Class notes from BOE meeting of 1/10/2012, courtesy of Howard Simon

Howard Simon, Thank you for writing up this meeting summary!!


While the meeting featured presentations about the Middle School and Elementary School programs, what probably was the most important news of the night came at the end of the three-hour meeting, long after most in the audience had left. Specifically, there was what seemed a very public sign of what the teachers union thinks about the possibility of making contract concessions.

After a parent told the Board he felt like he was living through “Groundhog Day” because the teachers didn’t give anything in the way of concessions last year and aren’t giving anything this year, Christine Vasilev, president of the Port Washington Teachers Association, demanded a chance to respond. Although acknowledging Vasilev, who began shouting after the Board said it was about to close the public comments portion of the meeting, was out of order, the Board allowed her a chance to speak. She argued that the teachers have worked and are continuing to work with the district to find solutions to the budget problem, and that people should stop talking about cutting costs and focus instead on raising revenue – in other words, collect more taxes. Vasilev did not say school taxes should go up, only that the community should work together to close the tax loopholes currently enjoyed by corporations. The bottom line seems clear: the PWTA does not look favorably on the calls from parents and others in the district for contract concessions and is showing no sign that it will respond positively to such calls.

Another piece of potentially important news came at the start of the evening, when the president of the Port Washington Educational Assembly, a group which has mobilized voters against the school budget for several years, told the Board that for the “first time in years” his organization is prepared to tell its members to support the budget provided that the budget came in UNDER the tax cap. Signs are the Board will do just that, thus requiring deep cuts to be made, but there is a caveat from the PWEA: it would like the costs associated with a planned bond issue (needed to repair the roof at the Weber Middle School) to be factored in as well. What that seems to mean is that if district taxpayers approve the bond issue and agree to pay X a year to cover costs of the bond, then the PWEA wants a savings equal to X included in the budget. It’s not clear how this is going to play out – further, the Board itself is publicly divided over whether the bond vote should take place on the same day as the budget vote.

As far as the presentations themselves (which should be visible on the district website soon if not already), they contained few surprises. Basically, the middle school says it is doing very little which isn’t mandated so any cuts will be devastating, and the elementary schools say they already bore the brunt of the sacrifice last year (fewer librarians and guidance counselors) and hope not to be hurt more. As for the specific issue of possibly cutting kindergarten to a half-day program, the principals said they would “rather look at other options” and that they would “prefer to look for other ways to economize” if it meant they could get back some librarians and guidance counselors. However, they acknowledged they have no answer – yet – as to what the other options and ways might be. Again, it should be noted that full-day kindergarten is not a mandated program, and it seems evident the Board is focusing first and foremost on non-mandated programs as targets for cuts.

The next Board meeting – at which we can expect a budget discussion with details about what the Board and/or administration is thinking about cutting – is slated for January 24^th at 8 PM at Schreiber High School.

What is the Triborough Amendment?

The Triborough Amendment is an amendment to the Taylor Law.

See the link below for a detailed study of it.

http://www.empirecenter.org/Documents/PDF/Triborough%20Final1.pdf

also below a WSJ article on how repeal is faring...
 

By JACOB GERSHMAN

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has promised to relieve local governments of huge, state-mandated costs this year.
But people familiar with the Cuomo administration's thinking said the governor won't pursue a potent weapon in that effort—repealing a law that keeps public-employee union contracts in effect even after they expire.
New York state's Conference of Mayors, school districts and other groups have urged Mr. Cuomo to scrap or at least scale back what's known as the Triborough Amendment. Critics of the 30-year-old law have argued it gives unions less incentive to compromise on a new contract.
The pay increases guaranteed to public-school teachers under the law add nearly $300 million a year to school budgets around the state, according to a new report issued Wednesday by the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a conservative research group.
While accepting a three-year freeze of base salaries last year, state-government union workers are entitled to automatic pay increases that cost the state $140 million a year, the report said.
"This is probably the single most important mandate-relief issue the governor can tackle. It doesn't cost anything to do this," said E.J. McMahon, a co-author of the Empire Center report. "The only cost is political in terms of union opposition."
Union leaders say the Triborough Amendment is crucial to their bargaining rights. The law amended the 1967 Taylor Act, which gave public-sector workers the right to organize, reaffirmed a ban on government union strikes and. labor officials argue, allowed management to impose wage cuts unilaterally by stalling negotiations until a contract expired.
"The notion that freezing step increases would somehow balance out negotiations at the bargaining table is very cynical," said Carl Korn, a spokesman for New York State United Teachers. "We all know that if salaries and steps were frozen, there would be no incentive for school boards to come to the table and negotiate in good faith."
But David Albert, a spokesman for the New York State School Boards Association, said the law "acts as a disincentive for employees to make difficult choices or agree to concessions."
"School boards already have an incentive to negotiate in good faith," he said. "It's the law."
In his State of the State speech last week, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said he would push to "enact mandate relief." But beyond backing a plan to reduce long-term pension costs, the governor didn't present specific proposals.
People familiar with the administration's thinking said the governor's office has indicated that it would leave the Triborough Amendment intact.
Repealing the law hasn't gotten much traction with Republicans who control the state Senate. The Democratic-controlled Assembly supports the law.
In the past year, Assemblyman Robert Castelli, a Republican from White Plains, introduced a pair of bills repealing or temporarily scaling back the Triborough Amendment. A few Republicans endorsed the bill, but not a single Democrat joined him as a co-sponsor. "I'm not an antiunion guy," Mr. Castelli said. "I just saw this as a matter of responsible government and fiscal conservatism in a bad economy."
Write to Jacob Gershman at jacob.gershman@wsj.com

Kyrene School District discusses ways to save money. - submitted by Doron K.

Kyrene School District discusses ways to save money

5 commentsby Allie Seligman - Dec. 8, 2011 08:45 AM
The Republic | azcentral.com

Next school year could bring a longer walk to bus stops, a change in the middle-school model and fewer academic coaches at the Kyrene School District.

District administration and board members discussed possible ways to balance next year's $5.3 million projected budget deficit at its study session.

The discussion Tuesday comes about a month before board members are expected to vote on the fate of free all-day kindergarten. The board has discussed a tuition-based model for full-day classes and providing only half-day kindergarten for free.

Initial budget recommendations from Kyrene administration are expected to save between $3.5 million and $6.65 million. As much as $2.8 million of savings would come from cutting positions.

"These are positions that are tied to a lot of these items," interim Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Calles said.

Personnel-based cuts include changes to custodial services, bus services, math and literacy coaches, the district office and the middle-school model.

Changes to the district's custodial services could save $200,000 to $300,000, Calles said. Currently four middle schools have in-house custodians, and eliminating those positions would save enough money to hit the low end of that target.

To make bus routes more efficient and save $100,000 to $150,000, Calles said, the number of students the district schedules to ride each bus could be raised. Now, 60 elementary students or 64 middle-school students are assigned to each bus. "We'll get 30 or 50 that actually show up," Calles said.

If more students are assigned to each bus, he said, the hope is buses will be more full and routes can be consolidated. That would most likely lead to fewer stops as well, he said, and up to three more blocks of walking for kindergarten through fifth-grade students and up to four more blocks for middle-school students.

Governing board member Beth Brizel said she worried about making young students walk that far, especially during the summer months "To have these little young kids doing extra walking ... seems a little bit excessive to me," she said.

Students who live up to a mile away from a school aren't provided any transportation, Calles said. "We're not going to have anybody walking further to a bus stop than what someone else is being required to walk to school," he said.

Most students would only see a one-block increase, though, Calles said, and only about 95 students would be affected.

A team of administrators and middle-school teachers are discussing the best ways to save money and improve the way middle school is run. Assistant Superintendent Gina Taylor said.

Currently teachers teach four 68-minute classes, Taylor said. Changing to something like five 60-minute classes could offer more flexibility for classes and cut down the number of teachers at each middle school, she said.

In 2005, Kyrene switched to the middle-school model. Brizel said the increase was in part to help raise AIMS scores. "Why now would we think that we need less time?" she said. "Why would we be thinking of decreasing minutes in any of the core subjects?"

Other personnel changes include cutting the math- and literacy-coach program by about half and reducing district office staff.

At a board meeting last month, Calles reviewed last year's projected savings and how much money was actually saved. The district fell about $786,000 short of its goal.

Eventually the discussion came back to funding all-day kindergarten, which the board is expected to vote on next month.

Several community members and Kyrene parents spoke in favor of funding the program and not implementing a tuition system.

Parent Darcy Boggs said all-day kindergarten is imperative for students who face the much more rigorous state standards being implemented in the next few years.

"Cutting funding for all day kindergarten will further burden already overwhelmed teachers," Boggs said.

From today's NYT

This is from today's New York Times - makes perfect sense to me.  Pay MORE money to great teachers and less to BAD ones - not exactly a new idea generally, but in the world of public education this is quite progressive.

In Washington, Large Rewards in Teacher Pay

By SAM DILLON

WASHINGTON — During her first six years of teaching in this city’s struggling schools, Tiffany Johnson got a series of small raises that brought her annual salary to $63,000, from about $50,000. This year, her seventh, Ms. Johnson earns $87,000.

That latest 38 percent jump, unheard of in public education, came after Ms. Johnson was rated “highly effective” two years in a row under Washington’s new teacher evaluation system. Those ratings also netted her back-to-back bonuses totaling $30,000.

“Lots of teachers leave the profession, but this has kept me invested to stay,” said Ms. Johnson, 29, who is a special-education teacher at the Ron H. Brown Middle School in Northeast Washington. “I know they value me.”

That is exactly the idea behind what admirers consider the nation’s most advanced merit pay system for public school teachers. This fall, the District of Columbia Public Schools gave sizable bonuses to 476 of its 3,600 educators, with 235 of them getting unusually large pay raises.

“We want to make great teachers rich,” said Jason Kamras, the district’s chief of human capital.

The profession is notorious for losing thousands of its brightest young teachers within a few years, which many experts attribute to low starting salaries and a traditional step-raise structure that rewards years of service and academic degrees rather than success in the classroom.

Many districts have tried over the last decade to experiment with performance pay systems but have frequently been thwarted by powerful teachers’ unions that negotiated the traditional pay structures. Those that have implemented merit pay have generally offered bonuses of a few thousand dollars, often as an incentive to work in hard-to-staff schools or to work extra hours to improve students’ scores. Several respected studies have found that such payments have scant effect on student achievement; since most good teachers already work hard, before and after class, there are limits to how much more can be coaxed out of them with financial incentives.

But Washington is the leader among a handful of large cities that are seeking a more fundamental overhaul of teacher pay. Alongside the aggressive new evaluation system that has made the city famous for firing poor-performing teachers — more than 400 over the past two years — is a bonus-and-raise structure aimed at luring talented people to the profession and persuading the most effective to stick with it.

“The most important role for incentives is in shaping who enters the teaching profession and who stays,” said Eric A. Hanushek, a professor of economics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “Washington’s incentive system will attract talented teachers, and it’ll help keep the best ones.”

Under the system, known as Impact Plus, teachers rated “highly effective” earn bonuses ranging from $2,400 to $25,000. Teachers who get that rating two years in a row are eligible for a large permanent pay increase to make their salary equivalent to that of a colleague with five more years of experience and a more advanced degree.

Those rewards come with risk: to receive the bonuses and raises, teachers must sign away some job security provisions outlined in their union contract. About 20 percent of the teachers eligible for the raises this year and 30 percent of those eligible for bonuses turned them down rather than give up those protections.

One persistent critic of the system is Nathan Saunders, president of the Washington Teachers Union, who argues that the evaluations do not adequately take into account the difficulties of working in poor neighborhoods. He also says that performance pay inappropriately singles out stars.

“This boutique program discourages teachers from working together,” Mr. Saunders said.

Several other big-city school systems have recently tried to break out of the mold of paying all teachers according to a single salary schedule.

In 2007, Denver enacted a merit pay system, which President Obama has praised but experts see as flawed. It gives larger monetary awards to teachers who earn advanced degrees than to those who significantly improve student achievement, though there is little evidence that students learn more when taught by teachers with advanced degrees.

The system in Houston, also adopted in 2007, defines classroom success so broadly that it rewards more than half of all teachers with bonuses. The amounts are smaller than those in Washington; the maximum possible bonus last year was $11,330.

This fall, the Miami-Dade County School District gave one-time bonuses, financed with $14 million in federal grant money, to 120 teachers. Eighty-four of them received $4,000 each, and 12 got the top payout of $25,000.

Karen Sutton, who teaches honors English at a Miami high school, was one of the 12.

“To have somebody say you’ve done a great job, that feels wonderful,” said Ms. Sutton, 56, who is in her 23rd year of teaching in Miami and has a salary of about $55,000. “But does it affect how I teach or whether I keep teaching? No. I’ve never thought, ‘If I get a bonus, I’ll stick this out.’ ”

Marta Maria Arrocha, who is 47 and teaches reading to fourth graders, was another $25,000 winner, which she described as exhilarating. Still, Ms. Arrocha, who has been teaching nine years, said she “would tend to discourage students who say they want to go into teaching.”

“I try to nitpick — is this really what you want to do?” she said. “A lot of people look down on this profession.”

Washington, like several other cities that have rolled out merit pay programs, first promoted the plan mainly by emphasizing the top compensation that someone could earn in a single year: about $130,000 annually in salary and performance bonuses. But earning that much is rare if not impossible — it requires the most experienced teachers, with the most advanced degrees, to have the best possible performance, something yet to be achieved.

Mr. Kamras, who helped design the Washington system, said he considered the most important aspect of Impact Plus to be the permanent increases awarded to outstanding teachers early in their careers, many of whom might otherwise leave the profession.

Take Mark LaLonde. At 32, he is in his seventh year as a social studies teacher at a high school in Washington. But he lives in Baltimore, where his wife works, and had considered working in the Baltimore schools to avoid the tiresome commute. But he gave up that flirtation after receiving the “highly effective” rating twice and having his salary increase to $87,000 from about $58,000 last year. He also earned a bonus of $10,000 for two consecutive years. In Baltimore, the union pay scale suggests that he would be making in the low $50,000s.

Jimmie Roberts, who is 28 and tutors slow readers, saw his salary increase to about $75,000 in 2011-12, from about $52,000 last year, in addition to receiving $30,000 in bonuses over two years. The money and recognition, he said, helped dispel the discouragement he had felt having to work a second job, as a greeter in a wine bar on nights and weekends, to pay off college loans.

Ms. Johnson, the seventh-grade special-education teacher, received her highly effective rating — and all the extra money — because her students’ test scores had improved significantly, and because administrators who had visited her classroom came away impressed.

“She’ll get a class full of kids who are below basic, who can’t read, and by the time they leave, they’ll be scoring well above basic or proficient,” said Remidene Diakite, the assistant principal at Ms. Johnson’s school. “A big part of her success is she puts so much effort into figuring out her students and teaching to their weaknesses.”