Listening to last nights school board meeting (nerdy...I know...but I like to be in the know). They discussed the state mandated differentiated pay plan that is going to change how teachers are paid. The board is in the beginning stages of this process. I was pretty impressed by their sensitivity that this is not necessarily the best way to go and the difficulty teachers face. Mr. Odom said its a tough time to be a teacher in Tennessee. Tim Tackett (who made me so mad last year) really impressed me with his statement his wife (36 year veteran teacher of Kindergarten) helped him prepare. He pointed out that while its all good and well to pay extra money to find Chemistry teachers and other hard to staff areas, K - 2 teachers should have some special consideration. He noted that they are the foundation and that what happens there effects everything else. It was also noted by the board that being a K-2 teacher is especially tough because so much of our evaluation scores come not from teacher effect data, but total school data. It will be hard to earn bonuses when a large chunk of our score is not directly in our hand, even though our work does greatly influence future work. It was good to see that on this, our school board is behind us and trying to be sensitive in this process.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 02:39:02 +0000