Union, School District Agree to Use Seniority to Staff Promise Academies

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) and the School District of Philadelphia have agreed to use seniority to staff Promise Academies like next year.

District spokeswoman Jamilah Fraser said in an email that the PFT and SDP have agreed to withdraw the Promise Academy seniority layoff issue from arbitration.

"Teachers assigned to Promise Academies will be reassigned based on their seniority," she said.

The union sued the district for trying to keep certain Promise Academy teachers from being laid off, regardless of their seniority level. That meant some teachers with more seniority than those at —which are part of the district's Renaissance Schools initiative—received pink slips, while those with less experience did not.

PFT had claimed that the layoff effort violated its contract with the district.

The two sides went through an arbitration process before an agreement was reached.

The consensus will allow a school like Germantown—which will become a Promise Academy in 2011-12—to go forward with hiring teachers. It has .

District spokesman Fernando Gallard said hiring had been on hold while the arbitration process was playing itself out.

"With less than three weeks in which to properly staff schools, many of whose staffs were decimated by layoffs, forced transfers and retirements, the district made the right decision to proceed according to the terms of the contract and move forward to ensure that teachers are in place and ready to teach their students when schools open on Sept. 6," PFT President Jerry Jordan said in a statement.