If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

Back in olden times, when I was in school, there was teacher tenure.

When I heard it discussed, which was seldom, it was in terms of how this was a good thing, because back in the bad old days, teachers were hired and fired at a whim. School board members gave their relatives school jobs or fired former officials’ relatives, and most school jobs were teaching jobs. (We hadn’t heard of support staff, because teachers did the janitor work, and we never saw a secretary in a school until high school).

We thought it made sense for teachers to have job security. Generally speaking, the longer they taught, the better they were at the job.

But there were exceptions, weren’t there? There were some teachers—you can remember a few, can’t you?—who probably were not good at teaching, ever. There were others who seemed to have lost their edge. I remember that PTAs had speakers or panel discussions on the topic of teacher burn-out. There were very senior teachers who seemed to be just going through the motions.

One thing that was said to make a difference in keeping teachers up to the mark was standardized tests. They had those in New York State—the dreaded Regents’ Examinations. But not in Pennsylvania.

My mother had come from New York State, and she used to tell us about the schools she had attended. Her mother had been a school marm until she married; her big sister was another, and when my mother was a young girl her sister Maud was her teacher a year or so, and had to be addressed as Miss Cook, not Maudie, during the school day.

Regents could be make-or-break, back then, and also when I lived in New York State and my kids faced Regents. A teacher who had too many students bombing their Regents year after year might face “performance review.” In some school districts teachers took competency tests. If a teacher did poorly on those tests, he or she might be required to take refresher courses.

I don’t recall when teachers’ unions became a thing. I lived in New York at the time, and it seems to me the unions were being formed in many states. Unionization was a controversial topic among teachers, and much decried by many administrators and boards. It did catch on, though. There were two main unions for teachers, one more militant than the other.

An argument often heard was that by having unions, teachers had lowered themselves from professional status to that of common laborers. Among conservative legislators, school boards and politicians the fear was expressed that unionized teachers would strike.

Some states passed laws forbidding teacher strikes. Public school education must not be held hostage by organized labor! It was all very well for teachers to be allowed to negotiate with school districts on such matters as salaries, benefits and working conditions. But walkouts? Picketing? Work stoppage? How unprofessional!

Then there was an actual strike at Friendship Central School. It was by students! Most of the junior-senior high school walked out. Seems to me it had to do with eliminating some courses and one or two teaching positions.

The administration threatened to discipline the students. At this, teachers walked out too. They and the students milled about on the grounds and the parking lot. I was down there covering the strike for my newspapers, and my kids were carrying signs and chanting, along with the others.

The next day parents had joined in, wearing and waving placards. Bus mechanics and custodians would not cross the picket lines.

The board and administration asked the local police to disperse the crowd. Parents defied them, and the police had no stomach for arresting anyone.

To the best of my recollection it lasted about three days. The teachers and courses were not cut after all.

Without tenure, possibly the teachers could have been fired or disciplined for their part in the insurrection. Without a union they might not have felt empowered to resist the threatened cuts.

Next time I saw a strike was here, when the teachers at the vo-tech walked out after getting nowhere in contract negotiations.

Then some parents got involved. Former teacher and dauntless parent Linda Postlewait organized some parents, I think, and there was a PTSA formed.

The vo-tech students seemed to be in a strange limbo, or a gumbo that was neither fish nor fowl. Whose students were they, the vo-tech consortium’s or their local school district’s?

The next impasse between teachers and board nearly led to a strike and late graduation. A strike headquarters had been set up downtown. Teachers and board were nose to nose, and the board blinked.

A school system can’t risk work stoppages now, what with the time constraints imposed by the rhythm of standardized tests.

Tenure is explained as a due process measure, when teachers and their unions discuss it. It doesn’t mean teachers can’t be fired, they say, only that teachers are entitled to due process, meaning to be informed of causes, to a hearing and to representation.

But some of us, looking at the yearbook pages Lanny Nunn puts on Port Allegany Remember When, see teachers we recall as having been incompetent. We remember encountering one or more abusive teachers, teachers who bullied, yelled, used harsh physical punishment.

In three years of Latin I learned a lot of mythology, but not how to translate Virgil or Cicero—and that was true if Latin students generally in our school, for years. We were taught to fake it, jotting down the translation as the teacher, a superb Latin scholar, “previewed” it for us. Next day we used those recipe card crib notes to pretend to translate.

I learned to translate because I was out of school a few weeks and had to swat it out with the text! Later I challenged the Cicero test to be eligible for the Latin prize. The Latin teacher was doing only part of the job. You can think of other examples.

Tenure and a lack of standardized tests protected that teacher, well before the Port Allegany Education Association was formed. Also protected too well and too long were the bullies and misfits on the faculty. I hope that is not possible now.

Peace.