WEST VALLEY — Principal Tyler Howe sat in a wooden chair next to a projector and a bright blue bulletin in the front corner of a sixth grade classroom late last week.
He watched as the teacher taught her students about antonyms and prefixes. Howe counted how many students were engaged. He checked to see if the teacher was moving around the room. Are the students on task? Are they responding?
After class, Howe sent Martin his report, telling her specifically what she is doing well and what he thinks she can work on.
Every day, Howe spends about 45 minutes observing teachers at Truman Elementary School help them improve and let them know when he sees a problem. In fact the teachers' union at the school helped administrators decide how this system would work. He says the teachers' union and the district get along and work well together.
But teachers' unions have become a hot button issue over the last several months nationally and in Utah. People are blaming teacher unions for bad teachers in the system. They blame them for blocking reform and not supporting alternative pay-scale options.
In Wisconsin, senators went into hiding last month so that teacher unions did not get some of their rights taken away by the state. Thousands have protested the possibility of union rights being taken away, with teachers even boycotting schools to protest.
In Ohio, leaders are questioning whether it is right to require teachers to pay union dues, and public union members have voiced their disagreement with New Jersey's governor's plan to abolish teacher tenure.
In Utah, the Utah Education Association (UEA), the state's largest teachers' union, is concerned with several education bills being discussed, including ones on merit-based pay, not being paid for association leave and on firing teachers.
UEA president Sharon Gallagher-Fishbaugh said UEA's main goal is to create a great public education system for every child while it seems politicians are just trying to get back at her association for being politically involved.
"We have become the scapegoat," she said. "We are being blamed for a situation we did not create."
UEA and its national affiliate the NEA have given more money and support to Democrat candidates and issues in the past. In 2010, the UEA gave $58,300 to Democrats and just $8,500 to Republicans, according to the National Association on Money in State Politics. Gallagher-Fishbaugh said the association supports those who support and vote for public education.
But because unions like the National Education Association has 3.2 million members, some groups believe the association has become too powerful and has helped create a system that is resistant to reform.
Teachers' Unions Exposed says on its website that America is trailing other nations in performance, students are not being prepared for college and graduation rates are "shamefully low."
Spokeswoman Sarah Longwell said teachers unions keep too tight a grip on school boards and seem to be protecting the wrong things.
"We believe that teachers' unions are constantly fighting to keep the status quo," Longwell said. "They have pushed through a number of policies which have helped to cripple our education system."
Longwell said one of the main things is how hard it is to fire bad teachers. Her group even did a contest a couple years ago to find the worst union-protected teachers in the nation and found some teachers who had committed sexual acts with students were still teaching and other teachers with criminal backgrounds.
Even NEA vice-president Lilly Eskelsen said New York is working on streamlining its termination policy because it perhaps has become too complicated.
In Utah, .07 percent of career teachers (or teachers who have been teaching in the same district for over three years) were fired in the 2008-2009 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And fewer than 1 percent of probationary teachers were fired. In Utah, teachers who have been teaching for less than three years can be fired at will. To fire a teacher who has been teaching longer than this, administrators must go through a process that includes consulting with the teacher, providing warnings and trying to help the teacher rectify the situation.
Last year, the Salt Lake School District fired eight of its 1,346 teachers. Alpine fired 24 of 3,300. And Canyons fired 17 of 1,250. Of those fired, just eight were career teachers.
But districts say many teachers who start going through the process of being fired end up retiring early as the final decision becomes apparent.
Howard Stephenson, R-Draper who has introduced many education bills this session, said he has spoken with principals, though he would not name any, who have gone through the process of firing a teacher and say they will never go through the process again because it was so difficult, emotional and time-consuming. He said by next year's legislative session, he plans to identify the lowest 5 percent of performing teachers and revoke their career status.
Other times, Cal Udy, the labor relations representative for the American Federation of Teachers-Utah, said principals end up shuffling bad teachers from one school to another instead of going through the process of firing them.
"I agree that if we have a bad teacher, we need to get rid of them," Udy said. "That's why we have orderly termination. There is a process to terminate a teacher and it's up to the administrator to do that. Instead they force the teacher out to a different school or different school district. I hate it. If a teacher is not doing their job, the principal needs to do something about it. Teaching kids should be their No. 1 priority."
He said the people who are pointing fingers at the teachers' unions don't understand the system, adding that ATF-Utah is more conservative than other state unions because the members are more conservative.
Granite District officials said the Granite Education Association, the local chapter of the national NEA union, sometimes helps these teachers who are not performing well decide to resign.
"I think it is very important to have a teacher association," said Mike Fraser, Granite's assistant superintendent over school accountability. "It provides a level of trust amongst your teachers that they have someone representing them. We have had great success."
All five school districts contacted for this story said they have great relationships with their teacher unions. Some like Alpine say, of course, the two "don't always see eye-to-eye," but they understand the importance of each other's role and work well together.
Carol Lear, the State School Board's director of school law, believes teachers' unions are perhaps not as powerful in Utah as in other, more industrialized states. She has talked with attorneys from other states who seem to have more of a contentious relationship with unions. Her relationship with UEA is about 80 percent positive, she said.
"I think they serve a valuable purpose," Lear said. "Teachers are not by their nature aggressive or adversarial so sometimes it helps to have someone be an advocate."
Yet Stephenson says when he has talked with school board members, it seems they are afraid that unions will influence their reelection, so they play nice and give them more power than perhaps they like to say.
"I think it will take a significant change to local school boards to overcome the traditional headlock that unions have on school boards, and we are seeing more and more of that," Stephenson said.
Utah also does not require its teachers to be a member of a union, yet more than 75 percent of Utah educators are still part of one. Some say they are pressured to join, others say it helps them feel like someone has their back and can explain to them different issues going on in the state.
DeLaina Tonks, who now teaches at Open High School, said she used to be a public teacher in Ohio and was forced to pay union dues. She said once she moved back to Utah she chose not to be part of the union because of the politics. She instead became part of the Association of American Educators, the largest national nonunion professional teachers association. She compared the organization to the American Medical Association and said AAE does not take on political issues or help decide individual members pay as a whole, but it still offers her liability insurance and professional development opportunities.
Tonks said when she was going to school in Utah as a child she remembers seeing bad teachers in the system and she said working in Ohio, she also was exposed to teachers who would no longer work hard once they got tenure.
Toni Martin, 6th grade teacher at Truman Elementary, who has been an educator for over 25 years, said for most of the time she has been a member of the local teachers' union. She said just recently she has gotten more involved and is currently the representative at her school. She enjoys knowing how certain legislation will affect her at the school level and to have teachers just like her telling her what is going on and representing her.
"Legislators sometimes put bills out and they have no idea how it is going to affect my classroom," she said.
Martin is now her school's GEA representative and actually recruits for the school. She said the reason many probationary teachers are not joining is because of the dues, which cost $50 a month.
Martin said even though she has career status, she in no way feels like she could never be fired. In fact, with the current hostile feeling toward teachers, she said she feels she has to work harder than ever before.
"I feel like if I don't do my job, I am able to be fired," Martin said. "I think the atmosphere for teachers is very hostile. If we didn't have teachers' unions, I feel like the situation we are in now would be worse."
e-mail: slenz@desnews.com