PEORIA, IL -- The Peoria District 150 School Board heard a provocative comment from critic and former teacher Sharon Crews, at its March 19 meeting.
The complete comment is attached below, and begins with the observation that in the past, the school district had more students, more buildings, and more teachers, but fewer administrators.
Now there are four highly paid administrators with titles involving instruction and curriculum. Teachers once had more stay in these categories, she said. And could do that work again.
Critic Terry Knapp noted that a well regarded basketball coach at Quest has been fired, via email, maybe to save about $15,000 in his pay for the rest of the semester.
The principal at Quest "thinks she's a CEO," and is there to save money, like she did at Northmore-Edison, by firing teachers and increasing class sizes, which won her a $5,000 bonus.
She's also the one who OKed the firing of teachers who left before their contracts ended -- a very unusual practice, he said.
Here is a recording of the comments . (It missed the first part of the comments of Crews, but see her complete message below.)
Download D150 Mar 19
-- Elaine Hopkins
Here are the comments of Sharon Crews:
When I started teaching in 1963, there were more schools, more teachers, more students, and fewer central administrators. Now the opposite is true, and public schools are threatened with less funding and possibly even extinction. Please consider the possibility of once again operating without so many administrators.
The long list of central administrators includes four with titles using the words instruction, instructional, or curriculum, thus implying that their jobs relate to tasks that teachers actually carry out. Their salaries fall between $128 and $135,000 with benefits between $10 and 25,000 and they have staffs to help them. Their tasks seem to relate to deciding what teachers should teach and how they should teach. Please consider some questions about these tasks.
Traditionally, teachers served on textbook committees to select new texts. Lathan usurped that task when she spent millions of dollars on texts very quickly with no teacher input. A year or so after, I asked to see the curriculum guides for these texts—there were none. At one time, the main tasks of the Curriculum Director were supervising teacher committees to choose texts and then to prepare curriculum guides. Once what was to be taught was decided, it was up to building administrators to check to see if teachers were doing so—and that seems appropriate.
I believe that the “how” teachers teach is the creative part that really can’t be duplicated—it is unique with each teacher. I hope board members see the necessity of asking some questions and arriving at some conclusions.
A recent message from Dr. Kherat stated that Academic Instructional Officers serve to improve student achievement and to promote effective teaching and learning. Why not prepare a questionnaire to ask teachers how they think these administrators have specifically contributed to student achievement. Ask how much time teachers have spent with administrators. Please ask the administrators how they believe they have contributed to student achievement.
Does anybody believe that meetings of teachers led by administrators are going to affect student achievement? What qualifies these specific people to teach teachers? Also, teachers already have help today that I didn’t have. The internet provides lesson plans and assignments for every piece of literature or skill taught in English classes. YouTube provides step by step science experiments, etc.
Remember that every certified teacher gained knowledge in college, especially for their major course of study (English, math, science, etc.) and took education classes where they gained information about how to present this knowledge to students. Elementary teachers take methods classes for most of their educational experience.
You are already paying teachers for the knowledge they gained from their own education. They come here to gain the third component—experience. It has probably been quite some time since these administrators were in the classroom. Why should their remembrances be more valuable than the experiences of teachers currently interacting with students? Administrators are currently working on plans for the core curriculum.
Why not have them work half a day planning and then the other half of the day teaching actual classes of students as a lab school to test the effectiveness of their own ideas and to allow teachers to use their prep periods to observe. Show teachers how instead of telling them how. Consider that there are likely many teachers in classrooms with as much or more experience and teaching success as these central administrators had in their careers. Isn’t it time to reward teachers financially for choosing to continue teaching instead of seeking administrative credentials and accepting jobs with no direct impact on or contact with students. - 30 -