The Battle to Watch in Buffalo

The real action in Buffalo’s City Hall for the foreseeable future won’t be driven by Mayor Byron Brown or the Common Council. The Board of Education is where it’s at.

A new majority took power at the start of this month, and it is pushing a reform agenda it has already backed with action.

Pamela Brown, the district’s long embattled superintendent, was shown the door and promptly replaced by a well regarded administrator, who has been given a two-year contract to clean up the place. The majority also released a vision statement that, if turned into reality, will vault Buffalo to the vanguard of urban school reform. The six-page statement immediately prompted grumbling from the Buffalo Teachers Federation and holdover members of the board’s deposed majority. That’s to be expected, because it represents the most aggressive blueprint to recast the city’s public schools since they were desegregated in the 1980s.

One can argue the merits of the board’s vision tatement, but few in this town dispute the dire need for reform. The on-time graduation rate hovers around 50 percent in any given year, proficiency levels in elementary school reading and math are in the neighborhood of 10 percent, and the state has declared 44 of 56 schools as failing.

To pay for the system that produces these sorry results, taxpayers will pony up $807 million this fiscal year.In simple terms, the majority’s vision statement advocates: expanding choice, especially for parents whose children attend failing schools; turning control of the district’s most troubled schools over to the state Education Department; and changing labor contracts to control healthcare costs and restore management rights. Probably the key objective is putting more teaching talent in troubled schools that need it the most.

“We need to get effective teaching in front of every child,” said Larry Quinn, perhaps the key player in the new board majority. “That means getting the best teachers in the most difficult schools.”

In Buffalo, as in many districts, that’s a challenge, because of seniority clauses in labor contracts. As a result, veteran teachers gravitate to the better schools, while greener teachers end up in struggling ones.

Another major challenge involves the district’s unusual (although not unheard of) provision of lifetime health insurance to retired teachers and administrators. The district this year will pay more to provide health insurance to retirees than to current employees, and the $73 million tab will chew up nearly 10 percent of the district’s entire budget.

Teachers have been working under an expired contract for 10 years. The status quo has kept a rich healthcare plan in place and provided steady pay raises through a step system that rewards years of service with extra pay. Thus the union has little incentive to bargain, and the district has been inept in trying to strike a better deal.

It’s not just the contract that has to change; it’s the district’s culture, which puts the needs of its employees first. I covered the district in the mid- to late-1990s and came to view it as not a board of education but rather a board of adult employment.

Much of the press coverage of the reform battle to date has focused on Carl Paladino, but Quinn, a friend of the former gubernatorial candidate, is the key player. He has demonstrated an ability to get things done, first as the city’s development commissioner and later as managing partner of the Buffalo Sabres. He is smart and savvy.

The same is true of Donald Ogilvie, who was hired as interim superintendent. He recently retired as district superintendent of one of the suburban BOCES districts, but has been part of an effort to study the district’s troubled schools and develop recommendations. He knows what he is stepping into. I have dealt with him on and off for years and he is a good fit for the task at hand. A great fit, actually.

Jim Heaney is the editor of Investigative Post, a nonprofit investigative reporting center. Don Ogilvie donated $600 to IP between 2012–13.