USD 410 school board talks tenure years ago
The process for giving teachers tenure — what should it entail? What guidelines should the school district use?
USD 410 board of education members re-examined this issue Monday night at their normal monthly meeting.
At previous meetings, board member Doug Weinbrenner presented a list of eight guiding principles that the board could draw from as they considered why and how a teacher should get tenure. The board's leadership team has worked with those principles, and a revised version was presented Monday night.
The revised principles are:
1: Quality teachers are among the District's greatest assets. 2: Quality teachers enhance the learning experience for children. 3: The ability to interact and retain quality teachers is of vital importance to the District's future. 4: The board and administration hold high expectations of teacher performance. 5: Quality time and effort shall be invested in evaluating the teacher's performance. 6: The district shall provide teachers with professional development opportunities to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to be exemplary teachers. 7: Administrators shall value input from parents, students, and others. 8: Board members shall communicate concerns about teachers to administrators. 9: Administrators are committed to conveying concerns about teacher performances to the individual teacher. 10: The decision to grant tenure is of particular importance to the Board of Education and administration. 11: Tenure will be granted to those individuals who consistently demonstrate the ability to become exemplary teachers.
One subject the board discussed dealt with teacher evaluations, as touched on in principle five. Evaluations should be consistent over time — not excessively demanding at tenure time, said Superintendent Gordon Mohn. That could scare off potential teachers.
If teachers have been getting consistent feedback over the years, said Doug Weinbrenner, they should know how administrators feel about the job they've done. By the time the tenure process arrives, they should already know what's coming, with no surprises.
Mohn agreed, saying that teachers should have the opportunity to know what the problem is, if one exists, and how to fix it.
Another aspect is that teachers considered for tenure probably won't be at the "top of their game" after just a few years teaching, he said. Principle 11 says that teachers should be recognized for their ability or potential to become a great teacher one day.
Board members also discussed how they should handle parents' complaints about teachers.
The board shouldn't "survey" local parents' views of teachers, but they should take those comments and direct them toward administrators, Mohn said. Then the administrator will make the decision about when — or if — to talk to the teacher.
But once a complaint or issue is brought to the table, it's hard to bring that back, said board member Reg Matz. How do you determine if a teacher has improved? When do you bring that to the board?
The building principals are the filters, Mohn said. They determine whether or not to bring an issue to the board — and if they do, that's when you know the issue is serious.
But the board and the administration each have different perspectives, Weinbrenner said. You can't withold information information from the board out of fear of bias.
Members acknowledged that the tenure issue may never be completely clarified.
"This is an area where we're never going to have a clear-cut line," Weinbrenner said.
In other business:
— Projected figures predict that district enrollment will continue to decline next year — which also means a decline in funding.
Next year's weighted enrollment — not the number of actual students — is projected to be 1,199.3. Multiply that times $3,863, which is the state's base budget per pupil, and you have an overall district budget of just over four and a half million dollars.
With the decline in enrollment, that figure is approximately $70,000 less than this year's budget. It's $104,735 less than the budget the district originally planned for, before former Governor Bill Graves reduced the per-pupil amount from its former $3,890.
Add that in with the $65,000 cost of giving teachers a two percent raise, and the district could be facing about $170,000 fewer dollars next year.
The district may also face staff reductions this year at the elementary school. Right now, grades kindergarten through sixth grade each have three sections, with third grade as the exception. Third grade has two full-time teachers and one part-time teacher. The two sections have 23 and 21 students each.
Next year, as these students move on to fourth grade, three sections of that grade would put class sizes at 15, 15, and 14. The board may consider eliminating a fourth-grade teacher, Mohn said.
"But that's not an absolute," he said.
At the March board meeting, members will further consider next year's staff and funding.
— Mohn reported that the new computerized energy management system will be completely installed by the middle of next week. He's already received a positive comment from one teacher, he said.
— Board members approved a five-year agreement with the Newton school district to continue providing vocational-technical training for Hillsboro students. This year, 13 students are enrolled in vo-tech classes, which take place every morning in Newton.
The overall cost to the district for this program is $3,233 per student. That includes tuition and transportation costs.
— District teachers will soon undertake curriculum mapping, a process that records what is taught in Hillsboro classrooms. This differs from normal curriculum planning, which merely plans out what a teacher should teach, not what he or she actually teaches.
Teachers will have an in-depth look into curriculum mapping this Friday during the district's in-service day.
— Two year contracts were renewed for each of the district's principals: Dale Honeck, Evan Yoder, Max Heinrichs, and Pat Call.
