June 17, 2010 Consultation Meeting

Salary Schedules for the 2010-2011 School Year.

There will be no change in the salary schedules for the coming year. The only employees who will be receiving a raise are those who are eligible for step increase. HISD stated there is no money available to improve the salary schedules, even for the lowest paid employees. This statement is simply untrue. The administration is proposing a budget of $1,563,380,761. A budget of better than $1.56 billion is very large. It is not a matter of not having money, it is a matter of choosing not to spend some of that money on employee pay increases. Had it not been for legislation passed in 2009 mandating that districts honor the step increases in their salary schedules it is unlikely that HISD would even grant the step increases. It is important that we work hard in the next legislative session to make sure that districts are required to honor all step increases in their salary schedules. As it stands the step increases will cost HISD $7,384,743. The district will advertise this as an average raise of 1.09%. Remember, unless you are eligible for an experience step increase, you will receive no raise this coming year.

The district has chosen not to grant raises claiming a lack of money. One place within the proposed budget where HISD could find money is ASPIRE. HISD is budgeting $29.5 million in local funds for ASPIRE. The board does consider this to be part of the overall employee compensation package even though only about half of the employees will receive money. HFT has long advocated that this money be added to the salary structure. We estimate that $29.5 million will fund a 3% pay raise for all non-administrative employees.

Highlights of the salary schedule from agenda item A-2 of the June 24, 2010 meeting of the school board:

All staff are paid on one of the following salary schedules:

• Teacher Salary Schedule (includes teachers nurses, counselors, librarians, evaluation specialists, and speech therapists)
• Principal and Assistant Principal Salary Schedule
• Master Salary Schedule (includes employees on the master schedule plus bus drivers, food service employees, associate teachers, and hourly personnel)
  
  The proposed changes include:
• Teacher Salary Schedule – one-year experience increase based on 2010-2011 step schedule; this move results in an average increase of 1.09 percent or an expenditure of $7,384,743 (HISD is claiming an average wage increase implying everyone receives something. Remember it is not true.)
• Principal and Assistant Principal Salary Schedule
• Principal – Adjust years of experience up one year; no salary increase is planned for employees on the Principal Salary Schedule.
• Assistant Principal/Dean - Adjust years of experience up one year; no salary increase is planned for employees on the Assistant Principal/Dean Salary Schedule.
  
  Recommended District Budget for 2010-2011
  
  The district is recommending a budget of $1,563,380,761. Along with the $7,384,743 appropriate to fund the step increases the district is also budgeting $10,000,000 to cover projected increases in health insurance. There will be a significant change in the health insurance plans offered next year but the final decisions have not yet been made. District representatives stated the $10 million should be sufficient to cover any increase so there will be no added cost for employees.
  
  Federal stimulus dollars are not included in the regular budget. The district has not yet requested all of the money that is available.
  
  Code of Student Conduct
  
  The code is mostly unchanged except for language changes to accommodate the administrative structure changed caused by the elimination of the Regional Offices. The main substantive changes are the sending of truant students to a DAEP and the procedures for releasing a student from a DAEP.
  

June 16, 2010 Consutation Meeting

On Wednesday (6/16/10) at a specially called Instructional Consultation meeting the district, represented by Anne Best, revealed a new partnership agreement with Teach For America that will increase the number of TFA teachers from 150 to 250. According to the board agenda item:

“During the 2010-2011 school year as many as 250 Teach For America teachers will teach in some of our most challenging assignments in an effort to help students make greater than expected progress in one year.”

The total cost of this agreement is $1.7 million. $700,000 will come from Title 1 Part A funds and will be used to fund 200 corps members. $1,000,000 will come from 2010-2011 HISD general funds and will “fund 50 additional corps members for Apollo 20 schools”. Apollo 20 schools are the nine secondary schools that have recently been targeted by HISD for transformation due to low performance. This past Friday HISD informed 162 teachers from these schools that they will not be invited back to those schools in the fall nor would they be eligible to teach at any of the other Apollo 20 schools. Of 100 extra TFA teachers provided for in this agreement, half of them are designated for Apollo 20 schools. It is worth repeating that these 50 teachers, are going to cost HISD taxpayers $1,000,000 above and beyond their salaries and benefits.

These 50 Apollo 20 TFA members will be on a separate list and are designated for the Apollo 20 schools. The district emphasized the principals of theses schools (it is worth noting that as of this writing most of these schools do not yet have a named principal for next year) will not be forced to take these teachers. HFT expects every one of them to be placed. While the district was unable to give us a specific breakdown by school of how many teachers were asked not to return, they did say that only two of them were from Ryan Middle School. This means that the 50 TFA members will be spread around the other nine schools but it is likely some schools will have a larger number than others.

The district did make some commitments to the 162 displaced teachers. First of all they all are under contract and have jobs for next year. These teachers will not be bound by the normal transfer rule meaning they may receive a transfer at any time. The district will hold job fairs for these teachers. The first will be held at Lamar HS on Friday June 18, 2010. The teachers are free to place themselves at any school that is willing to accept them up until August 9^th, the first day of the new contract year. The district does not yet know where unplaced teachers are to report on that date. The district also emphasized that the displaced teachers were chosen because they did not fit the Apollo 20 model, not because they were bad teachers. It was stated that principals have been told that there should be no stigma attached to these teachers and they are perfectly acceptable to be hired. No principal however, will be forced to hire these teachers; the district will not place them at any school. When we asked for the rubric that was used to determine which teachers did not fit the Apollo 20 model, we were told that none was used.

HFT obviously has several problems with this plan:

• There was no standard used to displace 162 teachers. These teachers were all good enough to be offered a contract, but not acceptable to teach at these schools. They were never told what they had done wrong or what they needed to change. Despite the district claim that they are not stigmatized, we don’t believe it. We think these teachers will for the most part; find it very difficult to find a new school.
• What is the plan for these teachers who do not find schools before the start of school?
• Each of these teachers were experienced professionals but at least 50 of them will be replaced with Teach For America members who have little training and no classroom experience. How can this be a model for improvement?
• We are very concerned that some schools will have a disproportionately large number of inexperienced teachers. Who will be available to train and mentor these teachers on a daily basis?
• Teach For America is very expensive. Could that $1,000,000 been used to support the current teachers? We think so.

HFT honors individual who choose to teach. We believe however; that teaching is a professional commitment and not a temporary vocation. It takes years to figure out what does and does not work in the classroom. There is no magic formula, no teach by the numbers guide. Each child is an individual; the different individuals interacting inside a classroom make each class different. TFA teachers are for the most part bright, enthusiastic, young, not burdened with family responsibilities of their own, and clueless about how to teach the entire child instead of training them to take a test. After the end of their two-year commitment most leave and the cycle of teacher learning begins for some other teacher. Those that stay, who make the long-term professional commitment, usually go on to become excellent teachers. Experience means everything. The HISD plan makes experience a liability and emphasizes change for the sake of change. It is in on way a long-term solution, but instead it is a short-term change done to appease those who are shouting that some change needs to take place.