PROVIDENCE — Starting with six schools in the next academic year, teaching vacancies in Providence will no longer be filled based on seniority, a shift that could have far-reaching implications for every school district in Rhode Island.

In a letter to all staff on Wednesday, Supt. Tom Brady announced that principals, working closely with school-based interview committees that include teachers, will choose which teachers will be assigned to their schools based on a common set of criteria. No longer will seniority be the driving force behind all staffing decisions.

Brady didn’t reach this decision alone.

In early February, Peter McWalters, state commissioner of elementary and secondary education, ordered Brady to begin filling vacancies based on teacher qualifications because, he said, the district wasn’t moving quickly enough to improve student achievement. McWalters made it clear that teachers contract language would not stand in the way of his “corrective-action order” to the school district.

McWalters said a 1997 state law, called Article 31, gives the commissioner broad power to intervene in chronically low-performing districts, as does the federal law known as No Child Left Behind.

Tim Duffy, executive director of the Rhode Island Association of School Committees, said McWalters’ order, coupled with several recent court decisions and the federal law, could have huge implications for school districts around the state.

“This recognizes that student welfare trumps any kind of contract language on seniority,” Duffy said. “I think it’s a good move.”

Brady’s decision, however, may deep-six his efforts to develop a collaborative relationship with the Providence Teachers Union. Steve Smith, president of the 2,000-member union, said he was blindsided by Brady’s announcement and threatened to sue the district:

“He ignored our ideas,” Smith said. “This doesn’t empower teachers. It relies solely on the principal’s authority.”

According to Smith, Brady knew that the union was preparing its own hiring policy, an assertion that Brady denied.

If the union’s recommendations aren’t taken seriously, Smith said, it will have no choice but to file a lawsuit.

Brady denied that this was a unilateral decision, adding that his office and the union met for at least six hours and that his plan incorporated several of the union’s recommendations. In his letter to teachers, Brady said that he appreciates the “uncertainty and angst that may surface as we implement a dramatically different system for hiring and assigning teachers.”

Starting this fall, teacher vacancies in four Providence schools — Hope High School, Veazie Street Elementary School, Lauro Elementary School and Perry Middle School — will be filled based on whether the applicants have the skills needed to serve students in those particular schools. The principals of the district’s two new schools — Nathan Bishop Middle School and the Providence Career and Technical Academy — will have the authority to hire their own teachers. The entire school district will move to this new plan at the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year.

MCWALTERS ORDERED Providence to radically change its assignment policy because he wanted to end a practice called bumping. Under the current seniority rules, when there is a layoff, the most-senior teacher can dislodge someone with less seniority. In a district with 2,000 teachers, bumping can result in wholesale dislocations. In recent years, some smaller high schools have lost a third of their staff due to bumping.

The result is a school system in which large numbers of teachers are constantly in flux, a system in which someone with a lot of seniority winds up teaching a particular class not because the teacher is the best person for the job, but because of the number of years that person has logged in the school system.

Brady emphasized that the new hiring policy is based on mutual consent, which would work like this: A teacher interviews for multiple vacancies. Once all of the interviews are completed, the committee ranks which teachers would be a good match for various openings at their school, while the individual teacher ranks which schools would be acceptable.

“No applicants will be assigned to schools that they have indicated to be unacceptable,” the policy states. “Conversely, no schools will be assigned to applicants that they have indicated to be unacceptable.”

Teachers will also have to submit evidence to support their applications, including three pieces of student work, a record of their professional development, two letters of reference and a cover letter that addresses specific questions developed by the district.

Teachers have the right to appeal their assignment, all the way up to the education commissioner’s office.

lborg@projo.com