September 1, 2011 Consultation Agenda

HOUSTON FEDERATION OF TEACHERS

Please include the following to September 1, 2011 Instructional Consultation agenda:

1.          Violations of paperwork reduction and 187 day duty schedule

Last month we brought into consultation a list rules that if followed would ease the burden on everyone during the school year. Unfortunately we have been receiving widespread and numerous reports of violations of some these most basic and simple rules. The most common violation we are seeing is of TEC 11.164 Restricting Written Information.  HFT has received copies of "templates" for lesson plans from many campuses that violate the paper work restriction act.  At least one principal has tried to say it’s not "paper work" since teachers enter it into the common drive!  This needs to stop and principals and SIO’s need to be schooled on this law. So far the list of schools where this has been reported are:

Sharpstown High School

Westbury High School

Gregory Lincoln

Milby HS
Ortiz MS
Jackson MS
Eastwood HS
Robinson ES
Bonner ES
The Rusk School
Cage ES
Patterson ES

Sharpstown International School

Barbara Jordan

Stevenson MS

Lewis ES

Mitchell ES

We are also compiling a list of several schools that are mandating Saturday training in violation of the 187 day duty schedule.

Why can’t this be fixed? Is the message that SIO’s and principals must follow the law not being delivered? What evidence can the district provide us that these district and school leaders have been informed by central administration that this type of behavior will not be tolerated? Can we be provided with evidence that any district or school leader has been disciplined for these types of violations? This behavior never seems to change. We can only conclude that central administration does not consider these violations to be serious and quite possibly condones or even sanctions this behavior. Must we grieve the highest levels of HISD administration for allowing these violations to continue?

  

2.  EVAAS/Aspire

This is a message from one of our members:

“Last week, HISD employees were able to view their EVAAS number and see which students were used to calculate that number.  When I looked at my number, I was floored as I have never had such a low number!  I then looked at my student data and found that many students who had less than one year of trackable data were being used to calculate my EVAAS number.  From my understanding, only students with three years of trackable data were to be used when calculating the EVAAS data.  I have emailed asking for clarification but have not received any response. “

  

3.  Employee transfers

Why does it take so long for technology to “Add/Change Information on an Existing Network/Portal ID” when someone transfers to another school?  Also, why does the district need a social security number in addition to the employee ID number on the form?  An employee ID number should be sufficient as there is too much identity theft to have a paper form lying around in someone’s office and requiring it to be faxed to just a department.  

4.  New teacher hires

HFT would like to see a complete list of all teacher new hires with a designation for those who are fully certified and those who are ACP's.