July 25th board meeting

We held a regular board meeting on July 25th. You can view the meeting on YouTube here. 

I continue to be nervous about our high number of teacher vacancies. As far as I can tell, we still appear to have way more vacancies than any district in the state. And I have heard concerns from some school leaders about the impact of these vacancies on their schools. One issue that some folks have raised with me is the number of students who did not have a certified teacher in the classroom last year for either half of the year or the entire year. 

There were apparently some concerns about whether some middle school students would receive high school credit in some of these circumstances. Since this meeting, the administration has indicated that no middle school student was denied high school credit because they did not have a certified teacher.  

I also requested that the administration provide the board with the numbers (and schools) of all elementary school students who did not have a certified teacher for either half or all of last year. I think it’s important for the board to understand these vacancies’ real impact on our schools. 

June 27th Work Session and Board Meeting & June 30th Called Meeting

We held a work session and regular board meeting on June 27th. You can view the work session on YouTube here and the regular meeting here. 

And you can listen (audio only) to the June 30th called meeting here. 

As always, I encourage you to watch/listen to the meetings if you can. 

Budget

At this stage, the administration and board’s primary focus on the budget was cutting approximately $6 million in expenditures from its original budget. While $6 million is a lot of money, it represents only about 1.5% of our overall budget. At the June 13th board meeting, I requested that the administration provide a spreadsheet that revealed all general fund contracts and spending so the board could have a good overview of our spending. I thought we could find less important expenditures than our proposed raises for teachers and staff and other incentives. 

At the June 27th meeting, I pointed out that we had not received this information. It’s another example of the administration resisting every request for what I think is fairly basic information that the board should be discussing. 

Fast forward to the called June 30th meeting. We did receive a spreadsheet about 24 hours before this final budget meeting. I raised concerns about the accuracy of this document. However, we did learn that in May, the district had entered into a contract with the company that produces the Irly Bird book and related experiences. Since the board previously relinquished any oversight over contracts under $250,000, this contract–which appears to be for $225,000–was not brought to the board. Given how much we have heard about the administration’s decision not to give all classified employees longevity bonuses this year, it is shocking to me that we entered into such a contract. That $225,000 could have gone a long way toward fixing this decision.

Finally, I suggested suspending board member travel to save some money. I certainly recognize that this will not by itself save huge sums of money. However, appearances matter. And the fact that we are cutting proposed salary raises and incentives and won’t consider cutting our conference travel budget is a bad look.

My Proposed Policy Change Regarding Teacher Contracts

I have long questioned our policy of revoking teacher certificates when teachers resign after signing their contract (during the summer or the school year). I will not repeat my concerns about this practice. However, I proposed a change to our policy that would address at least one particularly unfair situation. (The discussion begins at the 33-minute mark of the work session). 

A teacher signs and returns their contract by the deadline. Days later, the district announces that the principal of that teacher’s school is leaving. Then the district announces that they are promoting an assistant principal of that very school. Teachers at the school had no input in that decision, nor were they ever asked for their opinion on how this assistant principal performed. What do we say to teachers who believe that the decision to promote that assistant principal is a huge mistake and they don’t want to work at that school any longer? Why not provide them with a window of time that they can choose to get out of their contract? 

The responses to my policy change seem to misunderstand how many teachers feel about our draconian and overly punitive policy of revoking contracts. Commissioners continue to bring up other professions as analogies without acknowledging that in those instances, employees do not lose their right to practice their profession for a year. So, we should give teachers genuine input into the leaders of their schools or let them get out of their contract when the administration makes a decision the teachers believe is not in the school’s best interest. Ultimately, I think it would benefit our schools in the long run because it would emphasize the need to involve more stakeholders in these decisions.

Many teachers who have reached out about our certificate revocation practice have said that they feel the district is saying that teachers are too important to lose but not important enough to involve in decisions that impact their schools. That’s not the message we should be sending.