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Area districts bracing for state education changes

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By Laura A. Bischoff,  Richard O Jones and Andy Sedla, Staff Writers 10:34 PM Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Area school districts are preparing for expected changes in how Ohio school teachers are evaluated as state legislators are primed to vote on a bill that includes such provisions.

Ohio’s next two-year budget, which the House votes on today and the governor is expected to sign on Thursday, calls for Ohio’s roughly 120,000 K-12 teachers to receive annual performance evaluations to help determine who is promoted, retained and fired.

In addition, the bill holds the line on taxes but cuts funding to schools and local governments, allows for tuition hikes and sells off government assets.

The budget bill calls for a new merit pay system for teachers in the 482 districts and charter schools - including Hamilton and Middletown - participating in the federal Race to the Top grant program.

Those districts will base pay on the level of licensure, whether the teacher is ranked highly qualified and evaluation ratings. Non-participating districts are allowed to base pay on performance or on experience and education levels.

Hamilton City School District Superintendent Janet Baker said that the district, which stands to gain $1.74 million in Race to the Top Funds, has been anticipating an evaluation model to meet those requirements and piloted a “walk-through” program this past school year that may fit the bill, but it doesn’t go into the same kind of depth as the current process.

“The biggest concern we have is our capacity to evaluate every teacher every year,” she said. “Currently, we do one-third of our staff every year.

“We’ll just have to adjust to what the requirements are and hope that we have the manpower to do a respectable job,” Baker said.

As a Race to the Top district, Middletown Superintendent Greg Rasmussen said his district has assembled a team of teachers and district officials to identify what would be a fair performance-based pay system for teachers and principals. The district hopes to have a system to pilot within a year.

“I just think this is a topic you have to get right,” Rasmussen said. “Whatever you do, it’s an area that can have impact.”

Debi Gann, president of the Hamilton Classroom Teachers Association, said the union voted on a three-year contract with no raises is to protect its members against layoffs and other cost-cutting measures. One reason for that decision was to prepare for the new evaluation model, which was supposed to have been part of Senate Bill 5, the collective bargaining reform bill that voters are expected to decide on in November.

“The opposition (to performance-based raises) from our point of view is that I don’t choose the child that’s in her classroom and don’t have any control on the environment they have at home,” she said, “and that they will be determining whether I’m a good teacher on a couple of meetings and on one test taken on one day.

“So most of the teachers are quite upset by this,” Gann said. “We have an evaluation process in our contract now that we’re very happy with and we don’t want to see that changed.”

The current process, she said, involves several meetings and other evaluation tools that take place from September to March.

Susan Willoughby-Crawford, an English teacher at Middletown High School, said there are numerous pitfalls if merit-based pay is eventually implemented across the state. First and foremost: all school districts are not alike.

“We’re not all on even ground,” she said. “We don’t start on the same level, we’re not working with the same students.

“You have to compare apples to apples,” she said. “You can’t take a suburban school and compare it to an urban school.”

The governor is expected to use his line-item veto power only on a short list of items. The Senate approved the budget, 22-11, on Tuesday.

The state Board of Education must come up with a framework by Dec. 31 that bases annual teacher and principal evaluations on at least two 30-minute observations and student academic growth.

Teachers will be given written evaluations and opportunities for professional development. Seniority will no longer be the sole basis for retaining or re-hiring teachers unless it comes down to a choice between two teachers with comparable evaluations.

School districts will have until July 1, 2013 to adopt policies that comply with the statewide framework and take effect when collective bargaining agreements expire.

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