The San Francisco's teachers union said Wednesday it would go along with a plan to make staff members at three Bayview neighborhood schools reapply for their jobs as part of the district's attempt to overhaul the low- performing schools.

The union had objected to Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's "Dream Schools" initiative, saying that forcing staffers to reapply would stigmatize those who weren't rehired and were made to transfer.

Ackerman wants to inject components of private education into the three schools, including having students wear uniforms, take rigorous college prep classes and stay in class for longer hours. She says she wants to make sure the principals, teachers and classroom aides at the schools are committed and enthusiastic.

Union leaders had called the requirement that staffers reapply for their jobs "a slap in the face." On Wednesday, though, they said they would support the initiative as long as teachers who aren't selected get preference for open jobs elsewhere in the district.

Tom Ruiz, the district's director of labor relations, said that was the district's intention. "We'll make sure they're treated with respect, equity and dignity," he said. "There will be no taint on them wherever they go."

Dennis Kelly, president of United Educators of San Francisco, said the plan "sounds like the right thing to me."

The agreement will probably apply when the district selects another round of "Dream Schools" -- three each in the Mission, Western Addition, Tenderloin and Potrero Hill -- for the 2005-06 school year.

The two sides reached the deal after a school board meeting Tuesday night at which African American community leaders and teachers ripped into union officials for fighting a plan intended to improve Bayview neighborhood schools.

"Where were you when they kept getting low test scores? Where was the union then?" asked the Rev. Carolyn Habersham of the Allen Chapel AME Church in the Bayview. "You're talking about teachers being stigmatized. We're talking about our children being stigmatized."

People sitting in the audience waved signs reading, "Children First -- Let Them Dream." A string of teachers working at the affected schools -- Charles Drew Elementary, Gloria R. Davis Middle School and Twenty-First Century Academy -- told school board members they had no problem with reapplying for their jobs.

Sheryl Perkins, a kindergarten teacher at Twenty-First Century Academy, said that when she asks her students what they want to be when they grow up, they rarely have an answer. One boy told her he wants to be a gangster "because they have a lot of money," she said.

"They don't know about people who make it," Perkins said. "They have no hope."

Ackerman took the show of support as vindication for her plan.

"It's important that the union understand and get the information from the teachers who are most affected," she said. "They're ready to go. They were never threatened by this."

Kelly countered by saying the union "must operate on general principles."

Specifically, he said, the union initially objected to the plan because it resembled the unpopular "reconstitution" of nine schools under former Superintendent Bill Rojas. Under that plan, entire staffs at low-performing schools were let go and given no preference for open jobs.

The union's agreement with the district is "much more humane, and it removes the stigma of reconstitution," Kelly said. "It's a very wise move."