Those tireless tenders of civic virtue at the League of Women Voters sponsored a forum Thursday night on an issue that some see as central to spreading the achievement record in Minneapolis schools more evenly around the city.

That’s how teachers are placed in Minneapolis schools. It’s a power that the brain trust at 807 Broadway St. NE enjoyed until ceding it to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers in the 1971 contract. Now the board appears to want it back. But its track record over the last several rounds of negotiations suggests that’s a goal as elusive a goal as regaining virginity.

The outcome may decide whether the relative haves among city schools get to keep more than their share of veteran teachers while the relative have-nots don’t. And it can determine whether specialized programs at schools get teachers versed in what they’re trying to do.

How the system works:

Here’s the role played by seniority in filling teaching vacancies in Minneapolis public schools, as spelled out in the labor agreement:

At the school level, when a position is cut, the most junior teacher holding a license in the relevant area (math, for example) is "excessed," unless a more senior teacher volunteers. Some teachers also seek to change schools voluntarily.

The district also determines how many jobs it will have in the next school year, and sends layoff notices in reverse order of seniority. Laid-off teachers cannot bid for positions.

Excessed teachers who haven't been laid off and those seeking voluntary transfers must sign up for interviews for positions for which they hold proper licenses. The most senior teachers are interviewed first. After the interview, teachers seeking voluntary transfers must get the principal's signature to bid for the job. That signature can be withheld for valid educational reasons.

Excessed teachers may bid without signatures in the area from which they were working; they need a signature to bid in another area for which they are licensed. There are two main rounds of bidding to be finished by June 30. In those sessions, teachers are called in order of seniority to bid for positions for which they are properly licensed. Once a teacher bids, the position is considered filled.

Later in the summer, excessed teachers who haven't found positions may be placed by a labor-management committee. Once school starts, positions still vacant are filled in order of seniority by excessed teachers.

The panel:

Louise Sundin was the lone voice defending seniority-based decisions on filling school vacancies. That’s not how it was supposed to be. Rob Panning-Miller, the teacher who ousted Sundin as federation president last spring, and fellow union executive board member Brionna Harder had committed to represent the union viewpoint. But they backed out, league organizers say, because they decided that talking about their views represented a conflict with the newly started round of bargaining. That apparently didn’t occur to them earlier, although we’re not sure since Panning-Miller didn’t return a call.

Nevertheless, the ballsy Sundin seemed no more ill at ease in presenting the union’s viewpoint before a largely skeptical crowd, than she did in moving the union in a new direction after her election in 1984. Leading a union board dominated by World War II vets with an industrial-unionism outlook, she steered it toward issues of teacher professionalism.

Also on the panel was Joan Franks, who in her 26th year with the district heads the Principals Forum, the union representing principals. She’s also the principal at Armatage elementary. In this discussion, she represented a management viewpoint.

Also participating from a principal perspective were Roger Aronson, the lawyer who serves as negotiator for the Forum and represents statewide principal trade groups, and Carol Markham- Cousins. She was a principal in Minneapolis for one year and is in her fourth year as a St. Paul principal at Adams, a Spanish-immersion school.

Rounding out the group was the moderator, Catherine Shreves, a onetime chair of the Minneapolis school board. She said that the league’s interest in the topic of teacher placement stemmed somewhat from the frustration some of its members felt from serving on teacher-parent teams that help principals to interview teachers for openings.

The school board and its top administrators weren’t directly represented in the discussion, although several participants were in synch with the board’s apparent goals on changing seniority in filling vacancies. We say apparently because despite the board’s professed desire for some changes, and professed desire for transparency in its deliberations, it hasn’t spelled out exactly what changes it wants, and what tools it would employ to achieve them. There were three silent board members attending, along with at least two people who plan to seek board seats.

The debate:

The discussion was supposed to focus on teachers placement, and whether that system needs fixing. By implication, that means addressing whether it’s a higher priority to meet the teacher’s need to find a job that’s a good fit professionally, or to meet the school’s desire to find someone that fits the school’s needs. But that focus didn’t stop the discussion from wandering into several cul-de-sacs, such as whether both principals and teachers need more job reviews, layoff-induced minority teacher losses and how teachers win tenure.

The conversation kept shifting between two different aspects of seniority. One is the right to a job that a teacher gains after spending three years on the job and completing a roster of tasks demonstrating professional competencies. Unlike collegiate tenure, that’s not a grant of freedom to teach subject matter however the teacher sees fit. But what it does mean under state law is that when budgets get tight, or there aren’t enough students, the most recently tenured teachers within a license area are the first fired. The district and union won the power to negotiate exceptions to that law but so far have agreed only on limited changes that have been temporarily in nature.

That’s different from determining who gets first claim at openings. That's strictly a contract issue, and the league says that Minneapolis is unlike no other district in the state when it comes to giving teachers the right to bid by seniority on openings.

The downside to that was described by Franks. “The reality is that we get to interview 10 of the most senior people for the position and don’t get to pick the very best person,” she said. For example, after interviewing the most senior teacher first, a principal must decide whether to sign the permission form needed to bid if that teacher is seeking to move voluntarily or withhold permission, which means specifying a valid educational reason. That decision must be made before the interview committee gets to discover later that the fourth most senior teacher it interviews is the best fit for the job.

“Teachers are not widget workers. They come in a variety of styles, and they work with a variety of students,” she said.

Moreover, the system is inflexible in accommodating the needs of specialized programs like the Montessori program at her school, she said, because that’s not a specialized license area.

Sundin brought an opposite perspective. For teachers, she said, the prime factor is looking for a school where there’s a good fit and good atmosphere that treats the teaching staff with respect. Teachers check out the leadership at a prospective school with their peers. Seniority- based bidding allows teachers with the most experience to use their best judgment about where they’re likely to succeed.

Markham-Cousins suggested that under the interview-and-select system used in St. Paul both sides gain something because the teacher is guaranteed a job at the end of the process but the school gets to pick the most apt teachers.

Franks wants a similar system in Minneapolis. Grant interviews to the 10 most senior teachers with the right license and an interest in an opening, she said. But let the school pick the one who is the best qualified rather than being forced to accept the teacher with the highest seniority number.

Sundin noted that just because a teacher has the highest seniority for bidding on an opening doesn’t mean that she’ll actually end up bidding on that opening. Some may not like the school or principal or interviewers after the 30-minute interview. Sometimes principals put unsubtle pressure on the most senior teacher not to bid.

She also emphasized that the union has been accommodating in meeting the needs of specialized programs. For example, it offered to help with Montessori training for teachers lacking that certification who want to bid into a Montessori school. A bilingual teacher must test competently for the required language.

But the union’s granting of permission to bypass seniority in favor of interview-and-select can be time-limited. For example, at two schools offering recently instituted International Baccalaureate programs at the elementary level, this is the last of three years for which interview-and-select procedures will be allowed. That means that if there’s an opening a year form now, the schools would be required to take the most senior bidder although that teacher would lack the training that other IB teachers at the school accumulated over several years. Do that often enough, and it dilutes the program, some teachers say. Sundin said that the union doesn’t agree with some teachers that their programs are sufficiently unique to need such exemptions.

The union studied some of the issues of deciding who fills vacancies two years ago. Interestingly, a survey that accompanied that effort found that teachers placed a higher value on keeping their staff rosters relatively stable in times of layoffs than they did on seniority.

Sundin spoke for teachers who face an uncertain future when they’re excessed from their buildings, or those who work in buildings with principals who rule by intimidation and hold great power where budgets are handed out each spring over which positions get cut. “I still get those calls” from frightened teachers, she said. “They need to have an opportunity to say where they go in their career,” she said.