Mrs. Parker brought up having residency requirements for employees. I’m not against this idea (especially for administrators), but I do have some concerns. There are many two-teacher or one-teacher, one-civil-servant families, where both may be subject to residency requirements. There are many excellent “second-career” teachers who may have children of their own in high school and be reluctant to uproot their family, especially in their first couple years of teaching. And in this economy, there are many families working in two different cities who may wish to split the commute.
It seems obvious to me there would have to be exceptions, and the risk is that you either exempt so many people that it’s a meaningless requirement, or that you make it too draconian and have no sensitivity to people’s family situations. (I even wonder if it might not make more sense to make residency a requirement for tenure but not for initial hire, given that attrition for teachers is so high the first couple years in teaching? And could you fire a tenured teacher who moved out of the district?)
I don’t have a strong opinion either way — I feel I need to explore the issues and implications a lot further before I develop an opinion — and I am interested in input from the community.
(As a reminder, all comments are now moderated prior to posting and may take some time to appear on the site. I am not filtering out opinions but controlling a problem with a spam issue and with a couple of people making in appropriate statements about district children in particular, which just isn’t okay with me.)
My husband is a civil servant and I have children in high school in a neighboring community. Should I “try” to sell my home, force my husband to resign his career, and move my children to a peoria high school because Peoria’s tax base is declining?
A commmenter on C.J.’s site says there is a state law that would prohibit a residency requirement. As a charter school district, is Distract 150 subject to any such prohibition?
Laura-
Thank you for being willing to look at both sides of the issue. I can tell you that after teaching elsewhere for several years, I made the decision to come to #150 last year. While apprehensive at first (I’ve grown up in the area and grown up with #150 bad press!) I can tell you that serving the students of #150 has been the most rewarding position I have ever had. Having said that, I have two children who are established in their home schools in another community. If the district were to impose a residency requirement, I would (with a sad heart) give up my position in the district in order to not uproot my children from the school system and friends they have grown up with.
a D150 teacher:
This is not about you or your husband. It is about the children and the community.
Hell yes. This is a great idea. Obviously there would be a grandfathered program for certain teachers which is ok by me. I don’t expect people to uproot their families and children. But I do believe if they change their address it has to be to Peoria, and that new hires should be required to live in the district or even city limits. Now for that pesky state law…
This is a brilliant idea….if you want to restrict the talent pool of available teachers. Force teachers to live within the boundary lines, and they will either a) send their kids to private school, or b) reject D150 as a possible employer.
How about we base teacher performance, not by how long you’ve been there, but by how well their students are doing? Tenured teachers have a license to screw off…..and most don’t, but some do. But first and foremost, let’s go after admin.
They need standards, and they need enforced. Troublemaker kids need to be removed and dealt with in a harsh, consistent manner. Show a couple good examples, and the rest of the kids will fall in line.
And please, for the love of whatever, quit approving the new superintendent’s buddies for 6 figure jobs. That looks really, really bad. What an incredibly demoralizing move.
I think this a bad idea given the current conditions of the District. The number of new hires in the near future will be minimal, so I am not sure how it will really improve the community and its tax base and it will be difficult to establish a fair and practical policy for all the reasons you identified. Also, I want teachers like Nikki to stay on board, regardless of their address. The District should be focusing on building harmonious relations with the union to make curriculum changes, longer school days, etc. — changes that will make a difference in student performance. Forcing the residency requirement at a time, when the District needs to concentrate on holding the line on compensation and lowering benefit costs it not good labor/management strategy.
That said, I think it would be a fine idea to “strongly encourage” higher level administrative staff such as the Superintendent and those moving to the community to work for her to live in Peoria. In such cases, it is simply a matter of modeling the leadership qualities the District should be seeking and I would question a candidate’s “fit” if they were unwilling to live in Peoria without offering good cause.
Completely off-topic—
Can you find out why the latest minutes are NOT on the website. The last ones are from May 10.
Thanks!
Probably because we recently changed Board secretaries, but I will check into it.
For years, District 150 has consistently pink-slipped a considerable number of teachers in April. Although the majority seem to be rehired by the start of school, the agonizing few months of uncertainty and waiting have not made for a care-free summer for the teachers. Obviously, this practice does not engender a spirit of hope for the future nor of stability of the District for our non-tenured teachers. Until the District Administrators acquire and implement the planning skills needed to eliminate this yearly insult to a significant number of dedicated teachers, the District has no right to impose a residency requirement. The “fly by the seat of their pants” perspective that has been the District’s M.O. for the last decade or so is not a formula for the initial hiring of and then subsequent retention of outstanding
teachers.
By the way, Laura, my comments aren’t new. This has been discussed by Board members years ago. Martha Ross probably was involved, as I know there were several members who saw this as a priority.
Yearly pinkslipping is not unique to District 150; it is a common planning tool statewide because of the way teacher contracts are implemented in Illinois. That “yearly insult” won’t go away, in 150 or other districts, unless there are significant changes to contracts, which I find unlikely.
Laura, It seems to me that the volume of pink slips handed out by # 150 considerably surpasses the average number handed out by many districts of a similar size. Nothing scientific; just perception of many with whom I’ve spoken; admittedly, not the whole state!
If “pink slipping” is perceived as a “planning tool”…..Mon Dieu! that leaves me “wordless” for the moment. After rereading your comment, however, I see that you based your statement on a particular situation : ” the way teacher contracts are implemented”. I don’t understand what you mean and how that brings about pinkslipping. I would really like to know. As a newly retired teacher with only 13 years in the public sector, I’m very interested in the significant changes that you feel need to be made in teachers’ contracts so that the “insulting pinkslipping” might disappear! There’s got to be a way to move forward in this regard; it sounds as though you’ve given this considerable thought. Yet, you find it “unlikely” that there would be significant changes to the teachers’ contracts–do you mean statewide, or locally?
Teachers have to be told whether they’re rehired the next year or not before student enrollment is known (I think April 30 is the date for teachers?); if they’re rehired but not needed, they still have to be paid that entire next year. And student mobility is particularly high over the summer, since many families put off moving until the break in the school year. So what many districts do is pink slip a large number of non-tenured teachers — in some cases all of them — and then hire them back as the staffing needs become known for the next year. It’s more common in large districts than in small ones; it may provoke particular outrage in Peoria because it’s less common the smaller, rural districts in the area than in Chicago-area schools. (I grew up outside Chicago and my mom teaches in the suburbs, so I always considered it par for the course.)
I don’t have any particular changes in mind, and I don’t know if changes would be helpful. On the one hand, pink slipping teachers is stressful for those teachers, even if they’re pretty sure they’ll be hired back. On the other hand, if we changed the contract date to, say, September 1, then you’d have a lot of teachers finding out at the last second that they weren’t needed and having no job for the next year. With the pink slipping system they have a chance to pursue other employment over the summer on the off chance they aren’t hired back.
It’s also commonly used in the Chicago area as a way to let go underperforming teachers in their first few years without giving them a negative evaluation; since everyone is pink slipped every spring until staffing needs are known, and staffing needs can fluctuate so much, it’s not a black mark. Again, whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on your view of the situation. Perhaps a particular teacher was just a bad fit, not a bad teacher, and deserves a chance to try again elsewhere; perhaps they were a bad teacher and should have negative evaluations on the record.
It’s not a system unique to Illinois, and it is a difficult situation: schools need to be able to adjust staffing to meet changing needs, but teachers who “miss” a hiring date are “out” for an entire year because school staffing is primarily a yearly exercise. So the pink slipping is an attempt that’s developed over time to give teachers fair warning and a fair chance to seek other employment while giving schools the chance to adjust staffing. It’s not a great system, but I don’t know of a better one that balances both sets of interests.
Money spent on demographic planning and projection can help minimize this, and can be a very successful tool in communities with fairly stable school populations. However, District 150 has very high mobility rates; while more robust demographic planning would help with the uncertainty and pink-slipping, I don’t think district taxpayers would be very enthusiastic about spending money on a non-instructional expense like demographic planning, and the high district mobility rate would still ensure there would be more uncertainty about staffing than is “average” in Illinois.
Thank you, Laura, for your thought-provoking explanation. It took me “back in time” where a few beginning teachers were struggling to such a degree that they were questioning teaching as their career choice. They were really down on themselves as to how they could have been so wrong. It was only after many open discussions with ‘senior’ faculty members that they began to question not “teaching” itself but asking themselves and each other to answer the 5 W’s !
They not only remained in the teaching profession, but became outstanding leaders.
Despite the high mobility rates, it would be interesting to know , if “basically”, enrollment remains pretty much the same from one year to the next. We don’t have to do a grandiose study -each building can pull up on the computer their enrollment totals for the last 5 yrs to get an idea.
At Von Steuben, Principal Dave Oberfel also feels the impact of mobility, yet he successfully plans the number of teachers he needs and usually distributes class schedules to teachers before they leave for summer vacation!