Leadership magazine May/June 2015 V 44 No 5 | Page 13

menting large-scale initiatives such as the
Common Core State Standards and new
state assessments. Collaboration is particularly important when we are asked to rethink how we structure professional learning, curriculum and instructional materials,
and family engagement activities.
In ABC Unified School District, our labor-management partnership has required
more than just civil communication and
cooperation. Our joint work has focused on
our strategic priority of improving student
achievement.
How did the ABC labor-management
partnership get started and what does it
look like? What structures are in place to
sustain this collaborative model? In 2012,
“The ABC’s of Partnership: Creating a Labor-Management Partnership Focused on
Student Achievement” was published by the
American Federation of Teachers and ABC
Unified, and supported by the AFT Innovation Fund. Ten elements were identified to
help others understand how we achieved the
partnership that exists today in ABCUSD,
and to encourage others to develop their
own unique partnerships in the existing system.

n Element 1: Developing an interest in
partnership
ABC Unified School District comprises
21,000 K-12 students in 30 schools serving
the cities of Artesia, Cerritos and Hawaiian
Gardens as well as parts of Lakewood, Long
Beach and Norwalk. More than 51 percent of
the students are from low-income families,
with 92 percent representing different ethnic groups.
In the case of ABCUSD, the interest in
forming a partnership grew out of an eightday teacher strike in 1993 after reaching an
impasse in contract negotiations. Shortly
after the strike a new superintendent was
hired. The president of ABC Federation of
Teachers worked with the new superintendent to move forward differently, and a new
era of collaboration began to take shape.
Since then, the partnership has been built
upon and sustained through multiple superintendents and different union leadership.
Although I have been involved with the
development of the collaboration since 1999,

I am the third superintendent in ABCUSD
to build on the labor-management partnership.

n Element 2: Getting together and
establishing guidelines
Many of the original features of the partnership remain today, including a weekly
meeting between the superintendent and
teacher’s union president that started 15
years ago. These meetings are largely infor-

• All employees contribute to student success.
• All negotiations support conditions that
sustain successful teaching and student
learning. This is the “main thing.”
• We won’t let each other fail.

Guiding behaviors
The guiding behaviors of the partnership
are as follows:
• We will work hard to understand the

All negotiations support
conditions that sustain