I typed these notes from the tape at TURN

Teacher Ownership and Teacher Unions Two Discussions Joe Graba - a regular attendee at meetings of the Teacher Union Reform Network for the last several years – had suggested to the co-chair, Adam Urbanski, a session about teachers forming and running schools through partnerships they collectively own. And, getting in teachers actually working in this model. Urbanski and TURN Co-Director Bruce Dickinson agreed. Graba briefly presented the idea at the fall 2002 meeting, and distributed copies of Teachers As Owners which describes the idea. For the discussion in Seattle Graba was accompanied by Cris Parr, a teacher involved with a school set up on this model in Milwaukee and by John Parr, her father and a long-time AFSCME official in Milwaukee, who had helped in establishing the school. Below are notes first of the discussion at the TURN meeting February 7, 2003 and, second – as an Addendum – notes of a follow-up interview with Cris and John Parr that was more specific to the organization and operation of the I.D.E.A.L. cooperative itself. ooo Graba: The idea of teacher-ownership had been discussed in Minnesota since the mid-1980s. The first school to form on this model was the Minnesota New Country School in 1994. Teachers – several of them from the local high school – set up a new secondary school built on the idea of project-based learning, and run through what is technically a workers’ cooperative. The cooperative – EdVisions ...