Letter to Editor, Thoughts About Leadership Premiums

After reading about the teacher Leadership Premium program presentation in the Blackfoot school district, I felt a need to comment. As a Firth school board member, we reviewed this program a couple months ago. We decided on a much different plan. We as a board, supported a plan that would provide the potential for all teachers to receive an equal share of these funds, as long as they meet the qualifications and requirements presented by our administration.   As I understand it, the state gives $850 per unit or teacher for this plan. The only way a teacher can make more than $850 is if other teachers receive none of this money. So essentially the districts are left with the decision of who can qualify for the funds and who can't, and that didn't seem fair. With teacher pay so flat in recent years, it didn't seem right to develop a plan that would benefit one teacher over another, or offer no potential for some teachers to receive this bonus. It would be harder to have teachers in positions where they couldn't qualify for these funds. I believe almost all teachers are doing their best to educate their students, so deserve to be rewarded for their efforts.

Why does the state Department of Education , with the support of the Legislature, feel compelled to keep coming up with these potentially divisive programs? If they were so good, why do they change the name and criteria every year? I am all for paying our teachers more money, but I believe it would be better to raise the overall pay scale instead of funding merit programs. My son gave up teaching recently. He taught for six years with only a token amount more pay in the final year of his employment than when he started. He couldn't support his family the way he wanted, and chose to further his education and enter a different profession.

I worry that unless Idaho chooses to step up and improve teacher pay, we won't entice college students into the teaching profession, and will continue to lose some of our best teachers to other states where they pay a higher wage.

August 14th, 2014 School Board Meeting

I am late again this month writing my blog. There has been a lot going on. This was however another month with a short agenda, and very few in attendance. 

The meeting started with the resignation of Stewart Portela as the track coach, and the hiring of Jason Chatterton as a Maintenance Man. 

We were then given an update of the summer maintenance projects. There has been a lot of painting in all the schools. Paint can make things look a lot better. There also has been a lot of work putting in new computer and phone wiring. Barb has really helped getting our technology improvements in place. All the gym floors were resurfaced. Rockymountain Power is doing a review to see if we qualify for new lighting in the middle school. It sure would be nice to get better lighting, like the other buildings. One of the main things completed is the removal of the carpet in the high school hallway and the polishing of the cement. It looks much different, but will be much easier to maintain. Having polished cement floors in school hallways is very common now. The cold weather entry at the elementary is on hold, not sure when it will get done. The parking and bus lane improvements between the high school and seminary building are progressing, just not as fast I would like. Hopefully the major work can get done during spud harvest. 

We talked over having board training and if anyone wants to go to the school board convention in Boise. The legislature last session included more funding for board training. We decided to start with strategic planning and have a trainer come to us. I can't attend the convention and I'm not sure if anyone else will go. 

We were given a copy of each schools handbooks and talked about the Superintendent evaluation schedule.

We then had a lengthy discussion about possibly moving back spud harvest one week. A local farmer requested we do this. He depends on help from high school kids and his spuds won't be ready to harvest in time for our first week break. He said there were eight spud farmers in the district, something I didn't know. I think all the farmers had been contacted and  some take longer than the two weeks, some only one week, but the scheduled harvest break didn't appear to be a problem for anyone else.  I hope he can work out his schedule, but to me it wasn't a good idea to change the break just for him. It was estimated about thirty kids work in the harvest. I was concerned about family vacations that may be planned for the same time. Yes we need to accommodate farmers, but changing our traditional harvest break especially after the calendar is set, would likely cause more problems than it would solve. I for one have taken my family on vacations to Disneyland during the harvest break in years past. It's a good time to go to places like this because of cooler weather and less people, and many vacations are planned a long time into the future. I later heard from someone that has a family vacation planned for harvest break and is glad we didn't change it.  I stated at this point the only reason I think we would change harvest break is if we get a lot of rain so the harvest is held up. 

This is pretty much all that was talked about. I hope this wet weather soon changes so our harvest season can get back on track. As always if you have questions or concerns let me know. Thanks, Brian