Oct. 24, 2017 – West Bend, WI – During Monday night’s West Bend School Board meeting a report was given by WBSD Human Resources director Russell Holbrook and his committee of teachers regarding a written analysis on Teacher Compensation Review.
-Holbrook on group of 25 teachers who participated in the committee. “The purpose of tonight’s presentation is to give an update on the work committee and to share with you the progress we’ve made and at the end we’d like to share with you some thoughts on continuing our work.”
-“The purpose of the study was to identify the strengths as well as areas that need improvement,” said Holbrook.
-Teacher Jody Klemstein on ‘why’ the study. “To continue to be student focused. And that was so evident though out this because we feel as staff our teachers… excuse me, our students deserve the very best.”
-JK – “We need to attract, develop and retain talented teachers and in order to get there we need to develop our teachers to keep abreast of rapid changes… To motivate and reward excellence in education, to remain competitive within the teacher-labor marketplace and to finally ensure the compensation system to be fair and objective.”
-Teacher Jason Penterman – overview of process RE: teacher salary framework “The committee then ranked the most significant areas of concern regarding the teacher salary framework….”
-Teacher Tanya Lohr – “Three main things we ended up talking about in terms of proposed changes to the current plan including levels, stages of development and professional impact credits.”
-TL – “If you wanted to retain quality teachers you have to reward teachers for being here.”
– January 22, 2018 deadline.
TL – “But that there be something for effectively teaching in the district each year. You need to retain teachers and you if you retain teachers you have to reward them for staying.”
Board member Monte Schmiege – “My next concern is with student focus because a lot of what I heard in terms of concerns and I talked to Russ about this several days ago is all about concerns about teachers and not about student success…. I still think it’s kind of under emphasized in the overall presentation.”
Russ Holbrook – “Somehow we need to take a look at how we communicated this evening because that was really important to us… In fact almost every comment made we wanted to ensure… the output of all this work is student achievement… If you help teachers grow and perform well in the classroom you’re going to have excellent learners.”
M. Schmiege – “It seems to me Classroom Learning System is becoming an optional item rather than a definite target. Is this correct?”
R. Holbrook – “The CLS is still at the heart of this program….
M. Schmiege – “I think there’s a very vital thing we’re missing here and that is an overall evaluation of CLS as to whether or not it is the thing we are going to do across the board or it’s something that’s optional … or maybe it’s not something we should do at all.”
Board member Nancy Justman – “That’s a question back to the team and to Russ… are we going to be evaluating CLS and will we hear that by January 22?”
N. Justman – “I think this is a bigger can of worms then potentially just looking at even this piece of it and saying we’re going to be done by January 22 is probably not realistic.”
M. Schmiege – “I’m somewhat leery of what seems to me we’re measuring activity and not success of students. And the rewards are based on activity and not the success of students.”
M. Schmiege – “I think we’re probably going to be getting away from stipends it sounds like, which means we’re adding to long-term forever pay rather than paying for an activity that’s special for that particular year.”
Interim Superintendent Laura Jackson – “It shouldn’t be easy or automatic to move up a level or shift a stage because those are both opportunities.”
