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

Sup’s Vlog

Question – Free and Reduced Lunch for Staff?

Question:

I guess this is an appropriate avenue for posing my question…As a male elementary teacher, I am definitely in the minority. Because traditionally men have been the bread-winners of the family, many men don’t consider a career in teaching because unless you absolutely love teaching and love kids, it’s perhaps not quite worth the less-than-adequate pay. That’s not to say you can’t make it work—my wife and I do, but it means that she has to work as well.

Now to the thorn in my side…My children all qualify for free and reduced lunch. They qualify because of how little money I make as a teacher. On the other hand, I, as a teacher, do not qualify for the same benefits. Rather, I have to pay nearly twice as much for the same lunch as the students receive. There is something off about this…Because I am a teacher, my children qualify for free and reduced school lunch. Yet because I am a teacher, I have to pay nearly double the amount for school lunch.

There is no career I would rather do than teaching. I love teaching. If there is no good solution to this quandary, then I’ll live with it for the remainder of my career. I’m not married to the school lunch menu, but I do find it odd that such a situation exists. Thank you in advance for your time and your consideration.

Response:

You make a great point.  As you may know, the foods program is a federal program, subject to lots of regulation that is beyond our control.  Let me look in to what control we do have for setting adult lunch prices.  Thanks for your great attitude and for the service you give our kids!

Question – NCLB goals

Question:

I recently received a copy of the revised AYP/NCLB goals at school. I know that Granite District is very concerned about achieving these goals by 2014. The aims of NCLB have always confused me. How can we as teachers be expected to have 100% of the students in our class and school achieve this by the year 2014? To me this is like asking the police to have no crime, doctors cure all illnesses, firefighters have no fires to fight, etc. by the year 2014. As hard as I try, there is no way I am going to have all of my students reading on grade level and doing math on grade level by any certain year. The only thing this is going to do is set me and my school up for failure. It is also going to cause many educators to leave teaching and it won’t be because they are poor teachers. Many will leave because they just can’t make students meet these goals. Teacher morale is at an all-time low, and I know because I have been teaching for almost 30 years. I will be able to retire in 2015 so will not be around much after we are supposed to reach these milestones. When are we going to start holding the parents responsible for how their children are doing in school? My school has not made AYP the last two years because of attendance issues and parent/student apathy. It’s okay for parents to take their children out of school for vacation but it counts against the teacher and the school, not the parents and students. Any light you can shed on this would be greatly appreciated.

Response:

We’re so proud of teachers and their efforts – and how far we’ve come!  You draw interesting analogies and point out some of the flaws we’ve seen in NCLB for some time, not to mention the stress fractures it’s causing in so many of us.

You may have heard from your principal, and you will hear more in the future, that our focus needs to be on the progress of individual students – rather than a focus on larger averages.  NCLB has helped us look closely at subgroups, but has also forced a focus on moving “2s” to “3s” and significantly narrowed our curricular emphasis.  We believe the focus propersly belongs on helping all kids progress as much as they can in a school year, regardless of whether they are high achievers, or members of several at-risk groups at the same time.  

We think that it is understood that when a student spends a year (or semester, or some other period) of their life with a teacher, that the student will have grown as a result of the contact.  Consequently, it seems it will be a relief to look at how far kids have come, and what standards they have mastered, as a result of the time together.

Thanks for your continued efforts.  🙂

 

Question – Benefits for Part-Time Employees

Question:

To my understanding the district doesn’t hire anymore contract part-time employees. My question is……why can’t part time employees that work 30 hours that are not on a contract get insurance through the district? If we are paying for it on our own why don’t you offer that for those that work 30 hours?

Response:

Let’s talk a minute about contract employment.  It would be optimal if all employment with the school district came with health insurance, retirement benefits, life insurance, vacation and so on – regardless of the number of hours required per week, month or year and regardless of the licensure or skill level requirements of a given position.  This scenario is absolutely what we wish we could provide.  In point of fact, there are countries which provide universal health care and similar benefits to all.  There are diferences of opinion on this, but the reality is that we do not live in one of those countries. 

Although we recognize that all positions have critical responsibilities (or they would have been eliminated by now), contract positions have time commitments and tend to have license, training or supervisory requirements that hourly positions do not.  Benefits offered by the district are then associated with those commitments and requirements. 

On the business side, the question is specific to health insurance.  Granite School District contributes a very large portion of the insurance premium for insurance eligible employees. For example, a full-time single employee pays $21.90 per month for medical, while GSD pays $416.40 per month for that employee.  The cost is considerably higher when insurance is extended to spouses and other dependents – “paying for” family insurance is more than $12,000 per year with the district paying for more than more than 90% of the cost and the employee contribution less than 10%.  Consequently, the health insurance benefit has long been associated with, and reserved for, contracts.

Having said all this,  hourly employment is a great opportunity for an employee to get a good look at the district and for the district to get a good look at the prospective contract employee.  Hourly employees who are interested in a long-term contract relationship with the district are encouraged to take advantage of training and similar opportunities available through the district to position themselves with the expertise and experience to compete successfully for contracts.

Superintendent Snapshot – School Community Councils

All,

Please keep your questions coming! Here is the latest video snapshot. Have a great weekend.

Sincerely,

Martin

Question – Optional Extended Day Kindergarten

Question:

I am a Kindergarten teacher in one of our schools. For several years we have had principals who have inquired how we might get a session of Optional Extended day Kindergarten at our school due to the low socioeconomic demographics of our community. Though we have a high percentage of students on free/reduced lunch, we do not qualify for Title I funds. We have been told that OEK is directly tied to Title I funds so we will not qualify unless we become a Title I school.

As we attended Common Core training at the beginning of the school year, we became acquainted with the team of Kindergarten teachers from a school which is right next door to ours, therefore shares our same community demographics. They are also not a Title I school. However, they have at least one session of OEK, and I believe another session was added because I know a teacher who was surplussed last month and was hired at this same school, also to teach OEK. Could you please explain why a school that is not Title I is able to have OEK? We would very much like to know the true criteria and why our school does not qualify when our neighbors, also not a Title I school, have OEK.

Response:

Optional Extended-day Kindergarten (OEK) programs are funded by the Utah Legislature. The distribution formulas are similar to federal rules for Title I funds, but are not limited to Title I schools. As you know from your own experience, students served in an OEK classroom enter first grade with reading and mathematics skills higher than their peers from traditional classrooms. We are hopeful that OEK funds will continue to be allocated (and increased) by the state.

Question – Fire Alarm Health Concerns

Question:

I understand that the district is doing everything it can to protect our children from excessive heat in the classroom. I am grateful for your efforts.

I do have another concern related to healthy safe environments. I was in school for a routine fire drill. Once again, I am grateful for an organized way to practice for emergency situations, but I believe we have overlooked one important health issue. We are exposing our children to very dangerous sound levels as we practice routinely for these emergencies. There are ways that the fire alarm sound could be played over the intercom so that the students know what it sounds like, but so that the volume could be controlled in a safe way.

Could we not record an alarm, and play it over the intercom for practice so that the volume can be controlled? They would still know what the sound is, and in the event of a real emergency, they would respond. Additionally, the alarm system in the building could be checked when school is not in session. That would help to protect our children’s hearing.

Response:

Not just student hearing.  Since the last fire drill in the district office (we have them here too), it’s been easier to talk behind the superintendent’s back – he can’t hear us whispering anymore!  More seriously, fire alarm systems are installed according to the Uniform Building Code, Uniform Fire Code and NFPA 72 Fire Alarm Code. Most fire alarm horns today are factory set according to the code requirements at 15db above the highest ambient noise. I believe 110db is max. Newer horns may have a lower and higher setting depending on manufacturer. We try and put all classrooms on the lower setting (if available) and hallways on the higher due to greater ambient hallway noise. Fire alarms are installed to a very strict code and horns are spaced and placed according to these codes. Like smoke detectors in airplanes, fire alarms are strictly regulated and tampering with them is a significant offense.

Thanks to Kurt Fisher, our district’s deputized fire marshal for his assistance in responding to this question.

Question – Teacher Websites

Question:

I noticed the Granite teacher portal offers a tutorial for setting up a teacher website through Granite school district. Rather than fussing with all new templates, and sitting through tutorials, why don’t we stick with the uen.org website format? I use my uen website as the repository for all the links I refer to during teaching (a much better option than saving links to your favorites tab – especially because there’s no physical way to back up your favorites browser folder).

With well over 400 links up on my uen website I am concerned someone, namely administration (don’t take it personally), will get a wild hare and decide we have a new “latest and greatest” Granite school website builder and will be “persuading” all of us to jump ship from the uen.org website builder. I’m not in the mood to migrate after spending the past three plus years setting up a fantastic teacher tool.

What are your thoughts? And here is a link to my website: http://my.uen.org/myuen/212513/Home Click on math fun or one of my science links – there are 40-50 links for those sections alone.

Response:

Great question and great job! It is exciting to see you have already jumped the biggest hurdle by actually having a web presence as a teacher.

Currently, the district has asked that all elementary teachers have a web presence. This can be on any platform – Dreamweaver, Weebly, Wikispaces, myUEN to name a few.

It sounds like your concern is that a particular website creation tool would be adopted and promoted by the district causing you to have to migrate your content to the new platform. I have to be honest and say that is a possibility. As technology changes and better tools become available we all need to consider them. With that said, I think your point has to be considered when making decisions regarding technology tools. The positives would really need to outweigh the negatives. We certainly don’t want to have teachers work harder for no reason. Believe it or not, we’re trying to make things easier! It is important that if a decision is made to use a new tool, you have support and assistance in taking what you currently have and migrating it. For some it will be giving support and assistance in making the paradigm change you have already made in using a fantastic teacher/student/parent tool.

In addition to the great communication potential between teacher, students and parents, we are really hoping to facilitate collaboration between teachers.  Let’s say we are able to roll out electronic support for teachers – just for the sake of this answer, let’s say we develop a menu of tier 1, 2, and 3 electronic lessons and resources corresponding to the math (or science or any/every other subject) objectives.  Teachers could share them, comment on them (like/dislike), improve upon them and so on.  This is not a technological stretch of the imagination.  It would however, be much more user friendly if the format was standardized.  We’re literally working on this right now!

Regardless, your UEN website is cool. Every teacher should check this out as you have added polls, links to the school webpage, and links to curriculum in addition to all of the digital content you refer to when teaching. Again, great job!

Question – Black Friday Paychecks?

Here is a question about getting an early paycheck in November:

My question relates to our paycheck for November only. Lots of us have children and we take advantage of “Black Friday” at the stores. Having our paycheck for that would make us really happy!! Is there any possibility that our checks could be deposited before we take off for Thanksgiving break? Please 🙂

Response:

This request may be due to the fact that over the past three or four years, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend fell at the end of the month which is closer to the end of the pay period. District policy states that payday is the last working day of the month. Both policy and negotiated agreements state that payday is the “last working day of the month”, which is not necessarily always “last day of the month”. For this year, payday is Wednesday, November 30 as per policy and, accordingly, payday is also on the last work day of December usually around the 22nd of December.

There are a few other reasons why we can’t pay our employees early:

1. Cost – We lose interest on $22 million for every day we advance payday (this interest rolls into the budget to pay salaries!).
2. State Statute prohibits payroll advances.
3. It would go against negotiated agreements with employee groups.
4. When we put together the master schedule for pay periods this year, we scheduled it based upon a November 30 payday. At this point, there is not enough time between the last day of the pay period and Wednesday the 23rd to be able to get all the reporting and processing completed/reviewed and ACH files submitted to banks in time for a 23rd posting.

We continue to try to improve our services – within the parameters of law, negotiated agreement, and policy. Thanks for your question!

Thanks to the payroll department for helping with this response. Please feel free to contact them if you have any additional questions at (385) 646-4312.

Question – English Immersion Program for ESL Students

Question:

Would you please address the possibility of developing an English Immersion program for ESL students; I understand Granite District had this at one time. This program would truly help the students in their academic achievement and relocation issues.

Response:

Though we could certainly use more individual supports for some English Language Learners, our “English immersion program” is provided at every school – the core subjects are taught in the English language in all grade levels. You are right, we had a separate immersion program for English language learners, housed centrally to be able to bring the requisite resources together. The federal government descended and, while acknowledging our good intentions, labled it segregation and made us change the program. We are actively pursuing other alternatives to best serve all our children – they are not only the future of our community, they are our community today!

Thanks for the question.