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.

Meeting with Brady Johnson and Pam Schiffman

This past Thursday I went to the Central Office to inspect some school records that were ready for me to view. Mr. Johnson walked out into the hall to greet me and took me back to Dawn Creason’s office to get the documents that were ready to inspect and to show me the ones they were still compiling. One set of documents that were finally compiled was the database indexes that I had requested months ago.

Brady invited me into his office and said that he wanted Pam Schiffman to describe what was included in the indexes. Pam said that as far as they knew, I-SS was the first school system to complete the indexes as required by NC law. Brady said it was an obscure part of the Public Records law and that most institutions probably don’t know about it. As a side note, I did not have any problems noticing it when I read the NC Public Records Law that is available one of the State’s web sites.

The indexes show the files and fields included in the School’s database and state whether or not the information is available to the public. As you might suspect some of the databases have information about students and some have information about employees. Some of the databases that the system uses are owned and maintained by the State. Pam told me that if I wanted to see the indexes for those databases, I would have to request that information from the NC Department of Instruction.

Some time ago, Brady had informed me that he would be willing to have Pam explain the formula that I-SS had developed to rank the NC school systems. Since Pam was already meeting with us I asked if she could ahead and explain the formula, which she did. She showed me the categories that she uses to produce the ranking and how she puts them together to determine the final ranking. I must say that I now feel more confident about the process even though I-SS determines what goes into the formula and the weighting for each category. Pam said that she is currently in the process of compiling a ranking based on the latest test scores and that she will share the ranking with me when it is completed. I will post that information when I receive it and will explain more about the formula at that time.

While I was in Brady’s office he showed me a number of binders of documents that Dr. Holliday had left behind. Brady said that any time I wanted to look through them, I could make an appointment to do so. He said that he wants to assure everyone that he believes in complete transparency and that all school documents are available for inspection. Of course that would not apply to confidential information. Brady also asked me what I-SS could do to improve the transparency of the system and I said that one way would be to place more information on the I-SS web site. As an example, I recommended that all documents that are presented to the School Board before and at their meetings should be made available on the web site.

As we were talking, Brady mentioned that he did plan to let teachers take the survey that was presented to the principals just before school started. This is the survey that lists various school procedures and allows the person taking the survey to indicate whether that procedure was working and should be retained as is, or useful but in need of improvement (tweaking), or not useful and should be abandoned. Brady said that the survey would be administered sometime around the beginning of November. He also told me that Larry Rogers, SHS Principal, had taken it upon himself to administer the survey to his faculty. Brady shared the results of two items on that survey. One was the item relating to the IFs. Of the SHS faculty, 11% said to keep it as is, 39% said to abandon it, and the greatest percent said to keep it but to tweak it. The other item was the one relating to PDSAs. I do not remember the breakdown for that one but the largest percentage of the SHS teachers said to abandon it.

At the community meeting, Brady had said that he planned to meet with the IFs and talk to them about what he thought their role should be. This past Thursday, Brady told me that he will be having that meeting with the IFs on this coming Thursday. He said that one of the things he was going to tell them was that with the budget the way it is, come this spring principals may have to decide just how important is it to have an IF and whether that money is needed to retain a teacher or some other staff person.

Brady also said that he wanted to again reassure everyone that he is willing to meet with anybody and to listen to his or her concerns. He said that he has heard that some individuals are still afraid to come forward and speak to him. Brady said that he does not want it to be that way. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I went to the Central Office expecting to just inspect some school records. But, I spent most of my time in Brady’s office talking to him and to Pam Schiffman. I think that this is indeed a true example of how willing Brady is to meet with individuals.