Who leads the way for Idaho’s young learners could come down to the luck of the draw.
At least one Southeast Idaho school district may resort to a lottery to determine which teachers keep their jobs in response to the state’s forced upheaval of public education.
Blackfoot’s board of trustees approved two resolutions during a special meeting Friday that suspend all existing policies regarding employment and establish a new Reduction in Force (RIF) policy. This new policy includes drawing teachers’ names from a hat to determine if they stay or go.
It may be purely coincidental that the actions were taken at a special noon meeting held when the leadership of the Blackfoot teachers union was attending an Idaho Education Association delegate convention in Boise. Coincidental or not, the perception of events by teachers in the district will only add salt to the wounds inflicted by the Legislature this session.
“Students Come First” appears to be a misnomer for State Superintendent Tom Luna’s education plans, which were pushed immediately into law by legislative emergency provisions. But his so-called reforms should be known as “The Learning Lottery.”
To say teacher morale statewide is taking a beating is as obvious as Luna’s lack of a formal education or classroom experience.
Yet, his plans are forcing massive changes in the way local school districts provide learning opportunities to their patrons’ children. These plans now have the powerful force of law.
Buckling under that force, school districts like Blackfoot are scrambling to conform. District 55 Superintendent Scott Crane said it best when he addressed the board about the need to approve Friday’s resolutions.
“Your power to make decisions for the Blackfoot community has been limited by these laws,” he told the trustees.
This includes the power to select which teachers to cut in order to accommodate another $1.4 million reduction in state funding. The new state laws strictly prohibit districts from considering a teacher’s years of experience as criteria for future employment. Blackfoot’s new RIF policy does include natural attrition, probationary status and state endorsements to help winnow the ranks, but when all else fails, jobs will go to those who win a drawing of names.
It may be unlikely, but a former teacher-of-the-year award winner could find his or her name in the bottom of the hat next to a relative rookie to the classroom. This is not the scenario of empowering the best teachers in Idaho to rise up and turn the tide of mediocrity in Idaho public schools that the backers of Luna’s plan have been touting.
It is local control being controlled by legislation that was forged without input from the very people who will be responsible for making it successful.
And apparently local school boards can do nothing but avert their eyes and close the door.
Two members of the Blackfoot board voiced their protests for the new rules forced on them by the state. Both Bryce Lloyd and Peter Lipovac voted against the resolution to nullify existing district policies.
Lloyd told board members he was certain that actions by the board to conform to the new state education laws would result in lawsuits, including alleged age discrimination against seasoned veterans of Blackfoot’s classrooms.
Time will tell. What’s difficult to believe is that some teachers chosen to stay on the job may owe it all to pure luck.
In reality, it’s becoming impossible to consider any teacher in Idaho lucky.
I think Luna and Co. have an agenda to privatize all education. Their “reforms” are just a way to make that happen sooner and with less opposition. Education in Idaho could do well with less money as long as the best teachers are kept and treating fair. What is going on in this state and how local school boards are reacting to it are downright scary. Idaho will make its own bed and will have to sleep in it. The consequences of the online-degree Luna’s brainchild will be felt for decades.
Using a computer as the “primary tool” for education is very much akin to the “cart before the horse”. Once the classroom setting is removed the interaction focal point between student and teacher removes any and all desire to to find accomplishliment to any given presentation, I.E. “dont get it, dont need it, games over”The problem thats created this crisis is the ongoing administrative, none producing managment schemes that have been proven time and time again to have failed, yet fueled by tax payer infusion of supplemental levies to provide saleries and benefits to the select few at the “top” with student tools and teaching facilities left to as”make do”. The educated people in this country, whom over the last decades are either retired or who, have passed away and are not being replaced at the same ratio in this particular process as before, primarily because of computerization. Think this a problem now, what happens when the main power supply fails and the “new generation of lap top” dummies cannot communicate!
Why do people always view technology only in the positive? Answer: $$$$$$
There are consequences of ideas and technology, for both good and bad.
Luna says we want to be able to hold onto the ‘good’ teachers, and be able to terminate the ‘bad’ teachers without the length of time that person has been a teacher being considered. School districts say they will get sued by those fired in such a manner. How then to retain the ‘good’ teachers? And if you get fired are you now a ‘bad’ teacher?
What the school districts need to do is put their own criteria together for retaining the best teachers(classes with best scores on tests? popular with students? etc) and not pass the buck by saying we afraid of being sued so we are throwing all the good and bad teachers together in a hat and if a good one goes, oh well, it’s Luna’s fault.
I don’t like Luna’s plan at all, but it’s now state law. Deal with it and do YOUR job, keep as many of our ‘best’ teachers as you can!
Some of our good teachers are getting jobs in Wyoming. Luna’s plan is right on track.