Hiring Rule Infuriates ‘Guerrilla’ Moms, Dads Parents Can Raise Money For Everything At Schools But Teachers

Call it the Greenwich Village rule of education equity.

As noisily codified in New York City this month, the rule says that activist middle-class parents - sometimes calling themselves “guerrilla moms” - can raise money to prop up, enrich and improve their children’s public schools. They can lease copy machines, buy football uniforms and fix the roofs.

But they can’t hire teachers.

The rule, which two weeks ago stopped Greenwich Village parents from paying the salary of a fourth-grade teacher whom their children were about to lose, governs virtually all big public school systems across America - with the curious exception of some elementary schools in the District of Columbia.

It’s a “core issue of equity,” declared New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, whose judgment is echoed by public school administrators across the country. They agree that if parents were allowed to pay teachers’ salaries, the whole system of public education would be at risk.

“You just cannot have a system where parents can buy personnel. Staffing decisions have to be made by management in the school,” said Anne Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association, which represents the 15,000 school boards that make policy for 48 million schoolchildren.

In the New York City school system, which has more than 1 million students and about 65,000 teachers, the can’t-hire-a-teacher rule made headlines as the chancellor scrambled to calm a parents’ revolt at Public School 41 in Greenwich Village, a middle-class enclave in lower Manhattan.

The revolt began when fourth-graders came home from school with a note that asked parents to write a check for $360. Written by a group of concerned parents, the note explained that fewer fourth-graders had enrolled at P.S. 41 this year than administrators had expected. So, one teacher was getting the ax. Instead of five classes with 26 students, there would be four classes, each with 32 students.

The note worked wonders. Within four days, the relatively well-educated and well-heeled moms and dads of P.S. 41 had coughed up a total of $46,000, enough to pay a year’s salary and benefits for the fourth-grade teacher facing the ax, Lauren Zangara.

When Crew heard about the money-raising miracle, he nixed it. The chancellor blocked the rehiring of Zangara and ordered a halt to similar schemes across the city.

“The Board of Education needs to establish a policy that ensures that this practice does not adversely affect the opportunity for equity in the teaching of the core curriculum throughout the New York City public schools,” Crew said in a statement.

Angry parents alerted the news media and found that the cause was resonating with hundreds of thousands of New York parents. They refused to back down. They scolded the chancellor in two negotiating sessions and went to court. A New York State Supreme Court justice indicated that she was prepared to issue an injunction that would return the fourth-grade teacher to class.

Politically, the chancellor had no choice but to compromise. The teacher could stay, Crew decided, but the school system would pay her salary and the $46,000 had to be returned to the parents. This week, he backed down again in Queens, agreeing to restore the salary of a second-grade teacher at P.S. 98 whose dismissal had infuriated parents, who had raised money among themselves to pay her salary.

Crew’s compromise has been carefully monitored by school districts across the United States, which generally approved, said Bryant of the National School Boards Association.

“Crew took an action that seemed to squelch parents’ enthusiasm, but the action he took was a correct one. You have to think about what public schools are for. They are about principals and teachers making the best decisions for students,” Bryant said.

Bryant said that she knows of no public school system in the country where the Greenwich Village rule does not hold sway.

There is, however, at least one exception. It’s the District of Columbia, where a school board member says parents can and do hire elementary school teachers.

At Lafayette Elementary School in upper Northwest, for instance, parents pay a total of $119,000 for full-time science and art teachers, as well as to supplement the salary of a nurse so she can stay at the school for 30 hours a week, said Kate Hill, co-president of Lafayette’s Home and School Association.

The association this year asked parents to pay $150 per student, with a family cap of $300. Some 90 percent of the parents contributed last year, Hill said, and any shortfall is made up by other fund-raising activities.

“It is incredibly worth the money and a small price to pay,” Hill said. “But remember it’s a public school. People don’t have to pay. We make appeals to the whole community that this benefits all the kids. And we accept the fact that there are some families for which this is a hardship. We don’t beat people over the head, but we strongly encourage it.”

District school officials would not return repeated telephone calls to explain or clarify the system’s policy on parents hiring full-time teachers. But at-large school board member Jay Silberman said parents can do nearly anything that a principal will allow them to do to enrich a program, including hiring teachers. “There is no rule that I know that would prohibit it,” he said.

Across the greater Washington area, where about 747,000 children attend public schools, no other school system allows parents to pay for teachers for instruction during class hours. The biggest reason cited by school officials is unfairness: Schools with wealthier parents would have an obvious advantage in resources.

“That’s exactly why we guard against it,” said Brad Drager, acting assistant superintendent in Fairfax County, Virginia, the region’s largest school system with 149,800 students.