(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
In Shakespeare’s Richard III there is a scene where Richard makes an offer to Elizabeth, widow of the former King Edward. Allow me to marry your daughter and you will continue to live a life of royal luxury. If you refuse, you die.
Elizabeth asks Richard “Shall I be tempted by the Devil then?”
Richard replies “Yes, if the Devil tempt you to do good.”
Needless to say, the Devil is not in the business of tempting anyone into doing good. People with far more expertise than I possess will be required to evaluate GreenDot’s own deal with the proverbial devil in the form of a collective bargaining agreement with the United Federation of Teachers. Needless to say, there is a potential for a win-win on both sides here, but as always, the devil is in the details. Here is one devilish detail that I certainly would have refused:
Article 10
Student-Teacher Ratio, Class Size and Teacher Load
The School shall maintain a school-wide staffing ratio of no more than twenty (20) students to one (1) full-time classroom teacher. Unless otherwise approved by the Calendar Committee and ratified by a majority of Bargaining Unit Members and the Board, an individual class may not exceed thirty (30) students. Moreover, there must be a total of no more than one hundred thirty (130) students in all of a teacher’s classes excluding advisory.
Translated: “There shall be an arbitrary and unsupportable cap on the total productivity of any individual teacher imposed on these schools. This cap will have the added benefit to the union of limiting the possibilities for differentiated pay, or attracting and keeping talented teachers in the classroom. Oh and by the way this will happily hamstring any hope of bringing Green Dot to a widespread scale. Thanks for playing sucker– this mole has now been successfully whacked. HURTCHA!!!!”
These standards may very well fit comfortably into GreenDot’s current practices. GreenDot’s current practices, however, are for a niche player and are not at scale. These terms of course could be renegotiated in the future, but good luck changing them once they are in place.
Teacher unions are rational actors. Their rational incentive is to maximize employment for dues paying members. If this happens to mean that we wind up throwing legions of all-to-often-ill-suited-and-ill-prepared-bottom-of-the barrell-students into the teaching profession at great expense and to castastrophic effect, them’s the breaks. Things would be better if we spent (even more) money!
This agreement is almost certainly an improvement over what NYC’s rubber room contract, but that does not mean it will prove to be worthwhile.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Excellent stuff, Matt. And I think you missed your true calling: writing labor contracts.
In Nevada the courts (or was it the AG?) have determined that negotiations with unions on contracts are not open to the public…