A New Initiative – Negotiation Year 1990. The Union and the Board will develop a procedure that will enable six or more teachers to submit and implement a proposal for educational initiatives. For purposes of guidance, the proposal should essentially demonstrate the following: -- There will be no adverse impact on other teachers and students in the home school or district; -- A commitment that the initiative will be consistent with the Board’s and Union’s legal obligations and especially those obligations regarding civil rights guarantees; -- A plan for participative management and governance and professional review; -- How the initiative will be organized to account for the fact that all students should have access to higher-order knowledge and be held to high standards, yet children learn at different rates and in different ways and should not be humiliated or penalized for their efforts at learning; and how an emphasis on both individualized and group learning for students and teams of teachers working together will be employed instead of conventional “tracking” and a “one best method” approach to learning; including how and in what ways parents can become involved in the learning process; -- How students will be workers and not passive recipients of information and how the curriculum will reflect this and the above principles, as well as the multiple instructional and technological strategies - - audio and videotapes, art, music, dance, drama, lecture, computers, etc. - - may be used to achieve these goals; -- How what the best of what is known about learning and teaching will be applied, but also how the initiative will be structured in a collegial way to inquire into that which is unknown or only weakly understood in terms of reaching the students in that school; -- A plan and method of evaluation setting high standards for what students should know and be able to do and how they might be asked to demonstrate mastery in ways that are superior to conventional standardized testing. The conditions for implementing the proposal will include, at a minimum, the following: -- The Union and District No. 111 School Board approval of any initiatives; -- Union and Board agreement with respect to the waiver or suspension of any provision of their collective bargaining agreement which would hinder or prevent the initiative; -- If the proposal involved an entire existing school, there should be consensus among faculty, principal, and parents involved; -- Voluntary participation on the part of teachers, pa...
