TarponChaser said:

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Y'all see this story? Not from Cy-Fair but from Corsicana ISD. One of my wife's sorority sisters from A&M who is a teacher up in Coppell ISD posted it.

Corsicana Asst. Principal Blinded By Student

Anyway, relative to this discussion because she and all her teacher friends blame a lack of funding. But how is more funding going to help when some kids families refuse to parent and they're little savages? And if the kid has such psychological issues as to become so uncontrollably violent why are they in regular, public schools?

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Daammmnnn.

TBF the injured principal said first that the discipline codes need to be revamped. Totally agree. She pointed out how the code is focused on the needs and rights of the student, but holy ****, things are waaayyy out of balance. Clearly.

The only thing I see as a funding issue is that the state mandates safety officers in each school but schools legitimately struggle to fund the adequate number when, as you rightfully said, there are savages roaming the halls.

This is all kinds of fubar on so many levels.

Back in the day, incorrigible kids were expelled from school after a certain age. They would then be the purview of law enforcement and labeled "juvenile delinquents" if they continued on this path. Maybe some went to military schools to turn things around.

Am I remembering things accurately?

Is that system so bad? It seems better than having juvenile delinquents acting as predators in the schools.

Just trying to see both sides... I guess if schools are unfairly expelling kids of a certain race, while others of a different race are allowed more latitude, then it's not a good system. But man, it is 2024. The ones suffering most in the current system are the low income status kids who are just trying to learn in class.

Just spitballing here. I don't have answers

Me too.

And it would take away another distracting training and expectation from teacher's plates. My list of Mandatory Trainings continues to increase and I'm responsible for the material.

How do you mean you're responsible for the material?

Sea Speed said:

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How do you mean you're responsible for the material?

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I'm supposed to know how to recognize or implement whatever the training is about.

Ghost of Andrew Eaton said:

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Sea Speed said:

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How do you mean you're responsible for the material?

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I'm supposed to know how to recognize or implement whatever the training is about.

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They give zero guidance on what to do or what is expected? How is that even considered training?

AggieT said:

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So, CFISD offers a larger homestead exemption to homeowners, collects less in property tax to pay for schools, and expects the rest of the state to make up the difference?

Do any other Houston districts do this?

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Yes, SBISD does it too.

State is trying to make districts accountable for their spending by basically telling them if they want more money, then need to get it directly from their taxpayers. Seems fair enough to me in theory.

However, limiting a district's ability to adjust those rates is a little chicken ****, and there were many in SBISD who say they were told a funding increase was coming from the state and it never did.

I think there's poor execution on both sides, but school districts need to reign in their spending and manage their G&A spend.

One thing that might help is to put on contract the employees required by the state to be on contract and to let districts allow contract to run out. On a campus, it makes sense to put classroom teachers and principals and assistant principals in contract, because those positions need to be stable through the school year. The superintendent is also on contract because of the nature of her job. And, in the case of teachers and principals, the state allows for the suspension of licenses for a year if one leaves the district during the year without being released (which means they can't work at any teaching job in the state).

But many districts put all professional staff on contracts. What winds up happening is that the burden to get rid of bad or incompetent administrators is too high. Instead of firing them, the district moves them to another position, where take up space at a six-figure salary. For example, I saw a principal (not at CFISD) who was ineffective get moved to central office in a minor role. She winds up covering for her boss after the boss gets sick, and provides terrible leadership for a larger team. Then she parlays that experience into a larger role at a different district that doesn't know she's not good, so she gets to be an even bigger disaster. If they had just cut her loose, then a bunch of problems might have been avoided.

Oh, and those contracts mean nothing in central office. Any district employee can walk at any time to another position, because those jobs don't require a certification that the district can suspend. All the contracts do is make it harder to get rid of dead wood.

Similarly, as I understand it, the state has made it impossible to let a contract expire. Teacher contracts are for one or two years, but the state has said that teachers are to be renewed unless you go through the documentation process to terminate. So once again, the burden is high to get rid of poor performers.

Anyway, just a thought.

The voucher program idea looks like a mess to me. I know some places have figured it out but I'm sure it will just move the problems rather than solve them.

How dare you mess with the time honored tradition of moving administration off campus for a menial job, not renewing the contract, then giving a good review so they find a new job and become someone else's problem

I agree that it is difficult to get rid of poor-performing teachers and almost impossible to get rid of poor administrators. I've seen good administrators push poor teachers out the door and all it takes is the admin being accountable for their actions, which is easy. The best administrators I've worked for have gotten rid of bad teachers from the campus. Most of them ended up resigning before not being renewed though.

As for admin, **** those poor-performing S.O.Bs. I've generally worked with good to great administrators but I've been around a few awful ones and they just get moved around from campus to campus. As with anything, the good admins I worked for pushed the poor-performing admins to improve or to look for work elsewhere.

This won't be a popular stance but there usually aren't enough admins on a campus to do all the things that need to be done. They end up having to cover all these mandates and so a lot of **** falls through the cracks. The Special Education portion of their job is enough to eat up a significant portion of their schedule and then you throw in 3-4 lunch duties, and before/afterschool duties, and their day is shot. They just don't have the time to get into the classrooms. Some of your APs are former coaches and their instructional focus is pretty low but those guys are good at the logistics of getting kids in and out to the building safely.

As far as ESC stuff, I'm a social studies teacher and we have four instructional people who service 18 junior highs and 10 high schools. So I don't think that is an overabundance of ESC people for that department alone. The other curriculums are similar in numbers, if not identical. In SS alone, you're talking about 9-10 social studies teachers per junior high school and about 30 per high school. That's 180 junior high teachers and 300 high school teachers. I'm not sure the number of support staff that would take in the corporate world but 2 ESC people for JH and 2 for HS seems reasonable.

Again, a significant portion of your ESC numbers are coming from SpEd and ESL(or whatever we're calling it today).

For example, in my district, we have 21 staff that cover Federal Programs. Don't ask because I don't know what that means.

SpEd--

• 1Senior Executive
• 1 Senior Staff
• 1 Executive Level
• 2 Directors
• 61 Assistant Dirctors over specific programs
• 23 Administrative assistants(secretaries, accounting)
• This does not include the actual homebound teachers, LSSPs, Adaptive PE teachers, Brailists, Audiologists, Campus Behavior Interventionist, Speech Pathologist or any of the Gifted and Talented Program.

ESL--

• 1 Director Level
• 29 Assistant Directors