The agreement between teachers and management at the North Central Charter Essential School is similar to one that may be found at almost any traditional public school. There is a salary scale with lanes and steps, and stipends for extra duties. Some teachers serve as representatives for the larger group in a "collaborative bargaining process."
Absent from the school's teachers' employee handbook, however, is a clause that gives veteran teachers job protection. "Professional status," more commonly known as tenure, doesn't exist there. Everyone is an employee at will, and a teacher of 10 years can be dismissed as easily as a first-year educator.
"If a teacher is not a fit, we have to be honest about that," said Patricia May, principal of the Fitchburg school. "That's not working for anybody."
Having no union affiliations appears to be working for the area's charter schools. Despite a full-court press from the state's second largest teachers union, charter schools in Central Massachusetts haven't hopped onto the union bandwagon. Statewide, only one charter school has signed up with the American Federation of Teachers in the two years the organization has been approaching charters, which are publicly financed but operate outside of school districts.
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