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Ex-LA teacher union head to launch charter school - Business on Astini News

& & The former president of the teachers union in the nation's second largest school district is moving on to a new job that might surprise many: He is launching a charter school organization after often criticizing such schools in his previous role.&

A.J. Duffy, 67, who headed United Teachers Los Angeles for six years before he was termed out in June, said Thursday he will be executive director of the newly formed Apple Charter Academy Public Schools.

If approved by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the schools are planned to open next year, possibly as soon as February or in September at the latest, with campuses in South Los Angeles, he said.

The model he wants to create will be a radical departure from both traditional and charter schools, promised Duffy. "We want to create a system that's not just good for kids and fair to teachers, but that's revolutionary," he said.

As a union leader, Duffy often spoke against charters, which are independent, publicly funded schools that largely employ non-unionized workforces. He had criticized them for siphoning off union membership, as well as cherry-picking pupils, typically enrolling low numbers of special-needs children and English-language learners.

But he also advocated giving traditional-school teachers the freedom from bureaucracy that their charter school counterparts enjoy, and has pushed new models of running schools that give teachers more decision-making power.

As part of his Apple model, which calls for a unionized teaching staff, Duffy wants to create new systems for granting tenure and firing teachers, both subjects that he staunchly fought against changing as union president.

Under his tenure model, teachers would undergo a three-year probationary period, with a review by the principal and an experienced mentor or "master teacher" after two years that would enable them to continue on to the third year or be let go.

After the third year, they would earn tenure for two years, after which they would have to be recertified. After each tenure period, they would earn an additional year of tenure before undergoing the next recertification.

Teacher dismissal would be decided by binding arbitration within a 10 to 20-day period after the principal and master teacher agree the teacher should be fired. Under the current system, firing a teacher can take years.

Although his position on both issues appears to contradict what he advocated as UTLA president, Duffy noted that in a large, bureaucratic-heavy district such as Los Angeles Unified, "it continues to be necessary for teachers to be overly protected, but I have always said that UTLA would be willing to give up certain traditional protections if they got in return academic autonomy."

Duffy is being joined in the new venture by a host of charter school veterans, including Caprice Young, former president of the California Charter Schools Association, who is a board member.

Young noted that as union president, Duffy and she "agreed to disagree on just about 100 percent of everything," but added his ideas for reform convinced her to sign on to the Apple project.

Apple is designed to fill the void left by this summer's abrupt closure of Crescendo Schools, which operated six charter schools serving 1,300 pupils, after a cheating scandal on state tests.

Apple plans to employ former Crescendo teachers and enroll former students.

Duffy said he's as surprised as others at his new venture, which was first reported in the Los Angeles Times.

"The idea of me running a charter school never entered the picture," he said.

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Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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