PROVIDENCE — State education officials are pushing for changes in state labor law that would financially penalize public school teachers who strike and also make it illegal for them to protest contract disputes by “working to rule.”

“Work-to-rule” is a bargaining weapon unions use in which teachers perform just the bare minimum of their contractual duties, refusing to perform additional tasks such as afterschool tutoring, leading field trips and writing college recommendations.

The state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education voted yesterday to submit the proposed amendments to Governor Carcieri for his support. Regents Patrick Guida, Angus Davis, Robert Camera and Karin Forbes voted in favor; the lone dissenting vote was Colleen Callaghan, director of professional development for a teachers’ union, the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers.

“To me, this feels like a piece of legislation that essentially puts the blame and penalty only on teachers,” said Callaghan. “I think the right to strike should be retained. In most cases, when teachers strike, it is often the only thing that brings everyone back to the negotiating table.”

Carcieri asked Regents Chairman Robert G. Flanders Jr. to study teacher contracts last fall, following a spate of strikes. It was clear Flanders also supports preventing strikes, but as he generally only votes to break a tie, he did not cast a vote.

The board formed a task force that met six times over the past few months, gathering input from dozens of educators and nonprofit organizations, including groups representing school committees, superintendents, principals, teacher unions and business-backed policy groups, such as the Education Partnership.

Amending state law to clearly prohibit strikes is the task force’s first recommendation. If Carcieri supports the plan as expected, he would have to ask lawmakers to submit the bill to the General Assembly for a vote.

Officials at the state Department of Education researched tougher labor laws in Pennsylvania and New York when crafting the amendments, according to Deputy Education Commissioner David V. Abbott. One amendment would force teachers who strike to pay a penalty of two days’ pay into a state school fund for every day on strike. When teachers strike now, they suffer no financial consequences.

The changes also would prohibit strikes and expand the definition to include “any strike or other concerted job action commonly referred to as ‘work to rule’ including, without limitation, any stoppage of work, slowdown or curtailment of one more customary teaching practices that are typically provided or performed by teachers in the absence of a strike.” Superintendents and principals told the task force they consider “work-to-rule” actions more detrimental to students than strikes, as the action can drag on for years, as it did in Warwick. West Warwick, Tiverton and East Greenwich have also recently experienced periods of “work-to-rule,” also called “contract compliance.”

Currently, teachers do not have the legal right to strike in Rhode Island, nor are teacher strikes explicitly illegal, Abbott said. This ambiguity creates a murky situation when teachers’ unions vote to strike.

“As a practical matter, what happens is that the school district takes the union to court and it falls to the district to show there is irreparable harm to students,” Abbott said. “Then they can get a restraining order that orders teachers back to the classroom while both sides go back to the negotiating table.”

Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director of the state’s other teachers’ union, the National Education Association, said he prefers third-party binding arbitration over striking as a way to resolve contract disputes between teachers’ unions and school committees. Connecticut uses binding arbitration.

“Police and fire have arbitration because everyone agrees it is not in the public interest to have those public employees on strike,” Walsh said. “Well, there would be irreparable harm to the public when teachers don’t report to work.”

The task force meetings generated so much discussion the Board of Regents expanded its focus to include ways to improve teacher quality, contract negotiation and mediation. Topics it plans to explore in the coming months include revamping teacher preparation programs at local colleges; strengthening mentoring programs for new teachers and leadership programs for administrators; requiring performance-based teacher evaluations; and making it easier to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, including professionals switching to teaching as a second career.

The board also wants to work more closely with the state Department of Labor and Training, which oversees bargaining, to ensure that the steps required for negotiation and mediation begin in a timely manner.

jjordan@projo.com