School Board Update
January 2007
Happy New Year! I hope you and your loved ones enjoyed special times together in 2006, and are beginning 2007 with health and happiness.
The New Year is always a good time to take stock in the past year and plan for the next, and in that spirit, I’m attaching the first school board update of 2007. In it I cover some of our accomplishments in the last few months and detail my priorities for the coming year. In particular, I have done a lot of thinking about our budget, how to attract and retain the best possible teachers and how to revamp our magnet program.
Thank
you again for allowing me to serve as your School Board member.
It’s truly a privilege. Please
call 546-7098 or email me at
if you have any
comments or questions, or whenever I can be of help.
Very Truly Yours,
Indya Kincannon
Budget
Summary
In the summer of 2006 we approved a $332.2m operating budget.
This is an increase of 4% over last year's $320m budget. It may
surprise you to know that 84% of our budget goes towards salaries and
benefits. Education is a people business!
Below I’ve highlighted some key aspects to this year’s budget:
· $5.3m for teacher raises;
· 3% salary increase for non-certified employees;
· $975k to cover 100% of the increase in health insurance premiums;
· $3.5m for step increases for all staff, certified and non-certified;
· $50k to fund a full-time grant writer (our first);
· $800k for a pilot program for foreign language in elementary schools;
· $600k for a tech support person for each of our 12 high schools.
Sometimes it’s easier to get the big picture of the school budget visually, so I posted some revenue and expenditure charts on my website.
We’ll be starting the budget process again this month. It’s a complicated – and sometimes contentious – process, because our schools need so much. My priorities continue to be the funds that go directly to students, classrooms and teachers. We need to be good stewards of public money, so I get as much information as possible about expenditures, look for cost-savings methods other systems use, and ask the hard questions in our budget meetings. Sometimes our decisions aren’t popular, but our obligation is to the children and the taxpayers.
Magnet
Task Force
In 2006 I visited magnet schools in
I pushed to have our magnet schools independently evaluated by UT researchers. They completed their evaluation and presented it to the School Board in August. One of their recommendations was to establish a magnet task force to improve and expand our magnet schools. My motion to establish a magnet task force passed unanimously, and the task force will begin its work on January 10th.
I
am a member of the task force, along with 17 other people from across the
community, and will do everything in my power to make it an effective,
efficient group. My goal is to
bring comprehensive recommendations to the School Board in time for the
coming budget cycle. Please
let me know if you have any thoughts on how we can improve and/or expand
our magnet schools.
Salary
Innovations
Beginning in August, I worked with a group of school
administrators and Knox County Education Association folks to explore
salary innovations. We
surveyed teachers about differential pay for hard-to-staff schools,
hard-to-staff subjects (special ed., foreign language, science and math),
and excellent performance, as measured by value-added test scores and
other criteria. KCEA is
compiling the survey results and will report back to the school board this
month.
Most teachers readily acknowledge that teachers in high poverty schools have harder jobs and seem open to the idea of bonuses or higher pay for teachers in such schools. Teachers also understand that it’s harder to recruit people in certain fields, such as math and science. For example, we funded a pilot program for foreign language instruction in our elementary schools, but so far *nobody* has applied, despite advertising locally and in a national publication.
In most labor markets, when demand for certain types of workers exceeds supply, the price attached to that labor (salary and benefits) goes up so more people are willing to do those jobs. This happens throughout the public and private sector, including higher education. We need to be creative about attracting and retaining qualified staff for these hard-to-staff positions. I’m recommending consideration of several strategies that have been used successfully in other school districts:
· Offer differential pay based on supply, demand, performance, and difficulty of the job;
·
Encourage talented, well-qualified people to teach on a
provisional basis before certification is completed, as in Governor
Bredesen’s Teach
· Offer one-time signing bonuses at recruitment fairs;
· Revise our hiring timetable so that top-notch candidates in hard-to-staff positions sign contracts early, rather than waiting until the budget is approved in late summer;
·
Add perks for people to teach in high poverty schools.
In
I
voted in favor of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), which is being
tried in 3
Volunteering
in Schools
This was the third year I’ve read weekly to students through the
“Read With Me” program. Year one was at Inskip, year two at
Shannondale and this year in Ms. Elaine Womack’s 2nd grade
classroom at Sterchi Elementary. I
also spend Wednesday mornings with my daughter’s kindergarten class at
Elevators
@ Central High, Gresham Middle, Belle Morris & Fountain City
Elementary
For years, physically challenged students at these schools had no
way to move from one building level to another. Although required by the
Americans with Disability Act, the upgrades were entangled in a mess of
red tape and bureaucracy. This fall Representative Harry Tindell and
Senator Jamie Woodson helped me cut through the red tape as I worked with
the Public Building Authority to get these improvements done.
I expect elevators to be installed at all these schools within a
few months.
No one can miss the amount of time the School Board has spent
discussing the new high school. Re-zoning families from school to school
is never easy. We’re committed to opening the new school with a
reasonable number of students and the excellent academic and
extra-curricular opportunities all our high schools should offer.
I’m open to the idea of more specialization and school choice at
the high school level, but only if it’s on a system-wide basis and
therefore available to all students in
We recently received our first charter school application from the
Florence Crittenton Agency, an organization that provides treatment for
struggling teen girls. While
I’m not flatly opposed to charter schools, I didn’t support this
application for two reasons: First,
it did not meet the legal criteria for a charter school; and second, a
majority of their clients come from outside
2nd
Congratulations to
On
the academic front,
In
spite of incredible staff dedication and hard work, the school continues
to face many challenges. Almost a quarter of freshmen enter
Whittle
Springs Middle School
Whittle Springs is also exploring innovative ways to improve academic
achievement. Through
some grants they’ve recently acquired several “smart boards,” which
are like digitized interactive white boards.
The teachers at Whittle Springs have successfully integrated this
new technology into their lessons and the students seem more engaged.
Today’s students are very media and tech savvy, so we hope
engaging them through media will improve their academic achievement.
I've also helped Whittle Springs obtain the funds to replace the deteriorated seats in the auditorium and have a covered walkway built to protect students from the elements when walking to busses or portable classrooms.
Christenberry
I worked with Christenberry staff to win a $20,000 grant from the Knox
County Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Committee to make the
playground accessible to children with special needs. When finished later
this month, children in wheelchairs or with braces and crutches and
children without physical challenges can play together, building skills
and having fun.
Belle Morris
I’m working with the Belle Morris PTA and the
Sterchi
I helped secure funding for a covered walkway at Sterchi.
Now students can walk to art, TAG, Speech and Occupational Therapy,
and English Language Learning classes without getting drenched.
I’ve also enjoyed volunteering once a week at Sterchi this year.
It’s great to see so many parent volunteers and the students are
making great strides with their reading.
Shannondale
At the beginning of the school year Shannondale’s enrollment was
even higher than expected and their kindergarten classes were overflowing.
I worked with the superintendent to add a kindergarten teacher to
serve all the new students.
This is a good reminder that we have over-crowded schools in many parts of the county and need to consider all strategies when coping with increased enrollment, including new construction, additions and re-zoning.
Inskip
Congratulations to the students, faculty and staff of Inskip on their
great achievement. Inskip has made adequate yearly progress (AYP) for two
consecutive years and is no longer a “high priority school” under No
Child Left Behind. The
turn-around at Inskip has been so remarkable that an official from the
U.S. Department of Education came to visit the school to commend their
efforts and learn more about how they are succeeding.
I will continue to advocate on Inskip’s behalf so they can keep
up the excellent work.
Looking Ahead
My top priorities continue to be improving the quality of our schools,
increasing opportunities for meaningful parental involvement and making
the best possible use of our limited resources. I'll be at various
school and community functions, PTA/PTO meetings and volunteering in the
schools to make sure I stay in close touch with all of you. Please
don't hesitate to share your thoughts, ideas and concerns.
