385-646-5000
2500 South State Street South Salt Lake City UT 84115
F.A.Q.
Translate:

Granite School DistrictGranite School District logo

Granite School District > Superintendent's Office > Sup’s Vlog

Sup’s Vlog

Performance Pay for Special Education Instructors

Question – I am sure you are overwhelmed with emails about the changing climate in our public schools. I have been a Special Education teacher in the district for 7 years. I am by no means a veteran teacher, but I can tell you that I love my job, love the kids, and am very grateful to work in such a supportive school district. I have chosen to work in challenging Title One schools, with challenging students. I have heard that we will now be given grades as schools, and soon be paid on the performance of our students. I really have just one question, what will that look like for Special Educators? This worries me because truly disabled kids make slower progress, beings why they are receiving special education. I really would hate to see a lot of amazing teachers go teach regular education on the east side, due to pay cuts to already sparse earnings. I really appreciate the opportunity to ask you this question. Thank you

Response – Great question!  The USOE has a committee convened and meeting regularly to develop procedures.  We absolutely expect that this committee to recognize circumstances of specific educational situations or students when developing performance measures. As we get additional information, we will be providing that to all of our employees. Thanks for the question.

Classified Fingerprinting Costs

Question – Why are classified employees expected to pay for fingerprinting and for some of us…again? I had my fingerprints taken when I was first hired…and I’m pretty sure they haven’t changed. Also I am confused as to why it is $45. I’ve worked for and work for several employers that require yearly background checks and all I simply do is fill out a form and HR submits it, and I have NEVER been charged for it. Not only is it expensive, but it is being taken out around the holidays, and people are already struggling.

Response – Utah Rule (R277-516-4) requires that all classified employees and volunteers with significant unsupervised access to students must have a regular background check. We have determined to do this on the same five-year cycle as with licensed employees.  

As you may be aware, teachers have been required to pay for their own fingerprinting costs for some time. Their cost is substantially more (currently $74) than the $45 charged to classified employees. This delivers an FBI background check to cover all 50 states,  and is the best tool to protect students.

It is unfortunate that we needed to schedule fingerprinting around the holidays but it was necessary in order to print the numbers of classified employees Granite employs. We did not have the luxury to skip November, December and January – there were simply too many employees to print. Please know that we value your work and service to children.

The HR office has two fingerprint machines and employs additional help to accommodate the expanded requirement this year for fingerprinting. They currently print from 7:00 am to 3:45pm Monday through Friday.

Thanks to the HR Department for their assistance in responding to this question.

Counters for Canvas

Question – Is there a way to have a counter on our Canvas sites so that we can tell how much students or parents are using them?

Response – There is currently no dashboard for viewing granular data on Canvas. We have voiced our desire to have an easy way to see what is being used and not being used on a macro and micro level. Canvas is working on developing Course Analytics which will show things like page views, participations, etc. by student. We have been told this will be released in January.

Thanks to our Educational Technology Department for their help in responding to this question.

Attendance Concerns

Question – I have a student who has been on hot lists for many years. He has been to pre-court hearings every single year and documentation is in his cum folder. He was #1 in our school for the number of days missed by a student, I have been told he missed over fifty days. His mom has outright told me that she can’t make him come to school, and doesn’t know what to do with him.

My concern is that I know this student is headed for dropping out. I know this student is red flagged for grades, for attendance, for social issues, etc. I know that his history shows that he has gone to court several years in a row with no consequences given to his parents or him. I am being told to be patient and let him miss the required number of days. In my mind, this equates to, “let’s wait for this child to fail, then we can help.” If we wait for him to miss more days, he is further behind and closer to dropping out. I want to be proactive and my school day is full of activities that make other students want to come to school. I try talking to him about missing school, but when I tried, his mom told me that me talking about it just embarrasses him and makes him want to attend even less. I am very frustrated because I know this boy is smart, has potential to be college bound, but I just have to sit here and wait for him to fail. Is there a solution to our attendance policies that are allowing students to miss 17 days of school before we take notice and start procedures?

I think if this is fixed, and we start holding parents and/or students accountable for their absences, we will start to see more positive results in student learning and probably even graduation rates.

Response – Attendance works! Student attendance at school is essential. Research shows that students with excellent attendance achieve higher grades and experience more academic success. Excellent attendance is defined as being absent from school less than 5% of the time.

You make a great suggestion about getting this “fixed.”  At this time, the law gives schools and districts few tools to hold students accountable for their attendance (or absence) other than the natural consequence of an impact on grades when objectives aren’t mastered.  Please know that we are as aggressive as possible in referring students to court – where additional accountability tools exist. 

The tools we do have are as follows:  Granite School District attendance policy is designed to encourage students to attend school and to be in compliance with state law (Utah Code 53A-11-101-105). This policy can be found at https://www.graniteschools.org/depart/schoolaccountability/studentservices/attendanceprogram/Documents/Attendance%20Policy%202010-2011.pdf .

Students and their parents have the primary responsibility for being in attendance at school, but as you are aware, this does not always mean the problem is addressed. Granite School District provides a useful tool to help parents in this responsibility to monitor their children’s attendance. This tool is part of the parent’s account in ‘Gradebook’. The tool allows parents to automatically receive word of absences, tardies, missing assignments, and failing scores whenever they occur.

Granite School District is currently piloting ‘Attendance Works’ at several of our schools. ‘Attendance Works’ is a national and state initiative that promotes awareness of the important role that school attendance plays in achieving academic success. The three objectives of ‘Attendance Works’ are:
• 1. Build public awareness and political will about the need to address chronic absence.
• 2. Developing coalitions to advance state and local policies that promote attendance.
• 3. Provide technical assistance and tools to help communities, schools and school districts monitor and work together to address chronic absence.
You can find more information about ‘Attendance Works’ at http://www.attendanceworks.org

Our hope is that through some of these programs, parents will better recognize their critical role in ensuring student attendance for academic success.

Thanks to the Prevention and Student Placement Department for their assistance in responding to this question.

Credits for Graduation

Question – I’m a student at Cyprus High School in the 11th grade. I have been in German class for three years. I’m being told that I can’t use my German credit as an English credit because of my grade level. The other people (12th graders) are allowed to do it. Why should they be allowed to but not me? I worked just as hard as they did to get into 3rd year German.

Response – There is an ongoing tension that only the state board of education can resolve between two strategies for awarding credit: competency or seat time.  Please know that we are pointing these same kinds of conflicts out to the state.  At this time however, state graduation requirements include 4 years of English credits: English 9, 10, 11 specifically, and then an additional course in the 12th grade year. The approved courses (that is approved at both the state board and our LEA board levels) that can be taken in the senior year to earn this credit include English 12, Debate, Journalism, and a World Language 3 or 4 course, among others. Your German 3 course taken now in grade 11 cannot count in advance for a course that is prescribed to be taken in the senior year. However, you can take German 4 next year which would count for that 4th English credit.

Thanks to Student Learning & Support for their assistance in responding to this question.

Superintendent Snapshot – Recognizing a First Year Teacher

This first year teacher was pretty surprised when the superintendent walked into her classroom. She is one of MANY Great Granite Educators. A full description of her nomination as a “Great Granite Educator,” will appear in next Monday’s edition of Connections. Have a great short week and Happy Thanksgiving!

Question – Faculty Meeting Visits?

Question – When I did my student teaching in Davis School District the superintendent visited our school and attended our faculty meeting. He also came up and talked with me and asked how my experience was going? He wanted to know if there was anything he could do to make my student teaching experience a positive one. This experience really made a difference to me. I felt cared about and really felt this man knew what was happening in his schools. I am sure he was told I was there but he still took the time to talk to me in person.

I have been in the Granite School District for 22 years now and I have never attended a faculty meeting where the superintendent took the time to attend and find out for himself how his teachers are doing. I find that truly amazing to say the least. I believe that the superintendent could take the time to attend one faculty meeting at each school each school year. I would appreciate knowing why this could or could not be a possible.

Response – It sounds like that superintendent was a very personable man – and a good example! As teachers and principals know, faculty meetings are the principal’s meetings and that time is precious. I have attended numerous faculty meetings, but always at the principal’s invitation. I do visit all 92 of our schools annually and make time to talk with teachers when I’m there. I’ll make it a point to come to your classroom the next time I’m at Granite Park. In the meantime, I frequently have meetings with individual teachers and with groups of teachers. For people who don’t want to schedule an appointment, I clear my schedule on the first Wednesday of every month for “Walk-in Wednesdays.” I’ve found that folks seem more prepared to talk about their experience and specifically how things are going when they have some advance notice – frankly, I like advance notice myself. If you’re inviting me over for a chat, I’ll be more than happy to come by, or you’re welcome to come my way as well.

Sincerely,

Superintendent Bates

Gradebook Q & A

We have received many questions regarding the new Gradebook system. Some common questions have been posted here along with responses.

I have been trying to pull up a simple missing work report for my class…
There is currently no single report for elementary schools that will print a single page of missing assignments for an entire class of students. There is a report that can be run for each student individually, but as was pointed out, this is a lot of work. This type of report is the single most requested item we have received for the new Gradebook. Our plan is to modify the report for single students and make it so that teachers can run it for an entire class list.

We know that in the old Gradebook, teachers would frequently print off a report and send it home with their students each week. While we think this should still be an option for teachers, we would encourage them to move towards using some of the other tools built into the Gradebook system. For example, a parent can opt in to receive email notification whenever their student misses an assignment. In the new system, teachers also have the ability to send attendance and assignment information to parents directly by email.

There is NOTHING simple about it…
The program does require some initial setup up front. Teachers need to create their own grade scales (or choose a district grade scale). They need to setup their own categories (or choose a district category). They need to select their preferences (or use the defaults). These items are one-time things that you can continue to use year-after-year. Once the one-time setup is done, a teacher needs to assign a category/grade scale to a course (this is no different from the old Gradebook) and elementary teachers need to setup their concepts (this is no different from the old Gradebook). The vendor has been very receptive to ideas on how to make the system easier to use, but in order to make improvements we need specific examples of how things could be done better from the people who use it.

I have yet to find even one thing that is positive about it…
· The old Gradebook did not provide teachers with a way to communicate directly with parents; everything had to be printed off and sent home with the student. Parent email accounts will become available as parents sign up for parent accounts in the new system.
· The old Gradebook had a one day time delay between when a student entered a class and when a student would show up in the teacher’s Gradebook.
· All reports in the old Gradebook were PDF’s. The new Gradebook allows a teacher to export any report to Excel, Word, PDF, etc.
· The old Gradebook did not integrate well with other systems in the district and was difficult to improve.
· The old Gradebook was unable to maintain information from one school year to the next. The new Gradebook does.
· The old Gradebook was limited to less-than-adequate hardware resulting in frequent system outages. The new Gradebook is compatible with newer server technology and can more easily be expanded to accommodate more users on the system.

Can we have the old program back? I don’t feel the move to a new Gradebook program was optional.

Here are some of the reasons why the old Gradebook was not an option for this school year:
· Elementary schools have moved to four quarters from three trimesters. The old Gradebook was designed specifically for three trimesters on the elementary level. Making this change would have required many changes to the old Gradebook, many of which would not fully be tested by the start of school.
· We would not be able to make the transition to a new Discovery system this year.
· Over the past couple of years, there has been a significant increase in the number of teachers, parents and students accessing information from the Gradebook. The old system was already having issues accommodating the increased load from last year.

While we understand that there is a lot of frustration involved with moving to a new Gradebook system, please remember that we are several weeks into a very significant change affecting thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of students and parents. We are still working on making the system really great for all users and we appreciate your patience.

Thanks to Information Systems for their assistance in responding to these questions.

Superintendent Snapshot – Where do P.E., music and art education fit into your vision for the district?

Great question from a teacher regarding the expanding of P.E., music and art education in the vision for quality education in Granite School District. Have a question? Submit it here! Have a great day.