School Board protests Seattle Times support of teacher transfer bill
Monday, June 3, 2013
In a guest editorial published in The Seattle Times, Shoreline School Board President Debi Ehrlichman, Vice President Mike Jacobs, and Superintendent Sue Walker provide a counterpoint to The Times' editorial support for a bill in the state legislature which would prevent teachers from being placed in schools without the principal’s consent.
The three explain that the unintended consequences of the bill would be potentially enormous costs to school districts.
This legislation would essentially undermine the efficiencies we have put in place, by obligating the district to retain teachers, without a mutually acceptable school assignment, under contract for 12 months. If after eight months a mutually agreeable placement was not found, the legislation states that it could be grounds for termination after a protracted legal process.
We estimate that the cost of one such contract and the accompanying legal entanglement would provide for more than 4,000 hours of extended-learning support for underperforming students. This or many of the other underfunded needs in our district would be a far better use of district funds.
Read the entire article in The Seattle Times.
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3 comments:
What sense does it make for the district superintendent to force the school to accept a staff member who has been evaluated as sub par, or who the principal does not want? How is passing around a bad egg, protected by collective bargaining agreements, good for the student? Where is local control for the school? What is to be the principal's role, if not to oversee the education and pastoral care of the students and their school environment?
If the district gives priority to providing what is best for the student, operational efficiency will be taken into account in due course. If instead it gives priority to operational efficiency, efficacy will be forced to take a back seat. That kind of strategy might be good for purveyors of commodities, like Walmart or Fred Meyer, but not for high-touch providers of customer experience, like Nordstrom and Haggen, and certainly not for our schools, the trusted cultivators of our children's minds.
What is best for the students cannot be determined by looking at the spreadsheet. It can only be determined by looking inside the school, and the principal is the best judge of that environment, not the superintendent, and certainly not the unions.
So you think legislators are in a better place to make these judgments than the people working directly in schools? That's essentially what you are saying. You're also making the assumption that principals are all capable of good instructional leadership. That's an assumption, not a fact.
Just as there may be some poor teachers, there are also plenty of bad principals. And bad legislators, and bad doctors, and bad police officers, and bad courtesy clerks.....
Still waiting for the legislation on bad baristas.
It is the principals who are in a better position, not the legislators. The legislators are in a better position to empower the districts to pick the principals, and the principlals to build their teams, yes. And the legislators are not the ones making the assignments, so no, that is not essentially what I am saying. Of course principals are fallible, some are corruptible, etc. That is why the superintendents are there to pick them, and perhaps replace them, but not to do their job for them.
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