They are also things they should have done a long time ago.
Stop factoring referrals into principal evaluations. Doing so encourages then to cajole, browbeat and scare teachers to stop writing referrals. It encourages administrators not to process referrals and overall it hurts discipline. Things that hurt discipline hurt the learning process.
End grade recovery as it is now. Make it just for students who tried hard but just didn’t get it and for kids who have multiple legitimate and documented absences. Kids that never come, make no effort or just disrupt class should have this crutch taken away from them.
Make being on time and attending relevant. When kids are adults those things will be relevant and they should be in school too. In nine weeks 10 tardies should be a letter grade and 10 absences should be an instant fail. An appeals process to hear legitimate reasons would be available.
End the A/B block scheduling, ninety minutes is too long for most of our kids and every other day is to infrequent.
Announce that teachers with satisfactory evaluations will not be let go and teachers that are let go will be told why. Teachers can be fired in Duval County and they aren’t required to be given a reason and last year hundreds of teachers with satisfactory evaluations who were not on success plans, meaning for the most part they had no idea they were in danger of losing their jobs, were fired.
Create an Ombudsman position that is outside the sphere of influence of the superintendent and school board. I hear stories all the time from teachers about numbers being fudged, funds disappearing, teachers being bullied or cajoled into doing things they know are wrong but when I ask them to go on the record for the most part they back off. They say they are afraid for their jobs or about retaliation. If they had a person they could go to anonymously, who could investigate their concerns, we could eliminate many of their concerns.
Work with teachers to create a teacher bill of rights. Teachers should only be asked to give one free hour a day, not the 15-20 hours a week that most teachers give, teachers should not be talked to in a fashion by administrators that would get them fired if they talked to students the same way and pass fail rates and referrals written should not be used to influence evaluations. I am not saying we should ignore those things but we should delve behind the numbers to find out the causes. If it’s the teacher, then let’s help them improve and if they don’t show them the door but if it’s the kids, let’s give them legitimate, rigorous opportunities to improve or fail and discipline them. They need to learn these things and where is better than school to teach them.
Suspend repeat discipline offenders indefinitely until one of their parents comes and spends the day with them. They would be allowed to return the very next day if the parent came with them, or they could stay out for the rest of the year but now the onus is on parents being parents not on schools raising kids.
Rescind the contracts with KIPP until the first school shows improvement, you will forgive me if their word isn’t enough and with Teach for America, we have teachers and college of ed grads here who can’t find jobs, let’s give them the first crack and then if we still have a few openings we can ask TFA for assistance.
Find the money for legitimate summer school. So many of our kids need more time to both master material and less time between school years so they don’t lose what they learned. We need summer school so much more than three additional public relations persons.
Then next year every school should offer at least one section of drama, yearbook newspaper and creative writing. We cannot continue to make school drudgery for kids and then scratch our heads wondering why they are doing so poorly.
Explore bringing back curriculums that teach the trades, skills and arts. Not every kid is going to go to college and that should be okay but we should still help prepare them for their future.
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