Central Falls High School offers a cautionary tale for California as districts await notification of which 187 failing schools must be restructured.

Late last month, the superintendent of the small Rhode Island district fired all of Central Falls’ 93 staff members – 74 teachers, the principal, counselors and other employees – as the first step toward turning around the low-income, largely Hispanic school. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised Superintendent Frances Gallo’s courage, and President Obama on Monday condoned the mass firings as a necessary last resort. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten called it another example of scapegoating teachers. Author Diane Ravitch called the tactic “mean and punitive” – more evidence of No Child Left Behind gone wild.

What’s clear in this case is that the union and Gallo painted each other in a corner, forcing her to take a drastic step with low odds of helping students at Central Falls. And that’s a scenario that should be avoided in California.

Firing the principal and staff – with the possibility of rehiring no more than half – is one of four options that the Obama administration will permit for the 5,000 schools  designated as the nation’s lowest performing schools. But it’s not the option that Gallo preferred, the Providence Journal reported. She wanted the transformation option, the one that most districts will choose, which permits an extended school day and other structural changes. The other two options – converting to a charter school and closing – didn’t apply, because Rhode Island has a very weak charter law, and Central Falls is the small city’s only high school.

Gallo approached the teachers union in November to talk about changes at the high school, but talks picked up in January, under 45-day timetable ordered by the state education commissioner. Gallo set six conditions – all reasonable – for the staff at Central Falls: adding 25 minutes to the school day, offering before and after school tutoring on a rotating basis, eating lunch with students once a week, agreeing to more rigorous evaluations, holding weekly after-school planning sessions and attending two weeks of professional development in the summer. And she has stated that she offered all of them job security .

After the union balked over pay – she offered to pay for summer training but not much more – Gallo turned to the other option: staff replacement.

Some of the teachers’ reactions – beside predictable anger  and upset– were confusing. They said they already stayed hours after school to help students and that the union had requested a better evaluation process a year ago. But they didn’t want conditions imposed on them. Weingarten called for mediation.

Central Falls is a depressed city with a high unemployment rate. Many of the students are kids of poverty struggling to learn English. They face hardships; their teachers face obstacles to connect with them. But the graduation rate at Central Falls High is 48 percent; the proficiency in math is 7 percent. Those numbers have stagnated for years; they must not be rationalized away.

The turnaround option is disruptive. There are few examples where firing the staff turns around a low-performing school. It’s dispiriting to the school and the community and unfair to committed teachers swept up in the undertow; Gallo will struggle to find qualified teachers by the fall.

But at the same time, an extensive study by the Center on Education Policy (“Improving Low-Performing Schools: Lessons from Five Years of Studying School Restructuring Under No Child Left Behind”) concluded that few schools have been successfully turned around without replacing some of the staff (page 9). Gallo should never have offered job protection to every teacher.

In cases of perpetually failing schools, some changes should be non-negotiable; some terms of the contract should be waived, not mediated. A school needs to be shaken up when  teachers are focused  on lunchtime pay, not the dropout rate.

By John Fensterwald on March 2nd, 2010