My sincere apologies if I’ve said anything that appears to denigrate the work of our outstanding teachers. I have nothing but the highest respect for those who’ve sacrificed and continue to sacrifice so much for the betterment of our future. In fact, I have personally nominated many Wichita public school educators over the years for the Good Apple award and have been successful on several occasions in seeing them so honored. In humility, I too have been the recipient of the award on two occasions. My goal is not to hurt the profession in any way, but rather to assist in the removal of those barriers preventing these incredible men and women from achieving their ends. I suspect you’ve spent time in our public schools and understand those impediments as well or better than me. To that end, I believe our goals to be aligned. Let’s keep up the outward education battle.

Who is going to make this determinations? The presumption seems to be that the evaluator should be administration, but is that evaluation valid and effective if there isn’t a system to prove rater reliabilty.

For something you want to make very simplistic, it is actually quite complex. I also concur that cuts need to be made as far from the classrooom as possible.

All this being said, I think maybe you should give the teachers a break Kip.

You’ve highlighted the problem and made my point. Not all of those teachers should have to suffer a two year pay freeze. There’s the inflexibility I’m referring to. There are tremendous men and women making huge strides in our classrooms and they should be rewarded not relegated. When publicly educated; my children had both fantastic and dismal teachers. Unfortunately, the poor ones are still around. Now that my children are privately educated I see that they are not exempt from ineffectual instructors. Fortunately, through parental input and oversight of the school board one such unqualified instructor was let go. That instructor has been replaced by an educator who really cares and the results are already notable.

I absolutely concur with your suggestion that we now begin cutting those furthest from the classrooms. In conjunction with that recommendation I’d propose that we introduce merit based pay. Thoughts?

You are totally incorrect about the certified employees being paid over spring break. Teachers are paid on a 190 day contract. Spring Break is not included in 190 days. The same is true for principals, except there contract is for more days.

Dismal

I’m pretty sure that the classified employees are paid per hour. If they work over Spring Break, they get paid. If they do not work, they do not get paid.

Get your facts straight before you shoot off your mouth.

In reality, 1/2 of the teachers in Wichita took a 4% pay cut this year when the BOE changed policy pertaining to at risk schools incentives. On top of that, ALL Wichita teachers agreed to a 2 year salary freeze to do their part in helping with the impending budget crisis.

How does that make the teachers union “inflexible”? It seems the classroom teachers have done their share. It is now time to cut jobs, starting as far away from the classroom as possible.

This is the second time in as many days that I’ve read about a Wichita board member pointing to the inflexibility of our district’s teachers union contract as to the reason we can’t do the right thing.

Anyone know when this contract is up for negotiation? I’m not opposed to unions, but I am against common sense being thwarted in the name of job security!

This one really set me off: “Arnold said she reads in the newspapers about incentives being given to employers. “The district is an employer. Where is our incentive?” ”

The incentives are (at least damn well should be) for private cititizens / businesses so that the income generated from their profits is REALLY additional to the tax rolls. Jobs from the public sector are a BURDEN on the tax payer. Public jobs should be well under 50% of the jobs in any region. The income produced by a public job gives back 40% of the 100% given to the employee out of the taxpayer’s pockets. The income produced by a private job gives back 40% of the income produced by the taxpayer, 0% of which can from other taxpayers.

Part 2. The comment “The excessive retirement plan for teachers that is currently underfunded, fringe benefits that are well above the private sector to name a couple.” is a little misleading. The retirement plan may or may not be excessive, BUT the school district promised that retirement plan to the employees back when a teacher’s salary wasn’t above average. The plans should all be fully funded, and remain so. If you want to change the plan for new teacher’s be my guest, BUT (again) you get what you pay for. Good teachers are worth quite a bit.

Any school district employee who isn’t a teacher is what private business calls “overhead”, i.e. the school engineers, bus drivers, and administrators do NOT educate children. These types of jobs are part of the cost of “doing business”, and the cost of doing business nees to be minimized.

Later

Mike