA\'s representative Deena Pollack herself faced these problems serving
on the EAC. Both she and Raether had requested time off from their
regular positions because of their positions on the EAC, but only a
replacement for Raether was ever hired. Thus, Pollack found herself
unable to do the kind of canvassing of people and organizing of the
staff that she had hoped to do, nor could she prepare for EAC meetings
as she had intended because of her responsibilities as school bookstore
manager. As the work piled up on both fronts, her days got longer and
longer, and there were few helping hands from the teachers or
administrators at the school. Indeed, even within her own association
members were concluding that the joint relationship offered them little
if anything, and they were increasingly unwilling to assist Pollack in
making it work.

Pollack, however, refused to give up on the promise a joint relationship
held out to CEA members and the students at César Chávez. Given the
failure to hire a replacement for her, Pollack was especially concerned
with the hiring of new employees at the school. When she discovered that
as the school year began officials were interviewing applicants without
the requisite association and community representatives present, she
notified McElroy that she planned on filing a grievance over the matter,
and McElroy and her had heated discussion. Already upset and worn down
from several months at the school, she had what many initially feared
was a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital. Her collapse turned
out to be an anxiety attack, but for the next few months Pollack was in
and out of the hospital as her condition did not improve. By late
January of 2000, with her doctor and friends recommending that she had
to leave César Chávez for her health, she transferred out of the school
to a position at the district office.

Into Pollack\'s place stepped Deitra Webb. She had been active in the
PUC when it had an initial meeting in November and had begun sitting in
on EAC meetings during Pollack\'s absence. Unfortunately, Webb had no
better luck than Pollack in developing the EAC into an effective
institution at the school. Indeed, like Pollack, she worked in a
department \-- in her case registration \-- that made hiring a
replacement difficult, and so she found herself working both jobs.

The EAC had some limited success, however, in mobilizing support for
other bodies in the joint relationship. By the second half of the school
year, the PUC had at least begun meeting on a regular basis, and with
the assistance of the EAC it had initiated three training sessions for
all school personnel on Interest-Based Bargaining. Moreover, the PUC
also finally developed de-selection procedures through which a person
could be asked to leave the school or a person could choose on their own
to leave for another school in the district. Toward the end of the
school year, the PUC resolved that department chairs should be selected.
After sometimes heated discussions, it also developed a protocol for
when \"emergencies\" could be declared by the administration so that it
could act quickly on educational policies at the school without going to
the PUC.

Yet, as with the EAC, there were more problems than successes. The IBB
training sessions created a major dispute over whether extra pay would
be available to those attending the sessions. The EAC was charged with
resolving the matter \-- as it was all too often when the PUC could not
resolve an issue \-- and not surprisingly it did not. As a result, no
overtime pay was available, and so support staff for the most part did
not attend the training sessions. In any case, since many of the support
staff themselves had not been convinced to participate in the joint
relationship at the school, they considered such training as
unnecessary.

That lack of participation in the IBB training by CEA members signaled a
larger problem with the PUC \-- a lack of participation. Only 40 to 50
percent of the teacher representatives attended weekly PUC meetings, and
just a few representatives from CEA-affiliated units were present. It
was rare even to find all the administrators at a PUC meeting.

Moreover, the timing of PUC meetings did not encourage attendance.
Rather than using the special time slot on Wednesdays reserved for
personnel meetings at the school, PUC meetings were relegated to the
afternoon when the school day was over. Hence, while those Wednesday
meetings served as a vehicle for the administration to address school
personnel, for staff development, and for department meetings, PUC
meetings occurred outside the regular school day. More than a few PUC
representatives only attended a meeting when that unit\'s specific
concern was to be discussed, and then only for that meeting and that
issue. Moreover, since support staff earned no pay while attending these
after-hours meetings, as a group they were largely absent.

The PUC faced the additional problem that few people at the school
understood how the PUC related to the Professional and Specialty Units.
Few people acknowledged that the PUC was the central forum where
everyone was to discuss programs and issues as they arose. Many of the
programs run by support staff, such as security or maintenance,
functioned on their own and had little or any contact with other units
at the school. Other PUC representatives, regardless of association
affiliation, considered themselves as the decision-makers for their
unit, and so rarely involved the people they represented in the
decisions they made. Consequently, one of the greatest benefits the
joint relationship might have offered \-- opening up communication lines
so that people from different work groups could communicate with each
and develop programs in cooperation with each other \-- was circumvented
from the start.

With such confusion over who had the authority to decide which issues,
the teachers, support staff, and administrators turned to what was
familiar to them: the traditional decision-making authority of the
district school. All three associations had members who wanted clear and
specific guidelines for what was expected of school personnel. With
rules and job definitions in place, every person would understand what
they could do or to whom they needed to turn, and they would do the work
for which they were responsible. As a result, during the school\'s first
year, more and more committees and decision-making routines typical of
district schools appeared at César Chávez. The EAC and PUC became little
more than two additional decision-making groups at the school. Indeed,
for many without any knowledge of the design team, the EAC and PUC was
simply another set of association-related bodies \-- a variation of the
association-related campus committees that existed at other schools (see
Figure 2, above). Few understood that the governing structure envisioned
in the compact was supposed to replace site-based councils and school
improvement teams in a way that made those groups and committees no
longer independent bodies in the school, but essential parts through
their connection to the PUC.

In this traditional school environment, administrators were particularly
discouraged about building a school program based on the work of the
design team. For example, the attempt in October to get a discussion
going among teachers on coring \-- a teaching strategy at the heart of
much of the design team\'s work \-- drew a sharp response by Assistant
Principal John Ewing. He raised fundamental questions that had to be
answered \"satisfactorily before \[the school would be\] embarking on
coring.\" Those questions included: \"Why are we coring? Is it for
student achievement? Is it for student discipline? Is it for
collaboration? What does the research indicate about the above
questions? Define coring? Is it a common group of teachers sharing in
curriculum collaboration or is it (as in South \[Mountain High School\])
2-3 teachers sharing EXACTLY the same rosters?\"

The learning systems group had spent a considerable amount of time on
these questions. It had worked out specific goals in response to some of
these questions and at least a set of ideals to be followed. Ewing\'s
response, however, indicated that the whole idea of coring classrooms
brought more harm to students than benefit. \"South \[Mountain
teachers\] invented coring as they went along, and I observed students
being slotted out of the core because they did not fit a perceived mode.
They called themselves the mongrels when they were not in the classes
their peers were in. Excluding adolescents for any reason is damaging to
their self-esteem.\" Rather than indicating how he could work with his
fellow teachers and support staff to develop their idea, Ewing drew a
line and indicated the conditions that had to be met before he was going
to join this effort. Such a response was completely antithetical to the
cooperative relationship. But, in a traditional school governance
structure, such a response was entirely appropriate. School
administrators had to work with dozens of groups in such an environment
\-- all of whom wanted to affect education policy at the school \-- and
play gatekeeper if the school was to continue functioning.

It was this type of conflict that revealed just how far collaboration
had to go before a joint relationship would truly exist at the school.
The administrators, the teachers, and the support staff did not begin
their first year at César Chávez as partners, and a partnership never
developed over the course of that year.

# The Role of Third Parties

A host of third parties both from within the district and from outside
were brought into César Chávez to help the parties develop the new
relationship. All did excellent work. Yet, the pressure to open the
school, the limited budget, and the lack of trust among the parties
sharply limited the ability of these third parties to get teachers,
support staff, and administrators to focus on questions of school
governance. The link between what these third parties were presenting
and the joint labor-management relationship remained fuzzy at best, and
more than a few participants doubted the neutrality of the third parties
as a result.

## The role of internal consultants

In 1996 Doug Kilgore became the UniServ director for the district. As a
UniServ director, his job was to provide access to training, to advise
and develop strategies for contract negotiations and grievance handling,
to handle grievances as the union representative, to assist bargaining
teams during negotiations, and to encourage support of public education
in the state. The position of UniServ directors had arisen nearly three
decades earlier when school administrators had broken away from the NEA
to form their own association. At that time, school administrators had
provided many of the support services within the NEA, but as the
association increasingly turned to labor-management issues,
administrators grew uncomfortable remaining within the ranks of the NEA.
UniServ directors were to fill the resulting gap in the administration
of the organization.

Kilgore played a key role in introducing and developing Interest-Based
Bargaining in Phoenix Union. He facilitated a four-day training session
and then continued on as a representative on the President\'s Council to
offer advice and suggestions about how the IBB techniques could be
expanded to address new problems and issues in the district. Indeed, it
was Kilgore who first saw the natural extension of IBB into a more
developed relationship among the parties based on joint management of a
school. He worked with association leaders to develop the proposal for
the new school and conducted a series of study groups for association
leaders and staff from the Superintendent\'s office on what a new joint
relationship might entail. Participants in these study groups could ask
questions to each other and begin addressing how a joint relationship
might operate at the new high school.

The trip to Saturn was the culmination of these efforts. There the
participants involved could see first hand what Kilgore had been trying
to communicate to them and understand what kind of results were possible
once a cooperative relationship at the school had been established.

Kilgore continued to play a role in the project even after it was fully
underway. As discussed below, he served as a facilitator for the design
team and continued to advise the Presidents\' Council as events
regarding César Chávez took place. He was also one of the key authors of
the grant applications for developing the involvement of the community
in the school.

As perhaps the most knowledgeable person on joint labor-management
relations in Phoenix Union, he also spent a great deal of effort working
with people personally answering their questions and attempting to solve
any problems. These attempts to nurture the joint relationship along,
however, were handicapped by his connection to two of the major players
in the process, the AEA-affiliated teachers and support staff
associations. For the other parties in the process, Kilgore was seen
less as a neutral problem-solver having everyone\'s best interest at
heart and more as an agent of the AEA seeking to expand its influence in
district decision-making. As a result, the more effort Kilgore expended
on trying to get the parties to work together, the more he was seen as
pushing the cause of the AEA and not the district.

To his credit, Kilgore understood the baggage he was carrying and did
not take center-stage in developing the joint relationship. Instead, he
worked behind the scenes attempting to allay fears and putting out brush
fires before they became too serious. Unfortunately, such work limited
his impact and perhaps even magnified the fears of others about an
AEA-led conspiracy to reformulate the district. Yet, there was little
else he could have done in the circumstances since in his position as
UniServ director he was the chief catalyst for this entire experiment.

## The Role of Outside Consultants

The consultants who played a role in the development of the joint
relationship begin with the workers and managers at Saturn. The initial
trip by a few association and district leaders was very useful for
providing a living example of what Kilgore was proposing and in
encouraging them to support it. At Saturn, attendees sat in on seminars,
toured the facility, and talked with people on the line about the Saturn
experiment. The real push for a joint relationship only occurred after
this trip.

The second trip served a similar function for the design team. Many
members explained that they were unsure of themselves and their tasks
before their trip to Saturn, and that afterwards they approached their
work with newfound purpose and energy. Still, that inspiration had its
limits. While Saturn may have behaved differently from other car
companies, it was still at heart a car company with managers still
managing what happened and workers still working the line putting cars
together. The design team members who visited the company did not have
an immediate grasp on how to translate the ideas developed at Saturn for
a production line to the craft-like work that went on in a school. A
sense of ownership among autoworkers may have been a good thing for
them, but it was not clear that teachers wanted a similar sense of
ownership or how they would get that sense of ownership, let alone the
janitors and security personnel within the support staff. So, while the
visit inspired several design team members, it did little to explain how
a joint relationship specifically changed school operations. The design
team was still largely on its own in working out those issues, and
because of the pressure to open the school, the limited authority of the
design team members, and the lack of guidance from the compact they
never worked out the dynamics of the joint labor-management
relationship.

Bluestone\'s visit to the district, likewise, did not provide the
specific guidance the design team needed. What that visit did
accomplish, however, was to assuage fears about whether a joint
relationship might become a vehicle for getting rid of the associations.
At the very early stages in the process, the parties were still figuring
out what they were undertaking. He outlined the general parameters of
what a joint relationship could and could not accomplish, giving the
parties for the first time some general ideas about what they could
achieve when working together.

Other consultants did not provide as much assistance. Robert Fritz, an
organizational consultant, and Jack O\'Toole, one of the original
participants in the development of Saturn, were criticized by
representatives from all the associations. Fritz, some of the
participants found, presented information that the group found difficult
to translate into something useful relative to the opening of the
school. The \"tensions\" Fritz identified came with a complicated
methodology for resolving them, a methodology completely separate from
their prior work as educators or the current training undertaken as part
of the joint relationship. Connections existed between the model Fritz
was developing and the joint relationship began at César Chávez, but it
was up to the parties themselves to make the connection. Fritz did not
connect the dots for them, and too many had too much work and too little
authority to take time out and make those connections on their own.
Moreover, his arrival after the design team had dissolved, when tensions
between members of the associations were starting to boil up into the
open, and just a few weeks before the school was to open, sharply
limited who could follow-up on his work.

Fritz\'s input suffered from the same problem that had plagued the work
of the design team: a focus on educational improvement and not on the
actual mechanics of the joint relationship. What the design team and
then Fritz had developed were completely workable plans, but the impetus
for working on those plans had not been well-developed. Because the
parties from the start had developed a sense of mistrust, they never
realized how little work they had done together. Here, the volunteer
nature of much of the work made it difficult for participants to take
time out and reflect on what was happening. They just did not have the
time and resources to afford what many considered the luxury of
self-reflection. Hence, obvious problems of trust in the
labor-management relationship had gone unchecked for too long within the
design team.[^8]

Those trust problems sank O\'Toole, the fourth outside consultant who
worked on César Chávez. He worked with the design team during the summer
of 1998, introducing many of the participants to the basic ideas of a
joint relationship. Some from the CEA and CTA saw him as providing some
of the key insights and building blocks for how to get the joint
relationship begun. Unfortunately, others, especially from the AdA but
also more than a few teachers, came away from his presentations
extremely angry, either put off by his gruff, no-nonsense manner or
sensing in him an outright hostility to management. They found him
needlessly antagonistic and unappreciative of the fact that he was no
longer in an automobile factory but in an educational setting with
different issues and decision-making structures.

For his part, O\'Toole himself was frustrated at the inability of
participants to take to heart the principles of a joint relationship he
was putting forth. For him, some of the participants \"did not get it,\"
and his attempts to draw attention to their intransigence only magnified
their hostility to him. McElroy, for example, was convinced that
O\'Toole was carrying out the agenda of the AEA-affiliated associations
without much concern for administrators. O\'Toole\'s discussions with
McElroy did not assuage such fears and even seemed to magnify them.
Understandably, without the ability to communicate with and be trusted
by a key constituency in the process, O\'Toole\'s effectiveness was
sharply limited. His direct participation in the process soon ended, but
he did continue to meet with some of the facilitators of the design
team.

O\'Toole\'s error was that his presentation assumed that all the parties
had already bought into the idea of a joint relationship as Saturn had
developed the concept. But, whereas the people at Saturn had developed a
sense of ownership over those concepts, a similar sense of ownership had
never developed among the members of the school's design team. Their
status as volunteers meant they lacked the resources and authority to
follow-up on their proposals and thus give their ideas a life outside of
the meetings they were attending. Moreover, there remained only a
limited understanding of all that those principles entailed and how
those principles were to be applied in this particular workplace
setting.

## The Role of Facilitation

Several facilitators worked with the design team to assist the parties
in developing their joint relationship, and almost all received high
marks from the participants on their skills at these meetings. Where the
facilitators did not necessarily succeed, however, was in what they were
facilitating. The pressure to open the school on time and all the
commensurate planning associated with that objective received most of
the facilitators\' attention, while the joint relationship \-- the basis
on which the parties were to develop the new school \-- largely
languished. Indeed, work on the joint relationship largely consisted of
Kilgore\'s role in originating the idea of a joint relationship, the two
trips to Saturn, and O\'Toole\'s presentation. The facilitators\' main
responsibility was to keep the drafting of the new school\'s operations
on schedule.

This lack of attention to the joint relationship was not from lack of
knowledge about the problems surrounding it. Even the community
participants on the design team realized that there was a great deal of
mistrust among the members of the three associations. What mainly
prevented the facilitators from dealing with the lack of trust between
the associations was the insistence by all the parties to get the school
opened on time. That pressure to act quickly affected the design team in
several ways.

First, the facilitators\' general unfamiliarity with the
labor-management ideas behind the joint relationship discouraged them
from pushing the issue. Like Kilgore, these facilitators had worked
previously in some capacity in Phoenix Union. Some had even served as
facilitators for other projects in the district. None outside of
Kilgore, however, came with any wealth of expertise in developing new
labor-management cooperation initiatives. As a result, between the two
goals of getting plans for the school completed or developing the joint
relationship, the facilitators focused much of their attention and the
attention of the design team on plans for the new school. Their lack of
knowledge regarding labor relations meant that they did not appreciate
how the joint relationship linked up to the question of how the plans
for the school when finished were to be carried out.

The facilitators\' hands were partially tied, however, by the
expectations of the design team members themselves. Several
administrators believed that while a joint relationship was important
the main objective of all concerned should have simply been to open the
new school in as effective a way as possible. A focus on the
labor-management relationship that existed at the school was secondary,
they felt, to the kind of educational practices developed at the school.
Moreover, administrators were not alone in this criticism of the
facilitators. While the design team was meeting, community
representatives on the design team were at times quite critical of all
the attention being spent on labor-management issues and the lack of
time being spent on what educational reforms would occur at the school.
A few grew frustrated at all the time and expense this issue occupied.
Such an issue should have been a non-issue, they believed.

Members of the design team from the CTA and CEA, on the other hand,
wanted to discuss labor-management relations but not to the point where
such discussion jeopardized plans for the new school. Moreover, their
initial focus was predominately one about how teachers and support staff
could take up traditional managerial functions rather than working with
administrators about governing a school cooperatively. This radically
different perspective from that of administrators and community members
meant that another kind of facilitation was needed than just assisting
the parties in designing the new school: namely, all the parties needed
help in understanding why they needed to join together in a
relationship. To their credit, the facilitators realized this problem.
Unfortunately, the pressure to complete the plans for the school along
with the volunteer character of the design team itself meant the
facilitators could not do much to push the issue.

# Post-mortem: The César Chávez experiment ended

In December 2000, association leaders and Superintendent Diaz concluded
that the experiment at César Chávez was not working out and ended it,
returning the school to the old collective bargaining agreements in the
other high schools within Phoenix Union. With the school only a year and
a half old and only enrolling freshman, sophomores, and juniors, no data
existed about whether the educational climate at César Chávez was
actually any better than what exists at the other high schools in
Phoenix Union.[^9] It was clear, however, that the joint relationship
that existed at the school had not developed into what association and
district leaders had originally hoped.

The governing structure for the joint relationship never blossomed. The
Professional Unit Council did not begin meeting until three months into
the first school year, and these early meetings were noted by the
inability to address, let alone resolve, educational issues at the
school. Even after the PUC started meeting weekly, discussions remained
divided between teachers and support staff on one side and
administrators on another. The debate in November and December 1999 over
the scheduling of honors classes exemplified these battlelines.
Administrators asserted that separate honors classes were demanded by
students and parents and so should be implemented. Teachers and support
staff on the PUC, however, recalled that the design team had discouraged
creating separate honors classes because studies indicated that the
creation of such classes marginalized those students not enrolled in the
honors programs. They advocated that some sort of compromise be adopted.
Administrators, however, felt that there was little time to hold such a
debate because classes for the next school year had to be scheduled
immediately and because the development of separate honors classes
reflected the interests of Hispanic parents at the school -- providing
their children with the same opportunities to which Anglo students in
the suburbs had access.

During the school\'s first year PUC meetings became little more than a
legislative process for determining the appropriate rule in a few
situations. Actual implementation depended on people and decision-makers
outside of PUC and the Professional and Specialty units that constituted
it. [^10] Without the power to actually put anything in practice, PUC
never achieved the status or level of importance beyond other committees
\-- e.g., site committees, departments \-- at the school. Instead of a
PUC meeting being as important as preparing a lesson plan or learning
the basic skills of a job, such meetings were only ancillary to school
personnel. A few individuals in PUC pursued an agenda they believed was
best for the school and sought to convince others to support their
ideas. But their efforts were little more than as a lobbyist working for
desired legislation.

Community involvement at the school, acknowledged by all to be one of
the more difficult tasks, had been as expected slow to develop. A
parents group has formed, but its involvement in school operations was
for the most part quite limited and nothing near what was envisioned
under the joint relationship. Some of the basic committees, such as
Site-based councils, have been staffed, but parental involvement during
job interviews and in working with teachers and staff remained minimal.
Given the school had only been in existence for a year and a half, such
limited involvement was to be expected. But, the idea of a partnership
between school personnel, administrators, and the community \-- the kind
of partnership largely prevalent among charter schools \-- meant that
progress here should have been better than it was.

Finally, the joint relationship failed to transform how the teachers and
support staff understood their work at the school. While many felt
positive about the school and were excited about the possibility for
change after the first year, the idea of a joint relationship remained
unknown or fuzzy to most of the staff. Teachers and support staff
largely pursued their work as they would in a traditional school
environment. Many of the new educational practices at the school were
also being done at other schools that had no joint relationship, and the
decision-making structure at César Chávez still more closely resembled
that of a traditional school.

A survey of teachers and support staff done at the end of the first
school year confirmed these conclusions. Several of those completing the
survey commented that the ability to be involved in school
decision-making was \"a major part\" of why they came to César Chávez.
But, many of those surveyed indicated there were sharp limits to their
involvement. \"I really dislike hearing all the discussion and arguing
that goes on to make a decision,\" one CTA member explained. \"I\'d
rather just know what the final options are and then make a quick
decision or just let someone else make the decision altogether.\" For
the most part, members of all three associations continued to cling to
old beliefs and refused to accept and implement the new ideas that went
with the joint relationship. They liked the general idea of a joint
relationship and expressed interest in the compact, but a true
understanding of the responsibility this placed on them was often
lacking.

Despite all these problems and already bitter feelings by many who had
committed a great deal to the high school only to find themselves having
no voice and no acknowledgement of their effort, there was a
considerable chance for a successful turnaround of the school during its
second year. The new members on the EAC from the teachers and support
staff associations were fully committed to the process, and both lacked
any baggage from past battles. They were deeply concerned about not
upsetting anyone by stepping on institutional toes or sensitive egos and
about including all in their deliberations. Over the summer they
prepared a special training session for all existing and new employees
at the school. They planned three in-service days at the beginning of
the school year featuring team-building exercises and training about
what the essentials of the compact. If some initial programs and support
could take hold at the school so that participants could begin to see
the joint relationship working and finally understand what it meant,
then it might finally succeed in transforming how teachers,
administrators, and support staff worked. Unfortunately, school
administrators, already burned too many times in prior battles, were not
willing to let their guard down and finally embrace this last ditch
effort at making the joint relationship work. Sudden changes in agendas
and schedules sunk the efforts for the summer program and the in-service
training.

![](media/image4.pct){width="0.2361111111111111in"
height="0.2222222222222222in"} The method several administrators
employed for handling disputes also proved detrimental to the joint
relationship. Numerous people on the design team and at César Chávez
spoke about a pattern McElroy exhibited throughout the design team phase
and into the school\'s first years of doing something unilaterally,
profusely apologizing for that action to the teachers and support staff
that he was supposed to work with, promising to never do it again, and
then acting unilaterally again soon thereafter. McElroy was quite
charming during these \"confessions,\" and for the most part the
immediate problem was smoothed over. Such a practice might have been
entirely appropriate and even beneficial when the issues in dispute were
relatively minor to some of the parties involved. Tensions were
minimized, and the parties could get back to work without their
relationship being jeopardized. But, in a joint relationship the issues
more often than not were essential to all the parties involved, and so a
resolution was required if the parties were to continue working
together. Indeed, in a joint relationship confrontation allowed the
parties to understand and deal with the issues separating them. Without
such confrontation, long-term animosities festered, and the mistrust
among the parties only increased.

For this new culture to take hold, incentives to adopt new practices and
ideas had to be institutionalized at the school. Unfortunately, rewards
for adopting the new mechanisms or even for participating in the
governing structure of the joint relationship did not exist. As
volunteers, the members of the design team lacked the authority
necessary to sit down with McElroy and work out a resolution of their
differences. Even though teachers and support staff at the school were
permanent employees, the demands of their current jobs discouraged them
from taking similar action. Indeed, if anything, the joint relationship
that came into being at César Chávez had resulted in nothing more than a
speed-up, according to more than a few participants. They still had all
their traditional responsibilities plus the responsibilities of getting
the joint relationship to work in a schedule that provided little time
for either task. In short, there was no reward for taking up the
increased decision-making authority, yet the parties were expected to
take up added responsibilities. In such a climate, it was quite
understandable that participation was not as forthcoming as association
and district leaders had originally hoped.

For the association leaders and Superintendent Diaz the problems at
César Chávez were especially exasperating. Even though César Chávez
dominated most of the Presidents\' Council meetings, not much could be
done to end the disputes at the school. The very nature of this
experiment had become a turf war with the Presidents\' Council asked to
serve as referee. That was something the Presidents\' Council could not
do if the students were to succeed. Teachers, support staff, and
administrators could only work together on their own initiative, not by
force. When after repeated warnings and entreaties it became clear they
could not work together, the experiment had to end.

# Conclusions

A joint relationship is a new process whereby the parties rely on their
working relationship to resolve issues before them rather then turning
to any document or external source of rules. What the parties at César
Chávez failed to realize was that a joint relationship purposefully
creates ambiguity over how the parties should relate to each other. It
is left to the parties to trust each other and work out solutions
through their combined efforts, developing new, more comprehensive
solutions that neither party by itself could deduce beforehand.

In place of the sharing and cooperation, it appears that most of the
people at the school ended up worried that others were \"plotting\"
against them. Relations between administrators on one side and teachers
and support staff on the other were marred by scars from past battles.
Those scars now prevented the parties from honestly talking to each
other. No one was totally frank with their intentions, as the line
between school administration and school governance had become
impossibly clouded.

It would be a mistake, however, to chalk up the problems at César Chávez
to the efforts of a few people. Yes, some individuals did stand in the
way of getting the joint relationship back on track. But the real
weaknesses in the joint relationship extend back to the mistrust among
design team members, their lack of focus on the joint relationship
itself because of the time pressure they were under, and their lack of
authority as volunteers because the district lacked needed funds and
resources. In other words, before determining whether the right people
were involved in César Chávez, before ascertaining whether the plans for
César Chávez were the best ones available, and even before concluding
that a joint relationship could never work, questions over the funding,
time constraints, and mistrust had to be addressed. Unfortunately, they
never were. No one had the chance to step back and consider just how
serious the issues were and how much was needed to resolve them \-- not
even third parties who found themselves in the same conundrum of
allegations, confusion, and doubt as the participants.

Whether a joint relationship in public education can succeed or not in
the future depends not on the feelings school personnel have towards
each other nor on the structural integrity of the compact nor on any
kind of enforcement of that compact. Rather, the success or failure of
future compacts will depend on whether those in the district and other
school districts throughout the nation realize just how serious the
challenges to traditional public schools are. In Arizona, education is
changing drastically. The schools in Phoenix Union will continue to lose
the wealthier Anglo students to competitors, leaving it with an ever
greater number of students other schools do not want. To reach those
students, new kinds of instructional methods and strategies not even
imagined yet will be needed. Phoenix Union schools will have to do much
more than they are doing now just to maintain their current educational
success, let alone expand those programs so that fewer students are
dropping out and more students are graduating. It is not a question of
whether to try a joint relationship again, but when. For those who will
follow-up on this experiment, they have much to learn about what
happened here.

[^1]: ^^ This case study was funded by a grant from the Federal
    Mediation & Conciliation Service of the United States and completed
    by the Center for Urban & Regional Policy at Northeastern University
    and the Nommos Consulting Group. The purpose of this funding was to
    examine some of the \"best practices\" in private, public, and
    federal sectors which promote conflict management and resolution,
    and the following report reveals how some of those best practices
    evolved at one school, César Chávez High School, within the Phoenix
    Union High School District. The author heartily thanks the teachers,
    support staff, and administrators of César Chávez as well as
    numerous people in the school district and the Arizona Educators\'
    Association who assisted in preparing this case study.

[^2]: There is some confusion over what the teachers\' association is
    called, as various association documents, personnel, and members
    refer to the association as the Classroom Teachers Association,
    Certified Employees Association, or Certified Teachers Association.
    The most common and widely used seems to be Certified Teachers
    Association but the official name is the Classroom Teachers
    Association. That will be the term used here.

[^3]: Unless otherwise noted, general use of the term \"associations\"
    refers to the AdA, CTA, and CEA.

[^4]: When a student transfers to a charter school, money the district
    receives for that student is transferred to the charter school along
    with the student.

[^5]: The AIMS exam \-- as originally conceived \-- was to become a
    graduation requirement for the class of 2002, but public outcry over
    the initial failure rates forced education officials to push back
    the requirement to pass the math portion of the exam to 2004 and to
    relax requirements on the writing portion immediately. In addition,
    consultants hired by those officials recommended pushing back the
    requirement to 2005 and then with only a moderate mathematics
    component (the original math requirement would not be in place until
    2008). The state senate has even entered the contest when in March
    2001 it passed a bill to push back the requirement to pass all
    sections of the exam to 2004. There is also a push to institute a
    dual diploma system for indicating those students who graduated from
    high school and passed the exam, and an effort to put a referendum
    for the exam on the 2002 ballot is underway.

[^6]: Almost everyone in the district refers to Interest-Based
    Negotiations rather than Interest-Based Bargaining. The former term
    will be used here for consistency with the other case studies.

[^7]: The previous iteration of the EAC ended in late May of 1999. Until
    late July the presidents of the AEA-affiliated associations joined
    with McElroy in staffing the EAC. Then, for the start of the school,
    each president appointed a person to be on the EAC for the first
    year. An election for new EAC representatives occurred for the
    school\'s second year.

[^8]: At the end of the first school year (May 2000), Don Lindstrom, an
    associate of Fritz, conducted a day long seminar on what goals the
    school had met from the list developed at the original seminar Fritz
    conducted. At best, participants gave this seminar grudging
    acknowledgement. While the report was quite positive about the
    school, many of the association leaders chalked up such positive
    results to a Hawthorne effect arising from either the newness of the
    school or the attention being paid the school from the associations
    and the district. Almost no one believed the joint relationship had
    been the success they had hoped for, and this follow-up meeting took
    on a cheer-leading kind of tone as Lindstrom had to point out to the
    participants where they had been successful. For those who had
    struggled all year with the joint relationship, particularly school
    administrators and CEA leaders, the meeting was not much more than
    good public relations.

[^9]: AIMS scores for the year 2000, however, reveal that César Chávez
    is not doing well when compared to the other high schools in Phoenix
    Union. In the district as a whole, failure rates among 10th graders
    for the Reading, Writing, and Math portions of the exam were 51, 84,
    and 94% respectively. At César Chávez, failure rates for 260 tenth
    graders were 57, 91, and 97%. At South Mountain, the other high
    school in Southwestern Phoenix, 51, 86, and 97% of 412 10th grade
    students failed the Reading, Writing, and Math portions of the AIMS
    exam respectively. Not only did South Mountain students fare a
    smidgen better on the AIMS exam, but more were willing to take the
    trail exam.

[^10]: During the school\'s second year, many participants acknowledged
    that the PUC was beginning to tackle a few issues related to school
    operations, and it was developing the capacity to resolve those
    issues on its own. Such efforts, however, hardly provided the kind
    of school-wide governing mechanism the PUC was originally supposed
    to be.