Update On The CO Reorganization Plan

On Wednesday, I sent Dawn Creason an e-mail in which I asked for information regarding the individuals (Kris Earl, Judy Honeycutt, Mathew Fail, Linda Gillon, Brenda Clark, Linda Rogers, Carol McCrory, Doug Wooten, Rob Jackson, and Steve Hampton) who were listed on the February 2010 I-SS organizational chart but who were not listed on the I-SS organizational chart submitted to the Board by Mr. Johnson as part of his reorganization plan.

I received the following reply from Ms. Creason on Thursday.

Mr. Klaene-

I just had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Johnson and discuss the organizational chart.

Coite Sherrill, Chip Weddington, Reginald Brown, Dorothy Woodard, Pam Stewart, Carol McCrory, Mathew Fail, and Brenda Clark will no longer be I-SS employees. Mathew Fail has already left the district, and all others will be completing their work at the end of June.

However, Mr. Johnson has added Kelly Cooper (executive director of middle grades education), Jessica Mellen (Title II administrator) and Tim Ivey (Focused Learning Communities grant director).

Kris Earl is a full-time employee of the EC department. Judy Honeycutt is a part-time employee (retired and returned) working with career & technical education as the career development counselor, Linda Gillon remains the full-time classified personnel coordinator, and Doug Wooten, Rob Jackson, and Steve Hampton (1/2 grant paid) remain in their previous capacities.

Mr. Johnson shared with me that the organizational chart has been reduced to only list department heads. His ultimate plan is to provide individual department organizational charts as well. He asked me to coordinate this effort just this afternoon. As soon as I am able to contact each department leader, I will ensure that all central office personnel are listed on the website, both in directory format as well as organizational chart format.

I hope I've managed to answer your questions adequately without rambling on too much. If you have further questions, I will be happy to help you.

Thanks a lot!

dc

Five of the individuals mentioned by Ms. Creason were not on the February 2010 organizational chart. I don’t know what was the administrative status of those individuals (Coite Sherrill, Chip Weddington, Reginald Brown, Dorothy Woodard, and Pam Stewart). But, looking at the two organizational charts and the information provided by Ms. Creason, there were 3 individuals (Carol McCrory, Mathew Fail, and Brenda Clark) who were on the February organizational chart and who will no longer be employed by I-SS and three individuals (Kelly Cooper, Jessica Mellen, and Tim Ivey) who will be new additions to the organizational chart with 7 individuals (Kris Earl, Judy Honeycutt, Linda Gillon, Doug Wooten, Rob Jackson, and Steve Hampton) who will continue to be employed as CO administrators but will not be listed on the main I-SS administrative chart.

Therefore, is this a true reduction in administrative positions, is it a restructuring of the organizational charts to make a clearer distinction in responsibilities, or is just smoke and mirrors to make it look like a reduction in administrative positions?

A Teacher's Job Description

As I mentioned in a previous post, Mr. Johnson is suggesting that a number of Central Office administrators should be given salary adjustments (raises) because they are being assigned additional duties as he reorganizes the Central Office staff. I already mentioned that many individuals have stated that teachers are often assigned extra duties without receiving additional compensation. However, those remarks also made me think that it would be beneficial to list the duties, or responsibilities, of an typical classroom teacher.

To that end, I used Google to search for teacher job descriptions. I found several comprehensive lists of teacher duties. I then merged those lists and, with my wife’s assistance, added a few duties that were not already included. As you might suspect the list is quite lengthy but that is just a small testament to the dedication of the teachers. I am including the list below. There is some overlapping between the bulleted items but that is balanced out by the fact that there are numerous other items that could be broken down into multiple duties.

Professional Responsibilities of Teachers:

• Prepare classroom and materials for Open House.
• Assemble class rosters and get to know students and parents.
• Administer Common Formative Assessments.
• Prepare lesson plans that reflect a logical sequence of learning objectives and activities and meet the individual needs, interests, and abilities of the students.
• Implement instructional activities that contribute to a climate where students are actively engaged in meaningful learning experiences.
• Use a variety of instructional strategies and materials that are appropriate for the stated instructional objectives of the students involved.
• Collaborate with students to prepare PDSAs.
• Identify, select, and modify instructional resources to meet the needs of the students with varying backgrounds, learning styles, and special needs.
• Use relevant technology to support instruction.
• Instruct and monitor students in the use of learning materials and equipment.
• Establish standards of classroom conduct and administer them in a fair, equitable, and consistent manner.
• Teach a broad base of understanding without indoctrinating students with his/her own cultural, political, religious or philosophical beliefs.
• Ensure that student growth and achievement is continuous and appropriate for age group, subject area, and/or program classification.
• Read and critique student papers.
• Assist students as they complete class projects.
• Provide appropriate feedback on student work.
• Appropriately display student work in the classroom and hallways.
• Post current PDSA information in the classroom.
• Monitor and assess student progress and adjust student instruction accordingly.
• Maintain effective and efficient record keeping procedures.
• Observe and evaluate student's performance and development.
• Assign and grade class work, homework, tests and assignments.
• Encourage and monitor the progress of individual students.
• Keep accurate records and provide them for school district use and file required reports on a timely basis.
• Demonstrate gains in student performance.
• Prepare and submit progress reports and report cards.
• Apply appropriate disciplinary measures where necessary.
• Monitor after school detention room as assigned.
• Assist in assessing changing curricular needs and offer plans for improvement.
• Collaborate with peers to enhance the instructional environment.
• Assume responsibility for meeting his/her course and school-wide student performance goals.
• Participate in training and presentations about various teaching techniques.
• Meet professional obligations through efficient work habits such as: meeting deadlines, honoring schedules, coordinating.
• Attend and participate in required district in-service programs.
• Stay current through professional staff development opportunities.
• Utilize established channels for handling routine procedures, resolving problems/concerns and making suggestions.
• Participate in required staff meetings and conferences.
• Keep up to date with developments in subject area, teaching resources and methods and make relevant changes to instructional plans and activities.
• Participate in committees as related to student needs, school programs, and district needs.
• Works collaboratively to achieve the overall purposes of the school program.
• Participate in the development and implementation of the school improvement plan.
• Provide a positive environment in which students are encouraged to be actively engaged in the learning process.
• Prepare and display motivational items on classroom bulletin boards.
• Promote and maintain a safe and healthful environment in the classroom and building.
• Maintain an organized and clean classroom.
• Communicate effectively, both orally and in writing, with students, parents, and other professionals on a regular basis.
• Communicate student academic and behavioral progress to parents.
• Develop and maintain positive and cooperative interactions and communication with school staff, clients, and the community.
• Establish and maintain cooperative working relationships with students, parents, and schools.
• Performs bus and car duty before and after school as assigned.
• Participate in extracurricular activities such as social activities, sporting activities, clubs and student organizations.
• Provide supervision in non-classroom areas and situations in accordance with the building student management plan.
• Monitor students in hallways, cafeteria, gymnasium, and school grounds.
• Assign lockers and maintain records of those assignments.
• Provide direction and supervision for all school activities to which he/she is assigned (coach, director, supervisor, chaperon, etc.).
• Develop a budget for applicable programs and insure that needed materials are ordered with the administrator’s approval.
• Care for district resources, equipment and materials assigned to him/her and report concerns regarding facility and equipment to designated supervisor.
• When applicable, provide direction and/or supervision for teacher assistants, student teachers, interns, and substitutes.
• Maintain a current folder of responsibilities and procedures for substitute teacher's use.
• Model professional and ethical standards when dealing with students, parents, peers, and community.
• Participate in IEP meetings.
• Be knowledgeable of and adhere to all procedures and practices prescribed in the Teacher, Student, and/or Parent Handbooks.
• Keep an accurate and detailed accounts of all monies collected and submit detailed accounting of such money to the appropriate building or business office personnel.
• Be knowledgeable of and adhere to federal and state laws that apply to his/her job assignment.
• Perform all other duties and responsibilities as assigned by their supervisor or district administrator.

To conclude, I thank all teachers and teacher assistants for dedicating your lives to helping students achieve success in the classroom and in the world outside the classroom. As the above list indicates, a significant effort is required to assist students achieve their goals. To all teachers and assistants, have a great summer. Spend some extra quality time with your families and friends, and recharge your batteries because it will not be too long till the beginning of a new school year.

Resources:

Sevenstar Academy, Omaha Public Schools, Waunakee Community School District, and Best-Job-Interview.com.

I-SS Vehicles Driven Home

There have been several comments on this blog about I-SS employees being allowed to drive school vehicles back and forth to their homes. I recently requested and received a list of I-SS employees who have been provided vehicles as outlined in the school policy code 7612 Employer Provided Vehicles. The list also included vehicles that were not assigned to a particular individual.

The I-SS vehicle policy reads as follows.

The Iredell-Statesville Board of Education will provide transportation for employees in the normal performance of their duties as determined by the Superintendent or designee. Such transportation shall be provided by assigning vehicles on a permanent or daily basis.

The permanent assignment of vehicles will be limited to those persons whose normal duties as determined by the Superintendent, or his designee, to require the use of a vehicle at other than the normal business hours of the central office or required frequently for emergency situations. The permanent assignment of vehicles requires the employee to commute in the vehicle for valid business reasons. This policy prohibits personal use other than commuting except De Minimis Nontaxable Personal Use as defined by the IRS.

The vehicle list I received included 133 school maintained vehicles. Of those 133 vehicles, 102 are assigned to specific school employees. The list also indicates if an employee is allowed to drive his/her assigned car home. Of the 102 I-SS employees who are assigned a school vehicle, 87 of them are allowed to drive their assigned vehicle home. Of course this means that the school is not only providing a car to be driven home but is also paying for the gas and the maintenance of these cars. As has been pointed out in one of the comments to an earlier post on this blog, a number of these individuals do not live in Iredell County.

I understand that a certain number of school employees will need access to a school vehicle at odd hours of the day. For example, a maintenance employee may have to go to a school building after hours if there is a plumbing or heating/AC problem. But, will that require 35 different maintenance employees? That is the number of maintenance employees allowed to drive school vehicles home. And, how many Drivers ED instructors have to come back to school to give emergency driving lessons to students? There are 15 Drivers ED instructors who are allowed to drive school vehicles home.

I don’t have any information on the number of miles driven by I-SS employees as they go back and forth between school and home each day. But, if most of the 87 employees allowed to do so actually use the vehicles this way each day, that will add up to a lot of miles each year. And it is not just the miles to drive home and back. Is I-SS using these 133 vehicles wisely and is anyone actually accounting for the use of each of these vehicles?

I-SS Vehicle List:

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Proposed CO Reorganization Plan

Brady Johnson’s proposed reorganization plan for the Central Office is now available on the I-SS web site as an item on the agenda for Monday’s School Board meeting. According to the plan the Central Office will be cut by 5% for 2010-2011 and this will be done with the elimination of seven positions and continued salary cuts of 2%. In addition the workload of the remaining central office staff will be adjusted and salary adjustments will be recommended for these staff members. Overall, this is supposed to save $201,000.

The new CO organizational chart is included in the plan. The following individuals were included on the previous organizational chart but are not included on the new one: Kris Earl, Judy Honeycutt, Mathew Fail, Linda Gillon, Brenda Clark, Linda Rogers, Carol McCrory, Doug Wooten, Rob Jackson, and Steve Hampton. The plan does not state if these individuals have resigned or retired, or have been reassigned, or terminated.

There are two additions to the organizational chart. Kelly Cooper is listed as Executive Director of Middle School Education/Rtl/504 and Tim Ivey is listed as Director of SLC Grant.

The reorganizational plan also includes a page that lists the additional duties assigned to a number of CO administrators. For example one of the extra duties assigned to Marty Moore is Speaking Engagements and Baldrige Training and one of the extra duties assigned to Dawn Creason is the BNQP Application. Does this mean that I-SS is going to apply for the Baldrige award again? I also find it interesting that one of the extra duties assigned to Dale Ellis is Staff Development yet Jed Stus is now listed as Executive Director of Staff Development & Training. Why is Staff Development an extra duty for Dale Ellis when Jed Stus will be doing the work?

The final page of the reorganization plan gives a listing of the duties and responsibilities for the Associate Supt. For Human Resources (Dr. Dale Ellis), the Executive Director for Staff Development (Jed Stus), and the Executive Director of Teacher Support (Bill Long).

It does look like Mr. Johnson is trying to streamline the CO administrative staff and that, of course, is a good thing. Is it too little, too late? Is it just a smoke screen to hide the true administrative agenda?

A few questions do come to mind at this time. How many, if any, of the individuals who were on the previous organizational chart but not on the new chart will still be employed by I-SS but with different assignments? What will be the amount of the salary adjustments for each of the individuals taking on additional duties? And, as many have asked before, why are raises (adjustments) being considered for administrative staff who take on additional duties while teachers are consistently asked to take on extra duties without any adjustments to their pay? I think the CO administrators are paid quite well as it is. Let them start earning that salary.

You can access the reorganization plan by clicking on the following link. (Note: For some reason at the time of this posting the following link and the link on the I-SS web site were not active. It is the link I originally used to access the plan. The link is working as of June 10th at 6:25 PM.)

Central Office Reorganizational Plan

I am also including the proposed CO reorganization plan below. (Note: As long as the previous organizational chart is readily available on the school web site, it can be seen by clicking on the image of the chart on the left side of this page.)

Click on an image to enlarge it.

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.

School Board Candidate Forum

According to the Statesville Record and Landmark there will be a forum for School Board Candidates on Tuesday, April 13^th, from 7:45 to 9:00 p.m., at Little Joe’s Chapel in Barium Springs. The local Chambers of Commerce and various media outlets are sponsoring the forum. It will follow the forum for the Iredell County Sheriff candidates.

Please note that the initial information printed in the April 4^th edition of Record and Landmark, as well as posted on their web site, includes some incorrect information. Contrary to the information provided by the Record and Landmark, there is no primary for the School Board elections and there is no School Board election in November. The May 4^th election is the general election for the School Board. In both District 1 and District 7, the candidate with the most votes wins the election. As I reported earlier, no one filed to run against John Rogers (District 3) or Bill Brater (District 5) so they will continue to serve on the School Board.

According to the Record and Landmark, if you have a question that you would like to be asked of one or more of the candidates at the forum, you may e-mail your question to dibach@statesville.com with a subject line of ‘Candidate Question.’ It is also reported that due to limited time, not all questions will be asked.

School Board Elections

The filing period for the School Board elections ends Friday, Feb. 26^th, at noon. Four Iredell-Statesville Board of Education seats are up for election. Those are the seats representing districts 1, 3, 5 and 7. School Board elections are nonpartisan and are to be held at the time of the May primary election. The term of office is for four years.

The information below depicts the schools included in each district as well as the current School Board member representing each district.

District 1- Dr. Ken Wilson

Union Grove, Harmony, North Middle, North High, Central, East Middle (district also overlaps with West Middle and West High)

District 3- John Rogers

N.B. Mills, Northview, Pressly, Statesville High, East Elementary (district also overlaps with West High, North High, West Middle, Statesville Middle, Monticello, Ebenezer, and Third Creek)

District 5- Bill Brater

Celeste Henkel, South High, Troutman Elementary, Troutman Middle, Lakeshore Elementary, Lakeshore Middle, Lake Norman High, Shepherd (district also overlaps with West High, West Middle, and Sharon)

District 7- Karen Watson

Mt. Mourne, Brawley, Lake Norman Elementary, Woodland Heights (district also overlaps with Lakeshore Middle, Lakeshore Elementary, and Lake Norman High School)

According to the Iredell County Board of Elections, Dr. Ken Wilson, Mr. John Rogers, and Mr. Bill Brater have each filed for reelection. Mr. Robert Bobinski has filed to run in the election for the seat representing District 7. As of Feb. 19^th at 2:22 PM, Ms. Watson has not filed for reelection.

In my opinion, unless there is some significant change within the School Board there will not be any significant change in the administration of the School System. NOW is the time for some individuals to step up and speak out for the students. If you live in one of the school districts up for election, please either consider running for the School Board or encourage someone who will make a good candidate to do so.

According to Iredell-Statesville School Board Policy Code 2110, no School Board member shall serve more than two consecutive terms. According to the I-SS web site Dr. Wilson is in his second term and Mr. Brater is in his first term. I could not find information regarding the number of terms for Mr. Rogers and Ms. Watson.

Feb. 2010 I-SS Organizational Chart

A new organizational chart has been posted on the I-SS web site. There are only a few changes from the chart that was posted in December. One of those changes is that Todd Holden is listed as the Executive Director of Secondary Education. When it was announced in January that Mr. Holden was being promoted it was stated that he was to be Executive Director of Secondary Education and Career Technical Education. I don’t know it there has been a change in his duties or if the Career Technical Education part of his title was just left of the chart for some reason.

Also, the new organizational chart shows Dale Ellis as Associate Superintendent of Human Resources and Bill Long as Director of Teacher Support Services. As I reported in a previous post those changes were made effective in January. One last change that I noticed is that Dawn Creason is now listed as Public Information Officer. Ms. Creason had been listed as Director of Public Relations.

You may click on the image of the organizational chart at the left of this page to enlarge it.

I-SS Innovation Showcase

Updated Jan. 19, 2010.

I-SS is hosting the First Annual Iredell Statesville Innovation Showcase at the Statesville Civic Center on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. According to the announcement there will be a focus on strategies and simple processes that positively impact student success. There will be booths by teachers and administrators with breakout sessions throughout the day. The event is free and open to the public.

Mathew Fail announced at the Committee of the Whole meeting that there would be some 68 presentations with about 150 presenters. He also said that they were expecting participants from a number of other school districts. Click on the link below to access the announcement.

Innovation Showcase

This is a workday for I-SS. Are teachers being informed of this event? Have they been told that they could spend part or all of the workday attending the Innovation Showcase? No? Why not? Because I-SS does not believe that one-day conferences, workshops, or meetings are beneficial to teachers.

The following statement is taken directly from the I-SS web site. It is located in the Professional Development section under the Continuous Improvement tab.

We believe that professional learning improves the knowledge and skills of our faculty and staff, and can lead to changes in classroom practice and increased student learning. Professional development that is not on-going or collaborative (aka One-Shot Workshop) rarely translates into classroom application or student impact. Research shows that the most effective professional development combines meaningful job-embedded practice with support from instructors through on-going feedback and coaching.

I-SS says that one day workshops do not translate into classroom application or student impact. Yet, at the same time I-SS is spending taxpayer’s money to organize and present such a workshop. Where is the reasoning in that?

I have received the following information from Jessica Mellen, I-SS Graduate Fellow.

The event will be held at the Statesville Civic Center on January 26, from 8:45-4:10 (and closed from 12-12:50 so that presenters may have a brief lunch break). This event is similar in style to a science fair, in that the majority of presentations are on display boards (some complemented with technology) in a large exhibit hall. There will also be concurrent seminar-style presentations which will delve deeper into some widely applicable strategies. Each of the seminar-style presentations will be held 4 times throughout the day--twice in the morning, and twice in the afternoon.

The presenters are all I-SS staff who have volunteered to be a part of this event. The requirement for entry was simply that presentations should demonstrate strategies that are having a positive impact on student learning! At this point there are over 70 presentations scheduled (including the seminar-style sessions), and 150 presenters and volunteers from the I-SS staff.

The goal of this event is to both share knowledge across the district, and to celebrate successes that students, teachers and staff are having in their classrooms and buildings. The project team has been working closely with principals to make sure that all I-SS staff has the opportunity to attend the event, as they are the intended target audience.

There will be a Welcome Table, from which any further questions can be answered and information will be provided on the day of the event.

I do think that this type of event can be valuable to teachers. It is always good to see various instructional methods that are beneficial to students. I only wish that I-SS administrators would acknowledge the fact that I-SS teachers could learn from similar events that are sponsored by other school systems and by professional organizations.

I also received the following Showcase information and schedules from Ms. Mellen.

The following schedules are color coded to match a shift schedule for the schools. In efforts to make this event as accessible as possible for all I-SS staff to attend, schools have been approved and encouraged to bring their staffs to the event on school buses.

All visitors are welcome to attend whenever best suits their schedules: please do not feel obligated to follow the shift schedule. You are welcome to arrive and depart (if you plan to do so) at any point during the day that the Showcase is open. Visitors are also welcome to participate in the raffle, which will be drawn at the end of each of the four shifts noted in the schedule. We will also be soliciting feedback about the event via comment cards throughout the day.

Click on each schedule to enlarge it.

January Personnel Report

As reported in today’s Statesville Record and Landmark, it was announced at Monday’s I-SS Board meeting that Todd Holden has been promoted to Executive Director of Secondary Education and Career Technical Education. Mr. Holden has been principal of West Iredell High for the last four years. There was no mention of what his new salary will be. I wish Mr. Holden the best in his new position. You may click on the link below to access the Record and Landmark article.

Todd Holden Named Director

It was also announced at Monday’s Board meeting that the interim positions created when Mr. Johnson was named Interim Superintendent are now officially permanent positions. Specifically, the personnel report approved by the Board states the following.

Ron Hargrave goes from Interim Deputy Superintendent/Race Street to Deputy Superintendent/Race Street.

Melanie Taylor goes from Interim Assoc. Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction/ADR to Assoc. Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction/ADR.

Dale Ellis goes from Interim Assoc. Superintendent for Secondary Curriculum/ADR to Assoc. Superintendent for Human Resources/Race Street.

Bill Long goes from Interim Assoc. Superintendent for Human Resources/Race Street to Director of Teacher Support Services/Race Street.

As I mentioned in a comment to a previous post, Dawn Creason sent me an e-mail on January 4^th stating that Dale Ellis and Bill Long had gone back to their previous positions and salaries. Obviously this was not a true statement with regard to Mr. Long. As far as I can tell the Director of Teacher Support Services is a new Central Office position created for Mr. Long. Again we see that there is no shortage of money when it comes to Central Office positions. How sad it is for the students at Statesville High School and Third Creek Elementary who have to share media specialists because there is no money to hire a replacement for the media specialist at Third Creek who has recently retired.

Renewed Vision Meeting

Materials related to last night’s meeting are now available on the I-SS web site. You can find information for each of the system’s key processes as well as issue bins for each. The reports of the principal and teacher surveys as well as the reports of the various advisory meetings are also available. The video of the meeting is not yet available. I want to thank Mr. Johnson for making sure this information was available in a timely manner. You can access the information by clicking on the link below.

Renewed Vision Information

There was a lot of information shared at the meeting but it seemed to be mostly this is what we are doing and don’t you think it’s wonderful. There was some talk of a few changes being made but the bulk of the information was simply a reiteration of the processes that have been in place for some time. Yes, it was mentioned that there would be more flexibility in some of the processes, and yes it was mentioned that changes were made based on input from teachers and others. However those changes were minor changes compared to the feedback given in the principal and teacher surveys as well as in the reports of the various advisory meetings.

There were several initiatives that the principals and teachers said needed major tweaking that did not seem to receive any tweaking. Or, if they were tweaked, they were minor tweaks. Was this a true response to the feedback received from the various groups? I don’t think so. Was it an effort to encourage everyone to be content with the way things are? I think so.

What do you think? Remember, all comments are welcome. Some comments about the meeting have already been given after the previous post.

I-SS to Share Renewed Vision

Via a notice on the School web site and an e-mail to teachers and support staff, I-SS has announced a meeting to share a renewed vision and improvements for education. The meeting will be on Tuesday, January 12 at 6:00 p.m. in the Mac Gray Auditorium on the campus of Statesville High School. I-SS staff and the public are invited to attend.

According to the I-SS web site, Superintendent Brady Johnson will address attendees and share highlights of feedback received during area advisory meetings, as well as from activities conducted with principals, teachers, and other I-SS stakeholders. Johnson will also share his vision and direction for the school district, including changes to the Iredell-Statesville Schools model for continuous improvement and the district's key processes. Board of education chairman Dr. David Cash will also address the audience on behalf of the Iredell-Statesville Board of Education.

The notice also states that attendees will have the opportunity to share their feedback on the event in the form of written plus/deltas, as well as submit items to an issue bin. There is no mention of any time being allotted for questions and answers at the meeting.

Click on the link below to access the announcement on the I-SS web site.

I-SS to Share Vision