Central Office Reorganization

According to the agenda for the upcoming meeting of the I-SS Committee of the Whole, Mr. Johnson will be presenting a Central Office Reorganization Plan to the School Board. The meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 7^th.

The agenda is available on the I-SS web site but it does not give any information regarding what might be included in the reorganization plan. I doubt that there will be any trimming of the administrative excess since many of the administrators have just had their contracts renewed or extended and apparently they are hiring a couple of new administrators. Maybe they are just going to shift personnel between the Race Street and ADR offices.

Put the IFs Back in the Classroom

Shown below is the Letter to the Editor that I submitted to the Record & Landmark regarding the IFs. It was printed in today's edition of the paper. I am including it here for those of you who do not subscribe to the paper. If you compare the letter below to the one printed in the paper you will see they only made a few minor changes. The paper did add the headline included below in green.

Iredell-Statesville Schools cannot afford to keep non-teaching teachers in the district's payroll

To the Editor:

A recent Record and Landmark article detailed the cuts in the proposed 2010 – 11 state budget as regards to education and the response of the Iredell-Statesville School administration to those cuts. As part of his response Superintendent Brady Johnson is quoted as saying that about 50 I-SS employees will retire at the end of the current school year and that the district will fill the 25 most critical vacancies and absorb the rest through attrition. This is supposed to save the district one million dollars.

The May I-SS Personnel Report recently approved by the School Board states that the two current Instructional Facilitator (IF) coaches are being promoted from interim status to permanent status. This indicates that I-SS is going to continue with the IF program. This is a program that has questionable value. The recent teacher survey indicated that many teachers do not find the IF program beneficial.

There are about 35 Instructional Facilitators currently employed by the district. These IFs should be moved back into the classroom to replace teachers who are retiring or resigning. This could save the school system another million dollars in salaries and benefits. If these IFs are truly exemplary teachers let their classrooms serve as models for other teachers. This would be a much better utilization for these individuals. As it is now, the IFs spend much of their time in meetings. They should be in classrooms instructing the students. I-SS can no longer afford to pay 35 teachers not to teach.

May Personnel Report

Update: The May 2010 Personnel Report is now included below.

I requested a copy of the Personnel Report that was approved by the Board at the May 10^th meeting. Of course it includes things such as Resignations and Retirements, but there were two sections that I found particularly interesting.

The first was the section listed: Approval of Administrative Appointments. Under this section there were a number of administrators listed along with their appointed positions. The list included principals, assistant principals, and Central Office administrators. The Central Office administrators on the list were Marty Moore, Jed Stus, Mary Anne Karriker, Kelly Marcy, Patricia Campbell, Dale Ellis, and Pam Schiffman.

In examining this list I noted that most, if not all, were being appointed to the position that they currently hold. I assumed that this meant that these individuals were being given a new or extended contract. To make sure I sent an e-mail to Dawn Creason asking her for clarification.

Today, I received an e-mail from Dale Ellis in which he stated that his contract and the contracts for Larry Rogers and Pam Schiffman were being extended. He stated that the others on the list had expiring contracts that were renewed and extended. In addition, Mr. Ellis also stated that there were no salary adjustments associated with any of the renewals and/or extensions.

I can understand extending the contract of an individual who is doing a good job in a valuable position. But why were the contracts for Dale Ellis and Pam Schiffman extended when they were not up for renewal? That makes no sense in this economy. If either one was threatening to leave I would say let him or her go.

And, speaking of the economy and all the cutbacks in the classrooms, since the contracts for Marty Moore and Jed Stus were expiring why not just eliminate those positions and reduce the Central Office administrative staff. There are already too many administrative positions at the Central Office.

Earlier I mentioned that there were two sections within the May Personnel Report that I found interesting. The second on was the section titled Approval of Administrative Transfers. In this section it was reported that Sherrard Lewis was being transferred from Interim 6-12 IF Coach to 6-12 IF Coach and that Kim Rector was being transferred from Interim K-5 IF Coach to K-5 IF Coach. I guess that Brady Johnson has decided to continue the IF program. What happened to the results of the teacher survey? With a number of teachers retiring or resigning at the end of the current school year the IFs could have been placed back in the classroom and saved the school system a significant sum of money.

I guess it is just ‘business as usual’ at the Central Office.

May 2010 Personnel Report.

Click on an image of one of the pages to enlarge that page.

School Board Election

Tuesday, May 4th

Remember that this is the general election for the School Board and not a primary election.

If you live in District 1, or 7, please remember to vote. There is no contest in Districts 3 and 5 and the other districts are not up for election this year.