Third-grade instructor Aurore Soliman, a French nationwide, has taught in lecture rooms world wide. In France and in Norway, she was employed and mechanically benefitted from pay scales and office situations negotiated by lecturers unions.

Now, in New Orleans, she’s preventing for one.

In January, educators at Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans filed union papers with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and requested the constitution college’s board to voluntarily acknowledge them. The union of “educateurs” are demanding “higher working situations, a more healthy work-life stability, and improved communication with administration.”

Up to now, the nascent union has not acquired the voluntary recognition they sought. Quickly, the NLRB is anticipated to step in and, after listening to from each the administration and the union, set an election date. Lecturers hope it’s inside a number of weeks, earlier than the top of the college yr. 

From the executive facet, Lycée CEO Chase McLaurin has been vital of the union motion. “We usually see interjection of a union between administration and workers as complicating efforts at communication,” he wrote in response to questions from The Lens.

It appears hypocritical, lecturers say, for Lycée directors to oppose a union after years of claiming, usually and in nice element, how the college embraces French tradition.  

In France, nearly all staff are coated by some form of collectively bargained contract. And unions are a distinguished a part of French tradition. “If hanging had been an Olympic sport, France can be world champions,” wrote The Native France, a web-based newspaper. 

Just a few months in the past, in February, lecturers throughout France walked out of faculties, to demand extra schooling funding and higher working situations, and to criticize adjustments from the nation’s new schooling minister. 

However 5,000 miles away on this French-accredited constitution college sited in New Orleans, a Francophone metropolis, the lecturers union is preventing for its existence.

The college’s three campuses, which span from pre-k to grade 12, ship a novel, specialised educational expertise. Lycée Français meets each the rigorous nationwide requirements of the French schooling system and Louisiana state curriculum necessities. And since it’s a Kind 2 constitution college, it may well enroll college students from wherever in Louisiana. It has lengthy loved robust assist from the state Division of Training and the French consul.

Those that are working to kind a union say that they’ve labored onerous for years to positively form Lycée. They imagine that their efforts to unionize may even profit kids. “A faculty the place lecturers really feel unheard, overworked, and overstressed shouldn’t be an setting conducive to scholar success and studying,” mentioned Sam Fick, who teaches pre-kindergarten and has been at Lycée for 12 years. “The working situations of lecturers (creates) the educational setting for college kids.”

A Historical past of Turmoil

Shortly after the union offered its petition in January, CEO Chase McLaurin despatched an electronic mail to all workers with the topic: “Union FAQs.”

In it, he posed a number of questions. “Do we want a union to offer us due course of?”

“After all not,” he wrote, earlier than providing a prolonged rationalization of his view.

McLaurin now heads up the college of roughly 1,000 college students. However in 2011, Lycée began small. Lengthy-dedicated lecturers and fogeys stored a gentle hand on the college, to usher it via some rocky inaugural years. 

In these early days, mother and father who volunteered as board members weren’t well-versed in public information or open conferences legal guidelines, which isn’t unusual for a nascent constitution college. However board instability and management turmoil rattled mother and father and lecturers. State Superintendent John White paid a go to to the college, urging French nationwide lecturers to stay with Lycée because it navigated administrative turnover and a full board turnover, ordered by White himself. 

At White’s path, the college underwent a large overhaul, reseating your entire board, conducting an extended and tenuous seek for a brand new chief, and reestablishing belief with mother and father who’d endured months of intense board conferences. 

Past the classroom, mother or father Amy George Hirons believes that the college suffers from persistent administrative challenges. “For 12 years this college’s biggest flaw has been a scarcity of communication,” she mentioned.

A part of that poor communication is petty therapy of lecturers, mentioned mother or father Barbara Penn Provo. In some methods, the college is run like a dictatorship, she says, recalling how a instructor was written up for leaving a gathering at 5:15 p.m., though the assembly was supposed to finish at 5 p.m. on a workshop day, when no college students had been in class. Additionally, she mentioned, some French nationwide lecturers are arbitrarily not being provided contract extensions. 

So Penn Provo respects the lecturers’ resolution to work towards a union. 

“In the beginning, lecturers wouldn’t wish to have a union if there wasn’t a cause to have one,” she mentioned. If the college doesn’t tackle the problems which have led lecturers to the union drive, lecturers received’t wish to work there, she asserts. “They discuss to one another. All of the lecturers know what’s occurring at Lycee.” 

Final college yr, Penn Provo’s daughter Phoenix was one of many college students who protested outdoors the college after the firing of a beloved instructor. Their misgivings concerning the college’s administration had been so grave that her mother and father determined to enroll her in a brand new college this yr, a transfer that left her with out the power to earn the French baccalaureate diploma she would have earned at Lycée. However with all of the uncertainty, they frightened that diploma may not have even been an possibility at Lycée on the finish of her 4 years.

From throughout the workers too, there’s robust criticism. The dysfunctional administration has created excessive charges of pointless turnover, mentioned Berenguer Becat, a French nationwide who has taught high-school historical past for 4 years at Lycée. For years now, he has seen lecturers go away as a result of they don’t have sufficient time to organize for lessons and since directors micromanage workers, in a means that’s not good for college kids or lecturers, he mentioned.

“It’s managing by stress,” mentioned Becat, who mentioned that his finish aim is “job safety and higher working situations.” 

McLaurin, who stepped into the function of CEO at Lycée in July 2022, has been criticized for his lack of presence on the college, his controversial firing of a beloved instructor final yr, and interference with the scholar council as a part of that fallout – or so households contend.

It’s not at all times been clear if McLaurin is talking as a person when he criticizes the union or if he’s reflecting a bigger board perspective. However the board and its lawyer deflected inquiries to him in a means that would appear to point that they share his view. Requested if the board supported the union, Lycée board president Cassandra Sanchez referred The Lens to the college’s administration. Lycée lawyer Brooke Duncan additionally referred The Lens to administration. 

From a scuttled union to rising numbers. 

Earlier than Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans faculties had been nearly solely unionized. However after the storm, the union was finally destroyed by the state takeover and dismantling of the New Orleans Public Colleges. 

For a number of years after Katrina, there was not a lot of a union presence in metropolis faculties. United Lecturers of New Orleans has slowly made inroads, and now Lycée educators can look to a number of different native unions for steering.

The primary constitution college to unionize within the metropolis was Morris Jeff Group College. There, in 2013, the constitution’s board voted to voluntarily acknowledge the Morris Jeff United Educators. The group is now on its third collective-bargaining settlement. One yr later, a prime public highschool within the state, Benjamin Franklin Excessive College additionally voted to voluntarily acknowledge its lecturers’ union.

Different unions, nevertheless, have been met with staunch opposition. At Worldwide Excessive College of New Orleans, the board has refused to take a seat down for negotiations for years. At The Willow College, previously often called Lusher Constitution College, board members coordinated behind closed doorways and through electronic mail, stifling public enter — and the lecturers’ union vote finally failed.

As evidenced by further union complaints filed towards McLaurin, voluntary recognition at Lycée appears unlikely.

McLaurin styled himself as a protector of the college setting. 

“Will our Lycée Français tradition change if UTNO (United Lecturers of New Orleans) will get into our faculty?” he requested in his electronic mail questioning the necessity for a union. In his thoughts, apparently, the reply is sure.

“Collective bargaining is by its nature contentious — it’s a authorized course of, and leads to a doc which hamstrings each lecturers and an administration from working collectively as wanted to handle issues and benefit from alternatives,” he wrote, then continued his critique. “In a union college, every thing must be “negotiated” — folks can’t simply sit down and have a dialogue to determine an issue or provide you with a typical sense options with particular person workers. Does that sound like a tradition through which you want to work?”

McLaurin closed his electronic mail message noting that it was the start of a day by day electronic mail marketing campaign he’ll be sending in session with “consultants.”

There have been no additional public messages from McLaurin, maybe as a result of there have been contentions that his message — “that deciding on a union can be futile” — may violate the Nationwide Labor Relations Act, which particularly requires employers to chorus from sure “unfair labor practices,” and protects workers’ rights to unionize.

Mother and father see French nationwide lecturers as important to Lycée Français.

When requested about Lycée Français, mother and father usually say that French nationwide lecturers are the lifeblood of their childrens’ expertise on the French college. 

Many Lycée educators arrive via a state alternate program, with educating visas to work on the college for one to a few years. The Council for the Improvement of French in Louisiana, known as CODOFIL, mentioned Lycée presently employs 25 lecturers who’ve taught between 1 and 5 years via this system. That common turnover means the college’s educating workers might not have the identical institutional reminiscence as different faculties, who usually have a core of longstanding workers. 

That will make a union much more mandatory, to take care of consistency, mentioned mother or father Amy George Hirons, who thinks a union is vital to make sure touring French lecturers have protections within the college and a voice. 

George Hirons helps the union as a result of she sees the visiting lecturers because the spine of the “world-class schooling” that her son Armor, now a junior, has acquired at Lycée since kindergarten.

After the January announcement, McLaurin’s administration questioned the eligibility of French nationwide lecturers to hitch with their American colleagues in a union. In query are the lecturers supplied by CODOFIL, the state company that recruits and locations worldwide lecturers. A lot of CODOFIL’s placements at Lycée are from France, whereas others are French audio system from nations resembling Belgium, Haiti, Canada, Mali, Morocco, Ivory Coast and Benin.

Some lecturers fear Lycée will argue that CODOFIL lecturers aren’t college workers, as a result of they’re assigned to the college, and due to this fact can’t be included with lecturers within the unit. Union advocates argue that the lecturers’ placement doesn’t disqualify them as workers, who ought to be outlined by working hours, locations, duties and different issues, all of that are set or supplied by the college. In the end, it’s a matter that the Nationwide Labor Relations Board will determine. 

The insinuation that French nationals wouldn’t be eligible is irritating to Soliman. “I really feel like I’m again in Nineteenth-century France, when folks had been making an attempt to get a union to fend for themselves,” she mentioned, as she left the college one afternoon to catch the streetcar and bus residence, toting alongside her son who’s in kindergarten at Lycée. Her causes for supporting the union are sensible, she mentioned. She needs to “really feel extra protected and have a greater stability, in life and work.”

Be aware: The day after this story printed, the Nationwide Labor Relations Board introduced that the union election for Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans might be held Could 13. Lecturers, together with overseas nationals engaged on visas, are included within the unit and eligible to vote.

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