High-performing teachers and principals could be in line for $5,000 bonuses as soon as next spring, according to newly released details of a plan on spending a windfall of federal money.
The plan, released last week in response to a records request from the Independent, outlines the plans for $53.4 million in federal Teacher Improvement Fund money that New Haven schools won in September.
The five-year grant represents the first major national investment in the city’s school reform drive.
The money will “turbo-charge” the city’s efforts to reward, recognize and develop teachers and principals, said Assistant Superintendent Garth Harries.
The city snagged the grant after laying the groundwork with a landmark 2009 teachers contract that serves as the basis for the city’s reform drive. New Haven gained national clout for the way labor and management collaborated on a new evaluation system that grades teachers on student performance — but aims to give them extra support and a chance to improve before they are shown the door.
Click here, here, and here to read the city’s grant application.
Teachers union President Dave Cicarella said he signed off on the grant application with one key provision — that teachers have a final say in how the money gets spent. As part of the grant, New Haven schools agreed to set up a Talent Council of teachers and administrators who will determine exactly how the money gets spent.
The documents released last week give a vision for how the city will spend the money, including $12 million this academic year. Those details may change, however, as the Talent Council, decides exactly how the money gets spent. The council comprises three teachers — Cicarella, Tom Burns and Pat DeLucia — and three administrators, vo-tech guru Steve Pynn, science supervisor Richard Therrien, and Celentano Museum Academy Principal Keisha Hannans. Each trio was selected by its respective union.
The council convened in the days after the city won the grant. It has met three times, according to Harries, one of two main point people from central office working on the grant. No money has been drawn down from the grant yet, he said. The panel is still working to translate the vision into concrete terms: “OK, we actually won this. What and how do we make it real?”
Thomas MacMillan File Photo
Cicarella (pictured) highlighted two aspect of the plan that will benefit the public school system’s 1,800 teachers. First, it will address an unevenness in the way administrators are implementing the new teacher evaluations, which debuted in the 2010-11 school year.
“Some principals do it well; others not so well,” he said. The grant will enable the district to even the playing field by hiring people to train principals and assistant principals in how to conduct the evaluations, he said.
Second, it will pay for teachers to receive more professional development — and for long-term substitutes to take over their classes while they’re off learning.
The plan also aims to address a deficiency in the system: That teachers have no avenue to leadership except by becoming administrators. Sometime in the second half of this school year, the school district plans to change that. It will name up to 180 teachers as “teacher leaders,” with a $5,000 bonus to boot. Those leaders will help train and mentor other teachers.
Similarly, up to half of all principals, or about 23, will be eligible for $5,000 stipends for serving as mentors to other principals.
The first batch of educators will gain that distinction in the second half of this school year, Harries said — after the Talent Council has defined the terms “leader” and “mentor.” The council has begun to wrestle with how to identify, select, and train educators for these roles, and what exactly the roles will entail, Harries said. In addition to the talent council, additional groups of teachers and principal will be enlisted to tackle those types of questions.
In future years, pending negotiations with unions, educators may be eligible for rewards if they score well on job evaluations and if they work in hard-to-serve schools.
Cicarella said if his union introduces merit pay, it will not be simply based on standardized tests. “You don’t pay for test scores,” he said. If a district starts doing that, he observed, teachers are going to “teach to the test.”
Key to the plan is a new fleet of “super subs” — full-time substitute teachers who will free up teachers and master teachers for professional development. The proposal calls for hiring three new super subs this year and three more next year, for a total of six.
Plans call for hiring a new administrative team to oversee what Harries is calling New Haven’s “human capital management system.” The grant calls for creating the following new positions this year:
• A new “talent office director,” with a $130,000 salary.
• A data analyst, to be paid $110,000.
• Three “talent associates,” paid $75,000 each.
• A junior recruiter to recruit effective teachers; $60,000.
• Six super subs, paid an average of $30,000 each.
• An administrative assistant, paid $50,000.
Harries said the school district has not started searching for candidates for those positions. Not all of them may end up getting filled.
Cicarella said before filling the positions, the Talent Council will raise the questions: “Do we need all those positions, and do we need to fund them at that level?”
“In this fiscal climate, we need to be sure that any resources we’re spending in central office, even if they’re grant-funded, are mission critical and will positively impact teachers and leaders in the schools,” Harries agreed. “We’re looking pretty hard at which of the positions do we want to hire first, which of them do we need,” or whether the school district may want to use the money in a different way.
Thomas MacMillan File Photo
For example, Harries (pictured) said the Talent Council has shown an interest in assigning a super sub to each school, so some of the money could be shifted towards that purpose, with the approval of the federal Department of Education.
Plans also call for spending $1.14 million on hiring consultants in this academic year, and $1.4 million over the remaining four years of the grant. One consultant will advise the school system on revising its salary schedule to allow for “accelerated movement on salary scale for high-performing leaders.” Evaluators from UConn will give feedback on the city’s teacher evaluation system. Another consultant will guide expert teachers in training other teachers through peer-to-peer visits. Another will “calibrate” the school system’s teacher evaluation system. Another will strengthen technology, including creating a mobile apps for evaluating principals and teachers.
Another consultant would focus on “strategic budget reprioritization” — helping the school district find a way to cut costs so it can support the new talent management system when the federal money runs out.
Cicarella said the consultants have expertise the district doesn’t have, and are not meant to be long-term. “We’ll bring them in for expertise, but they should come in and they should go,” he said. “We’re going to make really darn sure that that’s what they’re going to come to do. … We won’t have them hang around year after year after year.” Included in the $1.14 consulting figure are the people and organizations who will train principals in better administrating the teacher evaluations.
Harries said the grant is meant to will build on work the district has already begun in developing educator talent.
“We’ve been very clear in New Haven that the teachers, the principals and the educators are the most important part of the system. A lot of our work has been geared towards engaging, enhancing and working with those educators. The grant gives us the opportunity to accelerate this work.”
Some of the proposed changes — such as allowing high-performing educators to jump up to a higher salary step — would require renegotiation with the teachers and principals unions. The 2009 teachers contract is set to expire in 2014. Negotiations are set to resume in the summer of 2013 on new contracts for teachers and administrators.
Peggy Moore, president of the administrators union, said she signed off on the grant application and looks forward to seeing more teachers in leadership positions. She was asked about her union’s willingness to change its contract to reward principals for high performance and for working in hard-to-serve schools.
“I don’t wish to address that until we go into negotiations,” she said.
This is great - take a $53M Federal plan that is supposed to help children living in inner city areas succeed, and use it to increase the salaries of middle-aged union members who live almost entirely in the New Haven suburbs.
The truth is, if instead of exporting all of our money, these types of bonuses were reserved only for teachers and administrators who live in New Haven, then we might actually begin to see some improvements.
Who is providing oversight to ensure that spending on this program is being done in an equitable way?
Detailed analyses of other Federal "stimulus" programs since 2008 shows that, in many cases, between 90% and 100% percent of the new dollars tend to flow to suburban areas and to people who identify as White/Caucasian.
Hopefully that situation won't happen here, but given that the unions are in charge, and that their leadership lives almost entirely in the suburbs, I won't hold out hope.