“For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.” – T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), American born English editor, playwright and critic

 

 

 

“Journalism is literature in a hurry.” – Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), British poet and cultural critic.

Senate leadership controversy appears settled

Based on various news media accounts, it appears the battle over who will control the state Senate once the 2011 Legislative Session begins next month has been decided.

According to MetroNews, Marshall County Senator Jeff Kessler announced Monday, December 27, 2010, he has enough votes to change the rules of the Senate to create the position of Acting Senate President and be elected to that post.

"Over the holidays, there have been ongoing discussions between the [Acting] Governor's Chief of Staff, myself and other members of the Senate," Senator Kessler said Monday at the State Capitol.

"I'm happy to report that several other members of the minority in the Democrat caucus have decided to come over and join their friends on the majority side as we come out of the caucus, as we lock arms and come to speak with a unified voice going forward."

When the caucus met earlier this month, the vote was 16-12 to create the Acting Senate President position. That was not enough to make the change with Republicans poised to vote against it.

But Kessler says several senators have thought over the ramifications of not having the proper separation of powers between Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin and his new position as Governor.  With no election in the near future to elect a permanent governor, Kessler says the issue had to be addressed.

"It wasn't about personalities. It wasn't about people, It wasn't about power. It's truthfully about the principle of the [Acting] Governor is downstairs and these are very unique times."

Kessler says he now has 19 votes in the Democratic Caucus with more on the way. But he would like to see those earlier opposed to the change of power, including Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin, come over to his side.

"It takes 18 votes perhaps to get elected. It takes a lot more than that to govern effectively. I would like to come out of this Senate like we have over the years with a 34-0 vote and that would be my hope."

Kessler says there are key issues facing the Senate in the upcoming session that begins January 12. The budget, energy and the OPEB debt are just a few, according to Kessler, that need the body's full attention.

Meanwhile briefs have been filed in the state Supreme Court of Appeals relating to “when” the election for governor should be held – either in 2012 or earlier. With information received December 27, 2010, from the governor and Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin, House Speaker Rick Thompson and Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, justices can decide what happens next with the lawsuit calling on the Court to order a Special Gubernatorial Election for early 2011.

Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court combined the two Special Election lawsuits that were filed into one.  Those filings came from South Charleston Attorney Thornton Cooper and the West Virginia Citizen Action Group.

The Court could opt to completely reject the case outright, schedule full arguments or issue an opinion without hearing full arguments.
Earlier in the month state Auditor Glen Gainer said the state Constitution overrides state law in a brief in support of the lawsuit by West Virginia Citizens Action Group and Cooper.

Other parties having entered briefs include AFT-West Virginia and the West Virginia Education Association.

Both groups support a gubernatorial election prior to 2012.

 

W.Va. Board of Education appoints Ted Mattern State Superintendent of Schools

John T. “Ted” Mattern will become state superintendent of schools January 4.

Mattern was selected state superintendent at the December 9, 2010, West Virginia Board of Education meeting in Charleston. 
A former county superintendent, Mattern will replace Steve Paine, who is slated to retire Jan. 3.

As state superintendent, Mattern will earn $150,000.

He will assume all the duties, responsibilities and authority granted to the state superintendent and serves at the will and pleasure of the board as its policy advisor and executive officer.

State law does not allow the board to appoint an interim superintendent.

State Board President Priscilla Haden said that by appointing Mattern, the board has ensured that a state superintendent will be in place immediately upon Paine’s departure.

 The board will, however, continue to conduct a national search for a candidate to replace Mattern in the near future. Applications will be accepted until Jan. 3.

Mattern brings to the post more than 40 years of education experience as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, assistant county superintendent and county superintendent. The West Virginia Board of Education most recently employed Mattern to assist with the state intervention in Grant County when poor leadership, personnel and curriculum issues surfaced last year. He completed that role in June. He continues to serve as a mentor to Grant County’s new superintendent and other new county superintendents.

A Wheeling native, Mattern previously was named county superintendent in Mingo County when the state board first intervened there in 1998. He also has worked as county superintendent in Preston and Upshur counties and as a consultant for Educational Testing Service. 

Paine has served as the state superintendent since 2005. He joined the state Department of Education (WVDE) as deputy state superintendent in 2003 after serving as county superintendent in Morgan County. He also has served as principal, assistant principal, teacher and curriculum director in Harrison, Upshur and Morgan counties.

During Paine’s tenure West Virginia has been internationally and nationally recognized for its 21st century learning program called “Global21: Students deserve it. The world demands it.”

The state also has been singled out for its work with pre-K programs, school technology implementation, school leadership development programs, reading initiatives and teacher quality efforts.

West Virginia recently received the 21st Century Practice of the Year Award for 2010, which commemorates the nation’s preeminent state-led 21st century skills initiatives.

21st Century Skills Leadership States include: Arizona, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, West Virginia and South Carolina.

Mattern said he will resign his position on the West Virginia Board of Governors to avoid any conflict.

That decision followed state Board of Education President Priscilla Haden's inquiry into whether Ted Mattern could serve as interim superintendent and on WVU's board at the same time. Haden wrote to state Attorney General Darrell McGraw seeking a clarification.
Managing Deputy Attorney General Barbara H. Allen responded saying that Mattern could not hold both posts.

Mattern was approved state superintendent on a 5-3 vote.

Mason County Superintendent says system has initiated process to correct OEPA violations

Mason County Schools Superintendent Suzanne Dickens will make the first of what is to be a series of quarterly reports to the state Board of Education in February  concerning progress the county board is making to address deficiencies cited in a December 2010 Office of Education Performance Audits (OEPA) report.

Although the Mason County Board was given “full approval status,” OEPA found major concerns in leadership, financial practices, personnel hiring practices, missing agendas and board meeting minutes.

Based on the state Board’s motion, Mason County school officials were given one year to address the irregularities identified in an OEPA onsite review conducted in October 2010.

The audit was requested after the county had not made adequate yearly progress (AYP) in the last five years and other concerns were noted, OEPA director Kenna Seal, Ed.D, told the board.

Dickens told The Legislature she has worked with Chuck Heinlein of the West Virginia Department of Education’s  Office of School Improvement to prepare for a technical assistance visit January 5, 2011. 

According to Dickens, Heinlein’s team will assist in preparation of the Mason County Board of Education’s “Plan of Action” to respond to the OEPA Report.

The Mason superintendent said central office directors have “collected data and responses for each item addressed in the OEPA report.”  She added, “much of this information has been shared with the county board.”

Dickens credits the local board with support as the system responds to the overall OEPA report. “I did not apply for the position of superintendent of Mason County Schools.  The board approached me and has given me total support in leading the system.  Many changes have already been made including the elimination of excessive amounts of overtime to employees beginning on my first day as superintendent and a strong focus on curriculum.”   

 As far as the county’s deficit – a major point cited in the OEPA report - Dickens said, “the debt is understandable considering the massive building projects undertaken in Mason County over the past nine years. 

“I am ‘tighter than the bark on tree’ and I am confident we can resolve our debt within a couple of years. I am very proud of our facilities and plan to fill these schools with good solid curriculum and a safe environment for our students and staff.” 

 She also points out the state board give Mason County “’full approval” status and, as stated in the OEPA report, ‘The Education Performance Audit of the individual schools did not reveal serious deficiencies that could not be corrected by good county leadership.’”

Mason County Board President Dale Shobe says Dickens is “on the mark” in terms of having county board support.

“Through Ms. Dickens’ leadership, we will work through this. We’re not into finger-pointing. There is no time nor, more importantly, no need for this. As a board, we’re out to put our school system back on track.”

“Boards must stay on top of things and put plans in place to know what is going on without micromanaging. That is hard to do. This is where board leadership comes into play.”  – Dale Shobe

Shobe said the county board learned some “important lessons” from the OEPA report. “Boards must stay on top of things and put plans in place to know what is going on without micromanaging. That is hard to do,” he said, adding, “this is where board leadership comes into play.” 

In their December 8 meeting, the state board agreed with the OEPA team’s recommendation to not replace Dickens, who has been in her position since August 2010.  

 “The Board of Education has a responsibility to all the students of West Virginia,” said Board President Priscilla Haden. “It is evident that Mason County has some discrepancies that must be addressed. I am hopeful they do so within the window provided.”  

“I think it is important to point out that there are pockets of excellence in Mason County Schools,” said West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Steve Paine. “I am confident that with Mrs. Dickens’ leadership and guidance from the state Department of Education, Mason County will see significant improvement and that the issues identified in the report will be resolved.”

Paine said “this is probably the most serious situation in which we have not intervened in my eight years here at the department.” – a point echoed by Seal who said, “If Mrs. Dickens were not there, we'd probably tell you to put someone else there until the place gets straightened up.”

 

State Board of Education returns personnel decisions to Lincoln Co. Schools

The West Virginia Board of Education voted December 8, 2010, to return control of personnel, financial matters and professional development of Lincoln County Schools to the county school board. The decision comes after Lincoln County made great strides in improving student achievement, superintendent-board relations and other deficiencies.

“It is time,” said state Superintendent Steve Paine. “The county superintendent and the local board are functionally well. We are proud of the work that has been done by the county board, the superintendent, teachers, students and parents. Still, it is important to monitor the county closely because the stakes are high for the children of Lincoln County. I think they ought to be watched very carefully during this time.”

The state board intervened in Lincoln County in 2000 after an Office of Education Performance Audits review discovered questionable financial and hiring practices in the county offices as well as serious facilities, curriculum and leadership issues.   

Since the intervention, Lincoln County has worked to resolve the majority of its issues. Curriculum and instruction decisions remain under state control. Grant, Fayette, McDowell, Mingo and Preston counties currently are under state control.

 

Subcommittee moves closer to OPEB legislation

By Jim Wallace

When members of Finance Subcommittee C meet early in January in the last set of monthly interim legislative meetings before the beginning of the 60-day regular session of the Legislature, they hope to approve a bill that could address West Virginia’s estimated $8 billion liability for OPEB – other post-employment benefits. But another committee has received a warning against using one proposed method for dealing with the OPEB liability.

Most of that liability represents health care benefits promised to state employees, school employees and other public sector workers after their retirement. Like other states, West Virginia began recognizing its OPEB liability a few years ago after the General Accounting Standards Board began requiring accounting for retiree health care on an accrual basis rather on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Over the past several months, subcommittee members and their staff have been working on a long list of possible actions the state could take to reduce and manage the OPEB liability. But as Melissa Lilly, a staff lawyer, explained during the subcommittee’s December meeting, that list has been fairly fluid with proposals being added, dropped or revised.

“That should be finalized next month, along with a report that will be made a part of the final report,” she said.

“We’re asking the consultant to review our list and see if it’s going to be economically feasible to do some of the suggestions.” – Legislative attorney Melissa Lilly

The subcommittee was still waiting for a report from Buck Consultants, which has a $31,000 contract to do an actuarial analysis to figure out which proposals would help alleviate the problem and which ones would not work so well. That led Delegate Tim Manchin, D-Marion, to ask whether lawmakers were letting someone else decide what should be on the list of recommendations for addressing OPEB.

“Not at all,” Lilly replied. “We’re asking the consultant to review our list and see if it’s going to be economically feasible to do some of the suggestions.”

Because of a decision the Legislature made a few years ago, about 40 percent to 45 percent of the OPEB liability has been assigned to county school boards. The school boards have objected to having to carry that liability on their books, especially considering that the state is responsible for promising subsidized health care benefits to current and future public sector retirees and that most of the funding for school employees’ salaries comes from the School Aid Formula. One of the suggested changes being considered by the subcommittee is to reassign most of that OPEB liability back to the state.

If work on the subcommittee’s recommendations is finished in time for the meeting during the interims, scheduled for Jan. 9 through Jan. 11, Lilly said, those recommendations could be put in the form of legislation that would be introduced early in the regular session with all of the subcommittee’s members listed as sponsors.

 

AFT official suggests dropping DROP.

Also during the December interim meetings, the Joint Standing Committee on Pensions and Retirement heard from an expert who warned that one method for addressing the OPEB liability might do more harm than good.

That method is the Deferred Retirement Option Plan – or DROP – which would provide pension-eligible employees the opportunity to retire but continue to work for another three to five years. Their pension benefits would be frozen at each employee’s DROP date and the pension benefits would be deposited in DROP accounts with a guaranteed rate of return. At the end of the DROP period, an employee would retire and receive a frozen monthly benefit based on the DROP date plus a lump-sum payment from the DROP account. The concept was first introduced in public safety pension plans about 20 years ago to keep firefighters and police officers working. It has since spread to use with other employees.

But John Abraham, manager of member benefits for the American Federation of Teachers, told lawmakers it’s tricky to do DROP right so that it has the desired effect of reducing OPEB liabilities. The AFT represents about 1.5 million workers across the country, including about 15,000 in West Virginia.

Abraham said workers need three things for retirement security when they age out of the workforce:

• 100 percent accrued retirement take-home pay from all sources of income, including Social Security, pension and private savings;
• Cost-of-of-living adjustments to protect their purchasing power; and
• Retiree health care.

PEIA has a complicated subsidy schedule for retirees not yet eligible for Medicare, he said. Employees with as few as five years of service are eligible for a partial offset of premium costs and enjoy the same deductible and out-of-pocket maximum that long-term employees enjoy. The subsidy is increased in five-year age spans until about 75 percent of the premium is met for retirees with at least 25 years of service. There are also different subsidy schedules for retirees with and without Medicare-eligible dependents.

For retirees age 65 and older, PEIA has developed a cost-effective Medicare Advantage plan, but Abraham said the concern is about the cost for health care benefits for pre-Medicare retirees. Thus, there is interest in giving employees incentives to stay on the job until age 65.

“If more age 55 to 65 eligible pensioners stay employed, the long-term OPEB liability can be reduced.” – John Abraham
Source: AFT photos

“If more age 55 to 65 eligible pensioners stay employed, the long-term OPEB liability can be reduced,” Abraham said.

Many state and local governments have used DROP programs to do that, he said, and some have even used an alternative called Back DROP. In Back DROP, an employee can retroactively participate in the DROP program by looking backward and selecting from the better of two benefit options, Abraham said, but it can be better for the employee than the employer.

“Implementation of the Back DROP would raise employer costs due to the employee’s ability to pick the best option,” he said. Noting that Texas stopped its Back DROP program in 2005, Abraham suggested that lawmakers should ask Texas officials what happened before considering using Back DROP.

For just a DROP program, he said, the advantages include:

• Keeping employees on the job past normal retirement or early retirement;
• Enhancing members’ overall benefits; and
• Keeping employees working in jobs they like without forfeiting retirement benefits.

But Abraham also pointed out several disadvantages to DROP:

• “One of the biggest hurdles that you will face is a public relations attack on paying out these hundred-thousand-dollar giveaways to public employees.”
• The setting of eligibility conditions might limit the benefits to only a small subset of the workforce.
• The effects of the DROP might force younger workers to seek other opportunities as they might see limited options for promotions over time.
• Pension funding could be impaired if a sizeable number of active employees enter the DROP and do not pay any pension contributions while in the DROP period at the same time new employee hiring is frozen.
• “If the DROP payment is less than the pension benefit, workers may feel cheated out of their benefit and decide not to participate in the program.”
• Low-wage employees could severely lower their income-replacement rates by participating in the DROP and affect their long-term income needs in retirement.

In addition, Abraham said, state officials would have to answer several questions before they could implement a DROP program:

• Would legislative wage increases be passed on to DROP participants or would participants’ wages be frozen once they enter the DROP program?
• Would pay increases during the DROP period increase the participants’ final benefits?
• What would happen if a participant would die, become permanently disabled or quit during a DROP period?
• Who should be eligible for participation?
• Would the DROP program be compatible with school board workforce rules?

“If the employees use the program to increase their overall retirement benefit, at the planned rate of retirement, the program could experience substantial costs. This is because the pension benefits must be funded over a shorter period of time and paid over a longer period of retirement.” – John Abraham

“It’s very difficult to predict whether the DROP will succeed in extending employee careers or if employees enter the DROP program at an earlier age than the age at which they would otherwise have retired,” Abraham said. “Many factors weigh on this retirement decision including the health status of the worker and their spouse, family finances, parental obligations and future job prospects. It is very hard to estimate the impact of the DROP in advance of its actual implementation. If targeted employees extend their careers, then the program will be cost neutral, providing the pension plan can generate a rate of return equal to or greater than the guaranteed interest on the DROP performance. If the employees use the program to increase their overall retirement benefit, at the planned rate of retirement, the program could experience substantial costs. This is because the pension benefits must be funded over a shorter period of time and paid over a longer period of retirement.”

Abraham said a recent study of the DROP program on the age of retirement and pension costs for the City of Philadelphia conducted by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College concluded that municipal employees maximize their use of DROP by entering the program about two years before the age they otherwise would have retired. The researchers estimated that the DROP plan has resulted in a significant increase in pension costs for the city, he said, so the city council is considering eliminating the program.

 

Other incentives could keep employees on the job longer.

However, there are other ways to get longtime employees to work closer to the age at which they are eligible for Medicare. Abraham said one alternative to DROP is to provide monetary incentives to workers who are at least 55 with 30 years of service to stay employed longer. For example, he said, the state could propose a non-pensionable longevity increase of up to $15,000 for workers who agree to stay employed for another five years after attaining age 55 with 30 years of service.

Such an incentive could work like this: In the year a worker turns 56, she would be credited with an account of $1,000. In the following year, the payment could rise to $2,000, so the account would be worth $3,000. At 58, the payment would rise to $3,000, then $4,000 and finally $5,000 at age 60. If the worker would leave at any age before age 60, her benefit would be fixed at the accumulated level.

For example, at age 58, a worker participating in this model plan would receive a final lump sum payment of $6,000 – $1,000 at 56, plus $2,000 at 57 and $3,000 at age 58. This device would not affect pension or health care funding, Abraham said, and it could be paid out of general revenues.

 

Other states have tried similar programs.

California has had some success at increasing the working careers of those age 60 with 30 or more years of service by offering increases in the multiplier for each year of extended service, he said. For retirement between age 60 and 63, the 2 percent multiplier is increased by 0.132 percent per year of age the member is over the age of 60 up to a maximum of 2.4 percent. There’s also a service factor to increase the multiplier up to 2.4 percent for those who stay beyond 30 years of service. Abraham suggested that West Virginia could consider a multiplier increase of 0.8 percent per year of service for a worker age 60 with 30 years of service to stay to age 65. But he advised lawmakers to consult with actuaries for cost estimates of such a change.

Ohio addressed the issue several years ago, Abraham said, and found a large number of second-career workers who stayed employed until they were eligible for a normal retirement benefit at age 60 with five years of service and then retired with entitlement to retiree health care benefits for life. In Ohio, public sector workers do not participate in Social Security or Medicare, he said, so the state has a large group of retirees who receive state benefits.

Abraham said the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System adopted a minimum service requirement of 15 years for entitlement for retiree health care benefits. A union coalition supported this change, because members agreed that retiree health care benefits ought to be set aside for workers who have made long-term commitments to stay in public service, he said.

Another variation on decoupling pension eligibility from retiree health care eligibility would be to provide a 10 percent health care premium offset for each year a worker stayed on the job past age 55, Abraham suggested. At age 60, a worker would earn a benefit of 50 percent of the cost of the retiree health care benefit through PEIA. At age 65, the benefit would be worth 100 percent of the premium payment.

Alternatively, Abraham said, the system could provide a retiree health care benefit subsidy of 37.5 percent starting at age 60 and 75 percent at age 65 for any retiree with at least 20 years of service. But he said that, if lawmakers consider that concept, they also should consider a transition benefit for those nearing eligibility.

“I suggest that you include anyone who is within five years of meeting the current age and service rules under the existing plan,” Abraham said.

The need to address growing liabilities for OPEB has led legislatures all over the country to consider ways of dealing with the problem, he said in summarizing his recommendations, and DROP has emerged as one of the leading contenders. But Abraham again urged lawmakers to be careful about it.

“You may want to give your actuaries a few more years to determine the impact of the shift of participants back to the old plan before making a significant plan design change that may have cost implications for the pension plan in the years ahead. But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything.” – John Abraham

“The DROP may be one way to encourage this group [workers not old enough to qualify for Medicare] to continue their employment,” he said. “While employee preferences for work and leisure will ultimately determine the success of the DROP, it’s hard to predict whether the program will be cost neutral or increase employer contributions over time. You may want to give your actuaries a few more years to determine the impact of the shift of participants back to the old plan before making a significant plan design change that may have cost implications for the pension plan in the years ahead. But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything.”

Delegate Dave Pethtel, D-Wetzel, said that, based on his experience in schools in his home county, most teachers who have been in classrooms for 30 years or more are looking to get out because of the pressures and amount of work in schools today. So he wondered how hard it would be to entice them to work longer.

“The thing that I worry about is that it’s very difficult to predict whether or not the actuarial cost estimates that you will receive will actually match the actual costs that you will not be able to calculate until you’ve been in the program for three or four years.” – John Abraham

Abraham responded said, “I think educators understand that you got to have retiree health care to have a chance at a dignified retirement.” He said those who retire before becoming eligible for Medicare either will be covered by spouses’ insurance or they will get other jobs with health care benefits. But he said incentives can be effective in many cases to get people to keep working until they are eligible for Medicare.

“I will say this about DROP: If all of you decide to implement this kind of program, it will become very popular,” Abraham said. “The thing that I worry about is that it’s very difficult to predict whether or not the actuarial cost estimates that you will receive will actually match the actual costs that you will not be able to calculate until you’ve been in the program for three or four years. Many jurisdictions that have adopted these programs have determined over time that they have increased the normal costs for the pension plan.”

Providing some incentive to keep longtime employees working is important, he said, but he wouldn’t recommend doing do it through a DROP program.

Senate Pensions Chairman Dan Foster, D-Kanawha, said lawmakers would continue to study DROP and other alternatives.

 

Lawmakers consider changing investment rules.

The Joint Standing Committee on Pension and Retirement also took the opportunity of the December meeting to ask Craig Slaughter, executive director of the Investment Management Board, about policies that affect the return West Virginia gets from investing pension funds.

Delegate Ray Canterbury, R-Greenbrier, said he was concerned about developments in the federal government and what would happen if the United States would default on its debt. He asked if the Legislature should make it easier for the Investment Management Board to invest in international markets.

Slaughter said the issues Canterbury raised are real. The United States is in a predicament, because it is over-leveraged, he said, and lawmakers should consider all possibilities. The U.S. economy could go downward or stay flat, he said, and the nation could see rising interest rates or inflation.

“I really believe you have to have some exposure to international securities.” – Craig Slaughter

“If that scenario plays out, then an allocation to foreign securities makes sense in a portfolio,” Slaughter said. “Now, I wouldn’t want to bet the whole ranch on that, but you have to be properly diversified and cautious about the whole situation. I really believe you have to have some exposure to international securities.”

The Legislature has restricted the Investment Management Board to investing no more than 30 percent in international securities. But Slaughter said that, if that limitation were removed, the board already adheres to the Prudent Investor Rule, which provides good protection.

“It allows some flexibility through time,” he said. “It allows for situations like this when certain markets are more attractive than others, because it focuses on the prudence of the decision, and it demands expertise in making those decisions.”

Canterbury said the Legislature has placed many rules on the Investment Management Board, because lawmakers are afraid of risk. But he said risk is managed better through diversification of investments. “I think some of these restrictions are actually counterproductive,” Canterbury said.

Sen. Brooks McCabe, D-Kanawha, agreed that the Legislature should loosen restrictions on the Investment Management Board.

PEIA gives members premium increases they can avoid

The Public Employees Insurance Agency is prepared to go into its next fiscal year, beginning next July, with no premium increases for PEIA members.

Actually, the PEIA Finance Board at its December meeting approved across-the-board premium increases of $14 a month for all members, but the members can avoid those increases by taking two actions:

• They must participate in a wellness program that includes a four-step screening process of measuring waist circumference, total cholesterol, blood pressure and blood glucose. Participation will provide a $10 monthly premium discount.
• Each must submit an affidavit to verify that he or she has completed a living will, or advanced directive for end-of-life care. Members don’t have to reveal to PEIA what they have put in their living wills; they merely have to affirm that they have set out advanced directives. That action carries with it a $4 monthly premium discount.

The idea behind the two incentives is to cut down on some of PEIA’s biggest costs. By getting members to be better aware of their health conditions, it is believed many will take preventive steps that will cut down on more serious – and more expensive – problems in the future. The living will measure is meant to get members to think ahead about what actions they want health care professionals to take as the members near the ends of their lives. That’s because the end of life tends to be the most medically expensive period for many people, although they might not always want all the life-extending efforts given to them.

PEIA Director Ted Cheatham told Finance Board members he also is working on a change in policy that could benefit people who leave public sector employment and later come back to work for the state or other public employers. Several months ago, the board adopted a new rule that eliminates the subsidy for retiree health care benefits for anyone hired after July 1 of this year. Cheatham said the proposed policy he is preparing would allow people with a break in employment to have their original date of employment be considered as their hiring date instead of the date of their return to employment. That would preserve their ability to get the retiree subsidy for health care benefits if they originally were hired before July 1, 2010.

Two board members, Elaine Harris and Bill Milam, wanted to have the board vote to approve the policy at the meeting, but Cheatham urged them to put off such a vote, because he needs more time to work out the details of the policy. The board could vote on the policy at its next meeting in March.

Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, said he welcomed the proposed change, because many teachers have breaks in their employment. But he said the policy of eliminating the retiree subsidy for newly hired people would only exacerbate the problem many school systems are having in hiring qualified teachers.

“We have a crisis in West Virginia,” Lee said. “The loss of the retiree subsidy will continue to drive teachers to other states.”

The Finance Board’s decision to eliminate the retiree subsidy was meant to help eventually eliminate the state’s liability for OPEB – other post-employment benefits. That liability has been estimated at about $8 billion, mostly for health care benefits promised to current and future retirees.

 

New course is to make sure more students are prepared for math after high school

By Jim Wallace

The Department of Education plans to give students more incentive to perform well on the WESTEST2 while also making sure that more of them are prepared for college or careers after high school. That effort is part of West Virginia’s participation in the College and Career Readiness Project of the Southern Regional Education Board, but West Virginia is going further than required by the SREB.

Other states participating in the project, which is funded by the Gates Foundation, are Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Texas and Virginia. The ultimate goal is to reduce the number of students who need remedial courses in college.

“Some of our students perhaps did not give their best efforts to the WESTEST2 in the past.” – Betty Jordan

Betty Jordan, executive assistant to state Supt. Steve Paine, said West Virginia already is seeing a gradual decline in the number of students who need remedial courses, but the plan is to do even better. She said that, beginning in the spring of 2011, any junior taking the WESTEST2 who doesn’t reach the college-ready benchmark will have to take a transition math course for seniors. That course will be offered beginning in the 2011-2012 school year, Jordan said, and schools already know potentially how many students might need that course.

Tying the transition math course for seniors into the WESTEST2 that students take as juniors is expected to motivate students to perform better on the test. The WESTEST2 has not been a “high-stakes standard for all our students,” Jordan said. “So some of our students perhaps did not give their best efforts to the WESTEST2 in the past.” However, a poor performance on WESTEST2 will not necessarily require a student to go into the transition math course. Jordan said there will be a waiver for students who can prove college readiness, such as by getting good scores on the ACT.

“Of the six states that are part of that SREB pilot, West Virginia is the only state to require any course for students that are not college-ready. So I think that speaks well to the leadership of our Legislature and our Department of Education.” – Betty Jordan

“Of the six states that are part of that SREB pilot, West Virginia is the only state to require any course for students that are not college-ready,” she said. “So I think that speaks well to the leadership of our Legislature and our Department of Education.”

The Department of Education intends to develop a similar course for students whose performance on the WESTEST2 in English/language arts shows they are not college-ready, but Jordan said the standards for that have not been set yet. She said it would be a great waste to develop a course if the standards were not correct. Higher education officials have been working with the Education Department on those standards.

House Education Chairwoman Mary Poling, D-Barbour, asked if students will receive credits for the transition courses. Jordan said the transition math course would count as a fourth math course, so students would not have to take another math course during their senior year. However, the status of the transition course for English/language arts is yet to be determined.

Senate Education Chairman Bob Plymale, D-Wayne, gave the Education Department credit for wanting to go beyond what other states are doing by establishing the transition courses. Supt. Paine thanked lawmakers for putting the necessary policy structure in place and trusting the department to fulfill it.

“There’s a gap in terms of student motivation sometimes. This serves as a motivator for kids to show what they are able to know and do on some kind of assessment. It motivates them to do their very best.” – Supt. Steve Paine

“There’s a gap in terms of student motivation sometimes,” he said. “This serves as a motivator for kids to show what they are able to know and do on some kind of assessment. It motivates them to do their very best.”

 Plymale, who serves on the executive committee of the SREB, said he would like the Education Department to complete plans for the English/language arts transition course by February.

“This is very important as we move forward,” he said. “This is really critical for the next steps we make.”

Paine said the department should be able to meet the deadline, but he won’t be around to see it through, because he will leave the state superintendent’s job in early January. He has accepted a job with the publisher CTB/McGraw-Hill as vice president of strategic planning and business development.

 

New science camp is planned.

Another initiative presented to members of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability is a plan to establish the West Virginia Science Camp. Bob Hall, assistant superintendent for instruction, said it would be modeled after the National Science Camp, which is held in West Virginia each summer. He said the state version will use the same staff. It will be for 150 students in 10th grade, Hall said, and they will return during the school year for extended weekends to work on scientific research.

Because Paine won’t appear again before lawmakers as state superintendent, he gave lawmakers an account of what has been accomplished during the last several years of his leadership. He noted that public education gets a lot of criticism.

“That can be good, but that can also be very detrimental to progress,” Paine said. He said there comes a point when “the beatings have to quit.” He said students come first in a school system, but employees come a very close second. Educators need tremendous levels of support in terms of professional development, Paine said, and after they get that they can be held accountable for results.

“When you invest in people and expect them to perform and hold them accountable for results, they’ll do that every single time.” – Steve Paine

“When you invest in people and expect them to perform and hold them accountable for results, they’ll do that every single time,” he said.

Paine credited that philosophy with West Virginia’s success in improving on most measures of student achievement. Reading scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels are the exceptions.

“We are cautiously optimistic that raising the rigor on our curriculum and our content standards and objectives is now starting to have an effect,” Paine said. “Our teachers and principals are adjusting to the increased level of rigor, and we’ll begin to see our results on multiple measures of progress.”

On WESTEST2, he called increases in results from the first year to the second year “incredible.” Further, Paine said, SAT scores are equal to the all-time high in West Virginia, and ACT scores improved this year over last year.

“We have a graduation rate that’s higher than the national average, but it has not grown,” Paine said, so the department is looking at intervention strategies and a data system that would show red flags for students who are in trouble.

The department also is trying to do a better job of getting students into career-technical education courses that could prevent many of them from dropping out of school and lead to better job opportunities. Paine said that 98 percent of graduates of such programs get placed in jobs, but the value of those programs is not fully realized in society. He said too many parents still focus on getting their children into four-year colleges.

“Technology is a huge issue for the future, and there’s not an easy solution to this. We are looking at the adoption of digital textbooks for one-to-one computing in some pilot counties.” – Steve Paine

“Technology is a huge issue for the future, and there’s not an easy solution to this,” Paine added. “We are looking at the adoption of digital textbooks for one-to-one computing in some pilot counties.”

Some publishing companies don’t want to put their content on digital media, he said, but they might be forced to do so in the future.

Paine said the state has made major strides in building bandwidth into schools, but more must be done. “We need to take a strong look at how we help our kids enter that digital world,” he said and added that the department has a plan that will be shared in January with legislative committee heads, although it won’t be ready for not for legislative action during the 2011 regular session of the Legislature. Instead, Paine said, the department will spend a full year building support for it. He said the plan already has been shared with Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.

“I think we have to do things a little bit differently in order to attain the results of some of those states that tend to be a little more affluent.” – Steve Paine

The progress West Virginia has made over the past few decades has come in spite of some obstacles, Paine said. For example, the percentage of students in single-parent homes rose from 12 percent in 1980 to 25 percent in 2000. And in 1990, 41 percent of West Virginia students received free or reduced-cost lunches, but that has risen to 56 percent today. West Virginia also has the lowest percentage of bachelor’s degree attainment in the country. It improved from just 12 percent in 1990 to 17 percent in 2007, but during those same years, the national average increased from 20 percent to 27 percent.

“I think we have to do things a little bit differently in order to attain the results of some of those states that tend to be a little more affluent,” Paine said.

But he told lawmakers that West Virginia is leading other states in some categories, including pre-kindergarten programs that have been growing in number and quality. The state also received a good onsite review recently from the U.S. Department of Education on special education.

“They did say they were so pleased with their findings that they would like to use our state as a model,” Paine said.

 

Career-tech classes are seen as dropout preventers

By Jim Wallace

A West Virginia Department of Education official has told lawmakers that the department is working hard to see that students get better guidance so that they can get into classes that will lead them to rewarding careers.

Kathy D’Antoni, assistant state superintendent for the Division of Technical and Adult Education Services, said the department has been trying to overcome and replace a comprehensive career guidance system the Legislature adopted more than a decade ago that has been difficult to implement. She said one problem has been that teachers tend to have limited knowledge about careers outside of teaching.

Changes are being made in the system largely because lawmakers and education officials have become alarmed that about one quarter of West Virginia students drop out of school before receiving high school diplomas.

“In fact, our dropout rate is exponentially increasing,” D’Antoni said. “Our prison rates are increasing.”

“We have to figure out how to engage students in their own education and get them accountable to help with their own learning process.” – Kathy D’Antoni

In addition, she said, many of the students who go on to college do not get jobs in the fields they go into.

“We have to figure out how to engage students in their own education and get them accountable to help with their own learning process,” D’Antoni said.

One way the department has been addressing the problem, she said, is through use of the GED Option, which the Legislature approved earlier this year. That program allows students to work toward the GED – or General Education Development diploma – instead of taking the regular set of high school classes without having to drop out of school to do so.

“That has been wildly accepted and appreciated across the state,” D’Antoni said. “It’s only the first semester, but we’re showing tremendous strides in this area of working with our dropouts.”

That program also includes a component that helps guide students to jobs available in West Virginia.

“We’ve got a lot of wonderful jobs available,” D’Antoni said. “The kids just don’t know about it. More importantly, the parents don’t know about it.”

 

Techademics is the next big thing.

Another program the Education Department is getting ready to implement is called Techademics. It is to incorporate academic knowledge from certain courses into career technical courses. For example, a building construction course might incorporate a lot of geometry.

“So if students successfully complete a building construction program at the career-tech center, they will also be awarded a geometry credit and won’t have to go back and sit in an isolated class,” D’Antoni said. “What that does is it frees up the schedule for our students.”

Currently, students need 28 credits to graduate from high school, she said, but tough academic requirements squeeze them out of taking some courses that interest them.

“This is a very cutting-edge approach that we’re very excited about,” D’Antoni said about Techademics, which some West Virginia schools will implement in the next school year. Education Department officials also have meet with representatives of the business community to identify career opportunities for which courses need to be developed, she said.

“It’s a different mindset at the department as far as how we turn this around. Basically, our kids need to understand the importance of education but also want to become engaged in the education process, because right now, they don’t see where what they do in high school connects with what they’re going to do when they get out.” – Kathy D’Antoni

“It’s a very exciting time,” D’Antoni said. “It’s a different mindset at the department as far as how we turn this around. Basically, our kids need to understand the importance of education but also want to become engaged in the education process, because right now, they don’t see where what they do in high school connects with what they’re going to do when they get out.”

Asked by Delegate David Walker, D-Clay, about the response to the GED Option, D’Antoni said more than 1,400 students have chosen that pathway instead of dropping out of school.

“We’re having a number of students who have already dropped out asking if they can come back in,” she said. “We’re also having a lot of our home-schooled folks asking if they can get on the option pathway to participate.”

 

Delegate suggests using ballgames as incentives.

Walker said the GED Option bill the Legislature passed earlier this year did not go as far as he wanted it to go, but he nevertheless was pleased with it. He added that his school board in Clay County has made another move, which he believes is helping keep students in school and working hard on their studies. Walker said the board voted to give students who maintain good attendance and a certain grade level free admission to all ballgames. He said senior citizens and veterans also get into ballgames for free.

“I think our biggest problem that lies with school dropouts is at home. I don’t think it lies in the school system. I don’t think our school system is a failure like a lot of people beat the drum about.” – Delegate David Walker

“There are three times as many students at the ballgames with their parents,” Walker said. “They’re interacting with their parents and interacting with their grandpas and grandmas. I can see positive things coming out of this. I hope that some other counties will take a look at this, because I think our biggest problem that lies with school dropouts is at home. I don’t think it lies in the school system. I don’t think our school system is a failure like a lot of people beat the drum about. I think our school system is doing a good job of educating our kids. I agree that we need to be more in touch with the manufacturers.”

Delegate Larry Williams, D-Preston, said he was glad the education system is doing more to connect academics with students’ interests, which he believes will reduce the dropout rate.

“This is a critical piece that has to happen,” D’Antoni responded. She said the system must draw a succinct pathway for kids, and secondary education must be connected clearly to higher education.

House Education Chairwoman, Mary Poling, D-Barbour, noted that lawmakers had to stand up to the Education Department to prevent the removal of a science credit from high school graduation requirements. D’Antoni said that was a few years ago.

“I don’t think we had the same vision for academics and looking at how they merge together as it is now,” she said. “I just think we’re much further and much smarter right now than where we were.”

When Poling asked if there has been any resistance to Techademics from teachers who teach the subjects that would be covered in career-tech classes, Brenda Tanner, Cabell County’s career-tech education director, responded. She said her district has been working on Techademics as part of its Innovation Zones program and has put content teachers and career-tech teachers on a committee together.

“It’s amazing to see them come together,” Tanner said. “There hasn’t really been much resistance.”

Sen. Ron Stollings, D-Boone, asked whether math is the weakness for many students in career-tech programs.

“You’re right if you’re looking in the traditional sense,” D’Antoni said. “But what we’re finding is that higher-level academics come to life for kids who are in our career-tech centers.” Noting that those students include some that are national winners in robotics contests, she said, “These kids never realized they were using calculus, because it was more hands-on.”

 

Traditional guidance counselor system is not enough.

Sen. Bill Laird, D-Fayette, asked whether guidance counselors are still a large part of the system. D’Antoni said they are, but the ratio is about 450 kids to each counselor.

“So you are not going to get the guidance you need to get, but the career guidance I was speaking of is the culture of the school,” she said. “It’s every person in that school becomes a deliverer of career guidance for kids.”

That’s especially important for kids who come from homes where their role models are not engineers and other such professional people, D’Antoni said. “We have to expose these children to what’s available and let them try to find where their interests lie,” she said. “If we say it’s only the guidance counselor, it’ll never get done, because we just don’t have the resources, the money, to put that many guidance counselors in schools.”

Delegate Stan Shaver, D-Preston, asked if the department has worked toward establishing a process to make students aware of the technical and adult career services they might want to go into by the time they go into high school.

“You just hit my passion,” D’Antoni responded. “Yes, we are. To me, that is one of the areas of weaknesses in schools at this point.”

“In most states, people going off to college go to community and technical college, the majority of kids. In West Virginia, it’s the reverse.” – Kathy D’Antoni

Trade schools have carried the connotation they’re for students not good enough to go to college, she said, which is a shame, because there are high-level, technical jobs that require a higher level of skill sets. Many parents and counselors don’t realize that, so the department plans to begin having one-on-one talks with counselors in the spring, D’Antoni said.

“We’re going to have to take a very direct, hard approach on this, because we’ve got to break the culture cycle,” she said. “West Virginia is the reverse of the entire nation when you look at career and technical education. In most states, people going off to college go to community and technical college, the majority of kids. In West Virginia, it’s the reverse. There isn’t a state in the union that does it the way we do it.”

 

Manufacturers want a bigger role in education.

Karen Price, chairwoman of the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, told subcommittee members her organization is getting more involved with the education system. She said that, over the 19 years she has been at the association, the big issues have been workers’ compensation, environmental concerns and taxes, but lately, education has risen to the top of the agenda, because manufacturers are having trouble filling jobs with people who have the right skill levels.

“What we’re seeing is they can’t pass the test that most of the plants use,” Price said. “So we’re really concerned that we’re not seeing a pool of students that can fill these jobs.”

There are about 50,000 manufacturing jobs in the state, but many of the workers are age 50 and older, so many will retire in the next several years, and companies need a pool of talent from which they can hire, she said.

Price said she likes the concept of Techademics. She noted that Virginia has instituted a technical standards diploma at the high school level, and Ohio has something called “stackable certificates.” She said the Manufacturers’ Association wants to encourage kids to go to community college, but she is concerned that many students need remedial math and English in community college. Manufacturers have jobs available with good pay and benefits, Price said, but students must be prepared to take them.

“I don’t think we have a lot of time,” she said. “I mean if we’re talking six or eight years, other states are ahead of us.”

Delegate Williams agreed that manufacturers should be in close contact with technical schools. But Delegate Ireland asked whether the Manufacturers Association would have a presence during legislative committee meetings in 2011. Price said she would try to attend many meetings but said that as one person she cannot always be available. Ireland responded that during his four years on the House Education Committee, he has rarely seen anybody people other than reporters and those from the education community in attendance.

“Those folks who say that the education system in West Virginia is broken need to get involved,” Ireland said.

Price agreed that manufacturers have been remiss in working with the school system. She said they didn’t see what was needed to be done until about a year ago.

Labor official offers advice on getting schools to work better

By Jim Wallace

Members of the Legislature wanting to improve West Virginia’s public schools have been interested in exploring whether to adopt some of the wide-ranging reforms implemented in the Washington, D.C., schools. But an official from the American Federation of Teachers has suggested that the school system in New Haven, Connecticut, provides a better example. 

Although the District of Columbia took some bold steps in recent years to reform its school system, commitment to that reform came into question earlier this year after the mayor who promoted those changes was defeated in his re-election bid and the school system chancellor hired under his direction resigned.

“It was and remains controversial, because the money that they used was from private foundations.” – Joan Devlin
Source: AFT Photos

Joan Devlin, senior associate director of educational issues for AFT, told the December meeting of Education Subcommittee C there are different approaches on how to use pay to get the best performance from teachers. One reason Washington’s school system has stirred interest in West Virginia and elsewhere is that it established a pay system that was based partly on how teachers did in an evaluation system and put a pilot project into effect.

“It was and remains controversial, because the money that they used was from private foundations,” Devlin said. “A number of foundations gave the district a lot of money to implement this voluntary system. What happened, however, is the district is not able to afford that pay raise if the foundations pulled their money, which they threatened to do when the chancellor left. They have not yet done that, and we’re hopeful they won’t do that, because we would like to see the pilot continue to extend to see if that really does provide the incentives that we were talking about or whether it is just a nice way of rewarding people that work hard.”

Devlin faulted Washington’s implementation of an evaluation system that was created with very little negotiation between the teachers’ union and the administration.

“We would never have agreed to some of the things they came up with,” she said. “They have five observations of every single teacher in the city. That required hiring a large number of what they’re calling master teachers, and some of the people they hired didn’t have teaching degrees or teaching certification. So it’s been an interesting pilot year.”

For many teachers, 50 percent of their evaluations could be based on how students do on a single test, Devlin said. “Again, that is not something that we would ever agree to, because no single test really tells you what a child knows and what a child has learned over the course of a year,” she said.

“Whatever you decide, you do need to start with what are the standards that you want all teachers to meet.” – Joan Devlin

By contrast, Devlin said, the New Haven school district has adopted an evaluation system designed cooperatively with union input. It uses multiple ways of measuring student achievement, including a state test, several end-of-year tests and teacher tests. It also uses student learning objectives designed by teachers and principals, who also developed a method for judging whether the objectives are met.

“Whatever you decide, you do need to start with what are the standards that you want all teachers to meet,” Devlin said. “Then, you have to decide how do you measure student learning and then put that system together in a way that isn’t what we call an ‘I gotcha’ system. It’s really designed to help all teachers no matter where they are on the performance scale. It’s to help all teachers improve their knowledge and skills as teaching professionals.”

With a good evaluation system, she said, even the best teachers can benefit from the feedback the system provides. Devlin said it should be accompanied by professional development for teachers who need particular attention to develop their skills and knowledge.

“So an evaluation system can’t be just a way of saying we’re going to fire a lot of people,” she said. “An evaluation system is how you help people grow. It’s how you help people become the best professionals that they can become.”

 

AFT has a model system.

The AFT has been working with researchers across the country for more than a year to put together an evaluation system the union can recommend. Devlin provided lawmakers with a copy of that system, the Continuous Improvement Model for Teacher Development and Evaluation, which she called “the best system based on research and experience.” She said AFT is working with the West Virginia Department of Education on implementing such a system.

Delegate Woody Ireland, R-Ritchie, asked if the evaluation system would lead to being able to differentiate between teacher doing exceptional jobs and those doing adequate jobs. Devlin said it would. Ireland then asked if the AFT would advocate using differentiated pay as a motivator.

Devlin said the union has a wide range of experience on differentiation of pay, including systems that pay for performance in which elite teachers or mentor teachers received additional pay for added responsibility. “Those teachers that are selected for those positions are chosen because they are the more effective teachers,” she said. “So in that regard, we think that differentiated pay makes a lot of sense.”

However, Devlin added that research about differentiated pay indicates it is a reward, not an incentive.

“It does not make a difference in terms of raising student achievement, so it’s a little difficult to say whether it works or not,” she said. “Right now, it isn’t working as an incentive. It is working as a reward.”

“If you have a level of salary that is too low, you are not going to attract teachers to West Virginia. If you have a merit pay system, you will reward some teachers, but you still haven’t solved the problem of the pay being in general too low. So that, if you really want to attract good teachers, there has to be a base level of salary as a consideration.” – Joan Devlin

Ireland said that confused him. He said lawmakers keep hearing that teachers’ pay is a significant issue for West Virginia’s education system, so he wondered how it could be significant but not be a motivator.

“If you have a level of salary that is too low, you are not going to attract teachers to West Virginia,” Devlin replied. “If you have a merit pay system, you will reward some teachers, but you still haven’t solved the problem of the pay being in general too low. So that, if you really want to attract good teachers, there has to be a base level of salary as a consideration.”

“So pay is a motivator with respect to whether you’re going to be in the teaching profession or not,” Ireland summarized. Devlin agreed.

Delegate Josh Stowers, D-Lincoln, said he understood the District of Columbia’s school system was to put into effect this fall a contract with a voluntary pay-for-performance plan. He wanted to know if that had been worked out.

No, Devlin responded, the district put into place a pay system partly based on how teachers did on the evaluation system and implemented it only in a pilot project. That’s the aspect that remains controversial largely because of its dependence on funding from private foundations, she said. The system set out methods used to measure teachers’ performance, she added.

“They had to achieve the highest level in the domains of teaching,” Devlin said. “Their students had to achieve greater than a year’s growth in what is to be considered to have passed the student achievement.”

However, she said, not all teachers are in a grade or subject with a test to measure such student achievement, even though 50 percent of teachers’ evaluation is to be based on student achievement. But the New Haven system has found ways to deal with that so student achievement is part of every teacher’s evaluation, Devlin said.

“In New Haven, we have performance testing, so if you’re an art teacher or a music teacher or even a history teacher for that matter, you can have student performance as a measure of their growth,” she said. “In the case of biology and chemistry and physics and other science subjects that are not tested right now in Connecticut, they have end-of-the-year courses that they use as a measure of student growth. So they have found other ways for teachers to demonstrate a level of achievement in their students over the course of a year.”

Delegate Walter Duke wanted to know if New Haven’s evaluation system also covers the hiring of new teachers, but Devlin said that’s not part of it.

 

More than hiring and firing are needed.

After hearing Devlin’s testimony and reviewing much of the AFT’s Continuous Improvement Model for Teacher Development and Evaluation, Delegate Ireland said he agreed with much of what was in the publication. But he said he was surprised at a statement that you can neither hire nor fire your way to better schools.

“I agree with that, but I am surprised to see that in there when we hear all the discussion about how we need to hire better teachers and pay them more, which I’m OK with,” Ireland said. “My mother was a teacher for 30-some years, so I’m OK with paying teachers all right.”

“It doesn’t make sense as a resource management system to say we’re just going to fire all the bad teachers and we’re just going to hire better teachers.” – Joan Devlin

Offering some clarification, Devlin said, “The charge in the popular media has been that the real problem here is that teachers are terrible, and if you fire all the bad teachers, everything would be fine. But the truth of the matter is, you don’t know whether the person you’re hiring to replace the person you just fired is any better. So it doesn’t make sense as a resource management system to say we’re just going to fire all the bad teachers and we’re just going to hire better teachers.”

Getting rid of bad teachers and hiring better teachers might be a good goal to have, Devlin said, but it is necessary first to have an evaluation system in place to determine which teachers are good and which ones aren’t.

“The second thing we absolutely have to have is a way to develop all of the personnel that you hire,” she said. “You have to have a system that maximizes people’s skills, whether they’re at the top of their game or they need help. You have to have a system that provides that kind of support.”

Ireland asked whether, once an evaluation system is in place, it would make sense to get rid of the worst teachers. Devlin agreed.

“We’re not designing a system that’s going to protect people that can’t teach,” she said. “We are designing a system that will develop everyone to their fullest, and if someone doesn’t make it, then that person has to leave.”

 

Overburdening principals doesn’t help.

Delegate David Perry, D-Fayette, asked Devlin if she thought West Virginia’s evaluation system is broken. She responded that principals are incredibly busy. They go into classrooms with a checklist to evaluate teachers, and only sometimes do they have time to talk with the teachers, Devlin said.

“We don’t think that that’s a very good system,” she said. “We think that there ought to be real feedback.”

Getting back to the evaluation system set up in Washington, Devlin said, the people hired as master teachers are to do only two of the five evaluations of each teacher, while principals are to do the other three.

“It overwhelmed principals, absolutely overwhelmed principals, because the numbers were so great,” she said. A principal had to sit through an entire class and have a conference with a teacher, but many principals were not comfortable with that, Devlin said. Another problem, she said, was that the master teachers were hired from the marketplace.

“We had a number of people that were doing the role of master teachers that weren’t teachers themselves,” Devlin said. “That was one of the problems that they ran into.”

Perry said he thought bad teachers make up only 1 percent or less of all teachers.

“That’s right,” Devlin said. “It’s a very small number of teachers.”

It’s easy to talk about bad teachers, she said, but if schools hire well and have a good evaluation system, they shouldn’t have any bad teachers.

 

Bills have been prepared for the legislators to consider in 2011.

The purpose of the monthly legislative interim meetings is not only for lawmakers to gather information on important subjects but also to develop legislation for consideration during the Legislature’s regular 60-day session. Many interim committees wait until the last set of interims in January before considering whether to recommend proposed legislation, but staff attorney David Mohr provided members of Education Subcommittee C with drafts of three bills they are expected to consider in January:

1. Tuition reimbursement – “Everybody understands the real problem there is insufficient funds to cover the tuition reimbursement program costs that people turn in,” Mohr said. The proposed bill would separate the two categories: beginning teachers’ reimbursement and reimbursement for teachers to change their certification.
2. Employment of retired teachers as substitutes in positions with critical needs and shortages.
3. Transfers – Mohr said it started as a bill to limit the ability to make voluntary transfers after July 15, but it also would allow superintendents to nominate prospective graduates from teacher education programs to school boards for employment. He said the bill would have faculty senates involved with principals in the interview process and would allow for reposting jobs if only one person applies.

Mohr said a couple of other potential bills should be ready for subcommittee members to consider in January.

Teacher calls for required family and consumer economics courses

By Jim Wallace

A family and consumer sciences teacher has asked lawmakers to require school systems to offer family and consumer economics required courses, as they were required to do in the past.

Vicki Toothman, who teaches at Mannington Middle School, said those courses are the first to be eliminated when school boards cut their budgets.

“It seems that board members have it in for us,” she told members of Education Subcommittee A during their December meeting.

Parenting is the only family and consumer sciences course that West Virginia school system still are required to have, Toothman said, but she wants students to get other classes to help prepare them to become productive and informed citizens. She said the courses teach students life skills that they might not otherwise get because of the makeup of today’s families.

In addition to parenting, Toothman said, the disciplines covered by family and consumer sciences courses include: human development, personal and family finance, housing and interior design, food science, consumer issues, nutrition and wellness, and textiles and apparel.

All students need some level of life skills training, she said. The courses also are interdisciplinary, incorporating reading, math, science and social studies, she said.

“The kids are learning but don’t realize it,” Toothman said.

Other states require schools to provide those courses, she said, and some states allow certain courses to be counted for health credits.

Members of the subcommittee had several questions for Toothman but did not say anything about acting on her request.

 

State school system audits find credit card misuse

 

Both the Charleston Daily Mail and the Associated Press report credit card misuse shows up often in Office of Education Performance Audits (OEPA) school and district reports . OEPA Executive Director Kenna Seal, Ph.D., made that report in discussing findings of the Mason County Board of Education Audit at the December state Board of Education meeting.

As part of a Daily Mail story by reporter Zach Harold, assistant state superintendent Joe Panetta said that fewer than half of West Virginia's 55 county school systems participate in the state’s purchase card program (P-Card).

State Auditor Glen Gainer says the program contains safeguards against card misuse. It also can save counties money.

In reviewing the MCBOE Audit, OEPA auditors found three transactions they deemed "possible personal use violations." A cardholder in January spent $82.73 on a car charger. A $73.14 purchase from April 4, 2010, went to the Apple Online Store. Another $73.14 purchase on June 30 was for an iPhone application.

According to state law, credit card purchases must be accompanied by itemized receipts. In all, nine of the county's card transactions did not have these receipts.

Several other county board credit card expenditures were cited in the Daily Mail article, including Fayette County Schools, Preston County Schools, Randolph and Webster County Schools, based on OEPA reports cited by Seal.

Gainer said state agencies have used the cards since 1996. The Legislature opened the program to local governments and school boards in 2008.

School systems also receive money back from card transactions. If a school board spends $1 million on the card, "they're going to get $11,000 on rebate back. That's part of the contract we have," Gainer said.

United Bank, which issues the P-Cards for the state, agreed to give most of its interchange profit back to the state, Gainer said. The state then transfers the money back to the local entity.

Gainer said school systems usually receive their cards two weeks to a month after they apply. The Auditor's Office makes sure the county has policies set up before they issue cards and train employees on the proper ways to use them.

The Auditor also requires school systems to designate a coordinator to oversee the cards, reconcile bank statements and oversee policies and procedures.

"There is some work we have to do on the front side. We don't just issue cards to people and turn them loose," Gainer said.

State school system audits find credit card misuse
Refer to http://www.dailymail.com/News/statenews/201012261219?page=2&build=cache

 

Editor’s Note: -- Jim Wallace is a former government reporter for the Charleston Daily Mail and former news director of West Virginia Public Radio. He now works for TSG Consulting in Charleston and writes for several national and West Virginia publications.

 

 

 

 

State Board / State Department of Education News

State to help teachers of special needs students earn National Board Certification

 

The West Virginia Department of Education is offering 55 teachers of students with disabilities or literacy specialists the opportunity to earn National Board Certification through the Take One! program. Applications will be filled on a first-come-first-served basis.

National Board Certification is a voluntary assessment program designed to recognize and reward great teachers—and make them better. While state licensing systems set basic requirements to teach in each state, National Board Certified Teachers have successfully demonstrated advanced teaching knowledge, skills and practices. Certification is achieved through a rigorous, performance-based assessment that takes one to three years to complete.

As part of the process, teachers build a portfolio that includes student work samples, assignments, videotapes and a thorough analysis of their classroom teaching. Additionally, teachers are assessed on their knowledge of the subjects they teach.

Take One! allows teachers who have at least three years of teaching experience to complete one module in the NBPTS certification process. Candidates are required to study the NBPTS standards for their discipline and complete a video portfolio entry by April 15.

Successful completion of the Take One! program will be the first step in a two-year process of earning National Board Certification. Remaining requirements in 2011-2010 will be partially funded through the Bridges to Literacy program, a federal grant that supports professional development for teachers at all programmatic levels in the area of student literacy. Applicants must register by Dec. 30 at http://creator.zoho.com/sexton6/take-one/form-perma/Take_One to participate.

The WVDE Office of Special Programs will provide a professional development and technical assistance retreat for Take One! candidates and full certification candidates at Stonewall Jackson Resort on Feb. 27-28.

 

86 teachers earn National Board Certification

 

West Virginia is ranked 20th nationwide with the addition of 86 new National Board Certified teachers to its roles, the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards announced Wednesday on National Board Certification Day. Overall, West Virginia is 24th with 580 National Board Certified Teachers, outpacing much larger states, such as Texas, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Colorado, among others.

“National Board Certified teachers not only have to prove they know their subject matter, but they also must provide evidence they know how to effectively teach their subjects to students,” said state Superintendent Steve Paine. “National Board Certified Teachers know how to bridge the gap between what students learn today and what they need to know to be successful in the 21st century. Teachers who receive the national certification are clearly among America’s best.”  

Across the county, about 91,000 of some of the most effective teachers in the country have demonstrated that they meet the highest teaching standards by becoming National Board certified. This year, West Virginia increased its National Board Certified Teachers by 17.4 percent, compared to a national average of 10 percent. West Virginia’s 2011 Teacher of the Year Drema McNeal of Raleigh County is among them. Overall, Wood County has the most nationally certified teachers in West Virginia with 68, followed by Cabell with 49; Monongalia, 42; Putnam, 28; and Berkeley, 27.

Founded in 1987, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization. Its mission is to establish high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do. National Board Certification is a voluntary assessment program designed to recognize and reward great teachers—and make them better.

“What you have in National Board Certified Teachers are change agents,” said former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, chair of the NBPTS Board of Directors. “Many of these outstanding teachers are assuming leadership roles in schools and leading reform efforts in their districts and states. National Board Certification is changing the culture of learning in classrooms, schools and districts.”

While state licensing systems set basic requirements to teach in each state, National Board Certified Teachers have successfully demonstrated advanced teaching knowledge, skills and practices. Certification is achieved through a rigorous, performance-based assessment that typically takes one to three years to complete. As part of the process, teachers build a portfolio that includes student work samples, assignments, videotapes and a thorough analysis of their classroom teaching. Additionally, teachers are assessed on their knowledge of the subjects they teach.

For more information about NBPTS and National Board Certification, contact the West Virginia Department of Education’s Office of Professional Preparation at (304) 558-7010, or the Office of Communications at (304) 558-2699. Information also is available on the NBPTS website at www.nbpts.org.

 

Kanawha County educator honored by Milken Family Foundation

 

A Kanawha County educator was honored in early December by the Milken Family Foundation for her exceptional contributions to quality education. Amanda Mays, a fifth grade teacher at J.E. Robins Elementary School in Charleston, is this year’s Milken Award recipient from West Virginia.

The award, which provides public recognition and an unrestricted financial award of $25,000 to teachers, principals and specialists who are furthering excellence in education, alternates each year between elementary and secondary educators.

Amanda Mays, a fifth grade teacher at J.E. Robins Elementary in Kanawha County, is the 2010 Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award winner from West Virginia. She is joined by previous Milken winners state Superintendent Steve Paine, Vaughn Rhudy, Deb Brown, state Board of Education President Priscilla Haden and Milken representative Jane Foley.

“Our society’s most important profession is teaching as it informs all others,” said Milken Family Foundation Chairman and Co-Founder Lowell Milken. “We created the Milken Educator Awards to proclaim in a very public way that greatness in education must be recognized and rewarded.”

Mays, an eight-year classroom veteran, holds degrees from West Virginia State University and Salem International University. Her areas of expertise include Project-based Learning, technology integration, positive behavior support and balanced assessments.

Colleagues and supervisors describe her classroom as a place of “high expectations, mutual trust and respect.” They say Mays is a teacher who “has taken many students who have fallen through the cracks and with interest in them, increased positive behaviors, increased achievement and increased confidence.”

“Teachers like Amanda have the most important jobs in America,” said West Virginia Superintendent Steve Paine. “We entrust them with the enormous responsibility of preparing our young people with the skills, knowledge and experiences needed to be successful in the 21st century.”

Dubbed the “Oscars of Teaching” by Teacher Magazine, the Milken Award was created by brothers Lowell and Michael Milken to recognize the efforts of some of our nation’s most outstanding teachers, principals and specialists in public education.

The Milken Educator Award, first awarded in 1987, has become the largest educator recognition program in the country. Since its inception, the foundation has presented more than $60 million to about 2,450 educators nationwide.

Educators are recommended for the honor without their knowledge by a panel appointed by each state’s department of education. Recipients of the Milken National Educator Awards are selected on the basis of numerous criteria including

• Exceptional educational talent as evidenced by effective instructional practices and student learning results in the classroom and school
• Exemplary educational accomplishments beyond the classroom that provide models of excellence for the profession
• Individuals whose contributions to education are largely unheralded yet worthy of the spotlight
• Early- to mid-career educators who offer strong long-range potential for professional and policy leadership
• Engaging and inspiring presence that motivates and impacts students, colleagues and the community.

For more information about the Milken Educator Awards, contact the Milken Family Foundation at (310) 570-4775 or visit www.mff.org, or contact the West Virginia Department of Education Office of Communications at 304-558-2699.

State Board adds standards for school counselors, delays action on textbook adoptions

 

The West Virginia Board of Education approved updates to two state policies during its December meeting.

Updates to Policy 5100: Approval of Educational Personnel Preparation Programs add professional standards for school counselors. The revisions, based on recommendations from the School Counseling Model Task Force, articulate what a school counselor should know and be able to do. The standards identify five broad areas in which the school counselor should demonstrate expertise: program planning, design and management; program delivery; data-driven accountability and program evaluation; leadership and advocacy; and professional growth and responsibilities.

The standards assure that all school counselors, school counselor educators and educational leaders in West Virginia share common language and common expectations regarding the role of the school counselor in West Virginia. School counselors play a vital role by providing academic, career and personal/social development guidance to students.

Changes to Policy 2445.40: Groupings for Textbook Adoption for Early Childhood Education, Middle Childhood Education, and Adolescent Education delays the adoption of instructional resources for two years. This update will allow county school systems to redirect funds to build the infrastructure necessary for implementation of digital resources currently being developed as the publishers make their transition to interactive digital resources. 

School administrators, teachers, parents and others are encouraged to review the policies, which can be viewed by logging onto http://wvde.state.wv.us/policies

 

W.Va. to create State Science Camp for Kids

 

The West Virginia Department of Education and the National Youth Science Camp are launching a state camp in an effort to promote the study of science statewide. Modeled after the national program held in Pocahontas County every summer, the state camp would allow for two rising 10th graders from all 55 counties to participate. The national camp invites two students from every state to attend.

The first state camp is slated for July 10-16 at Cedar Lakes Conference Center near Ripley. The curriculum will mirror that of the national camp.

“Science is critical to preparing today’s students for the 21st century,” said state Superintendent Steve Paine. “This camp will give promising West Virginia students the opportunity to experience science in the real world and prepare them for deeper levels of scientific investigation and understanding.”

The first state summer science camp will see 15 West Virginia teachers serving as facilitators. Fifteen students mentors, chosen from past participants National Youth Science Camp and the Governor’s Honor Academy, also will participate in the camp. Students will be expected to conduct research projects in a real-world context and report findings at four extended weekend follow-up sessions throughout the school year.

Camp participants will experience directed study blocks in science, expert guest lecturers, field trips and will be introduced to the Youth Science Discovery Experience for Extended Learning and Research. The project will be funded by the state Department of Education and the National Youth Science Camp

The West Virginia Board of Education and the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) are committed to ensuring all students in the state are college and career ready when they graduate from a public school. What West Virginia students are learning in school exceeds national and international standards. Through the WVDE’s 21st century learning plan called “Global21: Students deserve it. The world demands it.,” West Virginia is seeing better student performance on the West Virginia Educational Standards Test 2 (WESTEST2); the SAT and the ACT college entrance exams; the job skills assessment called Work Keys given to career and technical education students; and in a high school graduation rate that exceeds the national average.
Source: West Virginia Department of Education  

State Board policies open for public comment

 

POLICY 2445.40 - Groupings for Textbook Adoption for Early Childhood Education, Middle Childhood Education, and Adolescent Education (PDF)
Pending Board Action

 

POLICY 5100 - Approval Educational Personnel Programs (PDF)
Pending Board Action

 

Appalachain Education Initiative

Vanessa Hotlosz selected Student Artist of the Month

 

Vanessa Hotlosz, a senior at Wheeling Park High School (Ohio County) is the first student to be recognized in a new statewide Student Artist of the Month program sponsored by the Appalachian Education Initiative (www.aeiarts.org) and Chesapeake Energy (www.chk.com). 

Hotlosz, who was nominated by Cheryl Pompeo, her dance instructor at the Oglebay Institute, is the daughter of Cindy and Frank Hotlosz of Wheeling.

"We were pleased with the number of entries we have already received for this program," said AEI Executive Director Lou Karas.  "The nominations have come from across the state and show that there are many students in our public schools who are excelling in the arts, academics and other school and community activities."

Hotlosz participates in dance, theater, music and visual arts at school and in her community.  She performs in Wheeling Park theater productions and is a member of the school's Speech and Debate Team.  She works in the school's media center as well.  Her other interests include photography and computer art. 

"One of the important aspects of this program is to recognize a student who finds time to excel in their classes, the arts and other extracurricular activities as well," said Jack Thompson, public affairs coordinator for Chesapeake Energy.  "Vanessa's interests demonstrate a balance of school and community activities."

Hotlosz, who has taken classes from Pompeo since she was two years old, is an outstanding dancer who enthusiastically shares what she has learned with younger students as well.

"Vanessa gives her best to every activity she is involved with," Pompeo said.  "She has been selected to attend several prestigious summer intensive dance programs in the past few years and when she returns, she passes along what she has learned to the younger students by teaching them."

"We hope that we will continue to receive nominations of this caliber throughout the school year," Karas said.  "The more we can do to increase awareness of the value of arts education in public schools, the more opportunities we have to strengthen those programs in the schools."

To be nominated for the recognition, a student must meet five criteria, according to Karas.  A student must:

• Be a junior or senior attending a West Virginia public school,
• Participate on an ongoing basis in a visual or performing arts program and have mastered that art or progressed in the field as a result of school-related activities,
• Be in good academic standing,
• Participate in other extracurricular or community activities that do not have to be arts related, and
• Demonstrate leadership skills.

School personnel and community members may nominate students by completing the nomination form on the AEI web site, www.aeiarts.org.  Print copies of the nomination form are available by contacting Karas at lkaras@aeiarts.org or 304-225-0101.

About AEI: Since its inception in 2001, the Appalachian Education Initiative (AEI) has been dedicated to ensuring that quality arts education should be a central part of the education of every public school student in West Virginia.  AEI is the West Virginia affiliate of the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education Network. For more information, go to www.aeiarts.org.

 

 

In Memoriam

 

 

 

Resources

 

 

Learn21 offers online learning options when inclement weather keeps students home

Learn21, the West Virginia Department of Education’s online learning website, offers students and parents learning resources that can be accessed 24 hours a day. The site includes grade specific information from pre-k through Grade 12 in social studies, science and math.

“The content on Learn21 is such that students can use it to review content taught in class, practice work they are currently learning or move forward and learn new things,” said West Virginia Deputy Superintendent Jorea Marple. “Learn21 allows us to extend learning beyond the school day in a fun yet informative manner. Learn21 allows students to learn while they play.”

Learn21, created last spring with 32 math resources for students in grades preK-12, now includes hundreds of social studies, science and math offerings. New resources are added monthly with the help of 60 educators and technology integration specialists. The site is to be expanded further to include language arts and reading tools, fine arts, health, and career and technical education.

For more information, contact Donna Landin at (304) 558-3199, visit the site at http://wvde.state.wv.us/learn21, or contact the Office of Communications at 304-558-2699

21st Century Community Learning Center Bidders' Conference

West Virginia’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers Bidders' Conference is scheduled for Jan. 27, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Days Inn Conference Center in Flatwoods.

Participants will learn how to apply for funding to operate after-school, summer and weekend programs to assist student learning and development. Attendance is mandatory for organizations applying for 21st CCLC funding.

The West Virginia Department of Education will award grants to eligible public and private organizations that support the implementation of community learning centers. Eligible applicants include schools and school systems, non-profit agencies, city and county agencies, faith-based organizations, institutions of higher education, for-profit corporations, among others.

The 21st Century Community Learning Center program supports local community learning centers that provide academic opportunities for children, particularly students who attend high poverty and low performing schools that have not met adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Such programs should meet state and local student standards in core academic subjects; offer students a broad array of enrichment activities that can complement their regular academic programs; and offer literacy and other educational services to families of participating children.

Registration for the event, which includes lunch, is required by Jan. 14 to participate in the conference. A registration form and other information are available at http://wvde.state.wv.us/forms/201101-bidders.

For more information, contact Chuck Heinlein in the Office of School Improvement at 304-558-3199 or at cheinlei@access.k12.wv.us, or the Office of Communications at 304-558-2699.

 

  Legalities

 

 

Association Counsel answers questions relating to assistant superintendent’s positions, censuring of members, superintendent contracts and superintendent evaluation

By Howard Seufer

Editor’s Note: The purpose of the “Legalities” column is to provide county board members and county superintendents general information relating to legal issues – usually in regard to questions the association staff has received. 

However, due to the rapidly changing nature of the law, the following opinions may become outdated. They are presented with the understanding that they are not legal advice. Before using these opinions you should always research original sources of authority, update the information to ensure accuracy when dealing with a specific matter, and consult legal counsel about the particular facts and circumstances of your situation.

Assistant Superintendents.

1.  School board members sometimes ask WVSBA whether, when a county superintendent of schools leaves office, the jobs of assistant superintendents automatically end and must be posted.

This question apparently arises because W. Va. Code § 18-5-32 provides that an assistant superintendent’s term of employment shall be “not less than one nor more than four years,” and “shall not extend beyond that of the incumbent county superintendent.”  People wonder about the meaning of the latter rule.

Clearly, once an assistant superintendent serves the full one to four year term specified in his or her contact, the appointment expires by its terms. 

But if the assistant was appointed upon recommendation of a superintendent whose contract ran out earlier than that, then the assistant’s appointment ends on the earlier date.

In instances where the county superintendent leaves office before his or her contract expires, e.g., by resignation midway into the contract term, the better view (supported by several opinions of the West Virginia Attorney General) appears to be that the assistant superintendent’s appointment does not automatically end when the superintendent leaves. Rather it continues until the superintendent’s term would have expired if the superintendent had served the full term set forth in the contract. (Neither the Supreme Court of Appeals nor the Grievance Board has weighed in on this issue.)

Typically, when an assistant superintendent’s term ends under any of the foregoing rules and the superintendent and board wish to retain the same individual as an assistant superintendent, action to appoint the person to a new one to four year term is taken without posting notice of vacancy.  In its only decision on that point, the Grievance Board agreed that posting is not necessary in that instance.
But where, upon expiration of an assistant’s term, the superintendent and board desire to replace the individual, the opportunity must be posted and filled under the same rules and procedures that apply to posting and filling vacancies in other administrative positions.

*

Censuring.

2.  WVSBA is also sometimes asked whether a school board may lawfully censure one of its members.

Censure is generally thought of as a procedure that a body follows to express its strong disapproval or harsh criticism of the actions of one of its members. Censure takes the form of a motion adopted by the body to publicly rebuke the member in question.

The school laws do not address the issue of censure. Nor do they empower a school board to limit the capacity of a sitting member to continue to exercise the authority of his or her office.

This is not to say that, as a matter of self-governance, a county board may not consider and approve a motion to censure an individual member. However, such action could not legally restrict the ability of the board member to continue attending meetings and voting upon questions that come before the board.

Board members are well advised to consider personal repercussions that might follow a vote to censure a fellow member of the board. It is conceivable that a motion to censure an individual school board member could result in allegations of defamation of character or deprivation of a constitutional liberty interest without due process of law.

In most cases, the better practice may be to focus efforts on obtaining desired changes in an individual member’s inappropriate conduct through positive interaction and dialogue.

Situations may arise in which an individual board member engages in conduct that may be unlawful and, under the circumstances, might seem attributable to the entire board. In such cases, it may be advisable for a board to formally but carefully disassociate itself from the action of the individual board member. Such action on the part of a county board of education may serve to limit its liability and preserve the integrity of the board to continue to function in the area tainted by the actions of the individual member.

In egregious instances, it may even be appropriate for board members or citizens to initiate proceedings seeking the removal of a school board member from office under W. Va. Code § 6‑6-7, West Virginia’s law governing the removal of public officials “for cause.” However, the statute has a limited number of causes for which a member may be removed from office. Proceedings to remove a board member must concern one or more of these limited causes specified in the law.

*

 

County Superintendent Contract Negotiations.

3.  The following question has been posed by some school boards whose superintendents’ contracts will expire on June 30, 2011: How soon can we begin negotiations with the incumbent superintendent for a new contract that will take effect on July 1, 2011?

The school laws do not expressly address the issue of how early the negotiations may occur. They do, however, impose a clear rule about how early a school board can vote to approve the reappointment of the superintendent.

W. Va. § 18-4-1 was amended in 2009 to provide that the appointment of the county superintendent “shall be made between January 1 and June 1 for a term beginning on July 1 following the appointment.”

A related statute, W. Va. Code § 18-4-4, was amended at the same time to require that the county board, on or before June 1 of the year in which the superintendent is appointed, “fix the annual salary of the superintendent for the period of appointment for the term beginning on the following July 1.”

Taken together, these rules mean that in the case of an incumbent superintendent whose contract will expire on June 30, 2011, a motion to reappoint, or to approve any of the terms and conditions of the new contract, should not be made and acted upon before January 2 or after May 31.

*

County Superintendent Performance Evaluation.

Finally, we have been asked to clarify whether all school boards must evaluate the performance of their superintendents by March 1, 2011.

In 2003, the Legislature enacted W. Va. Code § 18-4-6 requiring county boards to annually evaluate the performance of their superintendents. The legislation imposed no deadline for the annual evaluation, leaving that to the State Board of Education.

The State Board of Education subsequently adopted Policy 5309. The policy identifies criteria that must appear in each county’s written process for evaluating the superintendent. These include setting mutually agreeable goals and objectives before September 15.

 Policy 5309 then states that each county’s process must contain a deadline by which the board of education will annually (1) assess the superintendent’s achievement of the mutually agreed goals and objectives, and (2) evaluate the superintendent’s success in improving student achievement generally across the county and specifically as it relates to the management and administration of low performing schools.

In years when the superintendent’s contract will expire on June 30, the deadline is “before March 1.” In all other years, the deadline is “before June 30.”

With one caveat, this means that in those counties where the superintendent’s contract will expire on June 30, 2011, the school board’s annual assessment and evaluation of the superintendent must be completed before March 1, 2011. In all the others, the assessment and evaluation are due before June 1, 2011.

The caveat is that if a particular county’s process for the annual evaluation of the superintendent, as previously approved by the State Board of Education, has earlier deadlines than these, then the earlier deadlines must be followed.

• Seufer is West Virginia School Board Association Counsel, a position he has held since 1986. Refer to these two links for his biographical information  - http://bowlesrice.com/attorneys/attorney/content,127.aspx, and http://www.linkedin.com/in/howardseuferjr.  

 

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee...

 

Mason OEPA report raises red flags.

 

by Howard M. O'Cull, Ed.D

As expected, the state Office of Education Performance Audits (OEPA) report concerning Mason County Schools (Point Pleasant) raised several red flags when its specifics were discussed at the December 2010 state Board of Education meeting in Charleston.

That the WVBE did not intervene in the system – there certainly was enough ammunition in the report to warrant such, based on state Board of Education actions in other counties – may be based on various personalities involved, especially superintendent’s Suzanne Dickens’s willingness to work through the mess she inherited when becoming superintendent in August – and what appeared to be the desire, among other things, to not bring on another state intervention in the waning days of state Superintendent of Schools Steve Paine’s tenure. (Coincidently, the WVBE’s 10-year encampment in Lincoln County was brought to an end at the December state Board meeting.)

Simply put, the Mason County OEPA report is chock full of various lessons, including superintendent selection basics and, for my purpose, the stark reality that in all OEPA cases, the buck stops with the county board, which is ultimately accountable both politically and procedurally.

In fact, during the WVBE discussion, mention was made by at least one state Board of Education member concerning “rumors” about the system dating back a few years. Other state Board of Education members concurred. Thus, state board members, awash with these “rumors,” were alarmed enough to recommend an OEPA audit. (Additionally, the school system had not mustered Adequate Yearly Progress [AYP] for five years.) The central question becomes the degree to which county board members “knew” about what would become the various OEPA report findings.

Indeed, a board of education has the obligation to secure, steward and protect public interests. This covenantal approach to governance cannot be set aside.

 Most boards of education, however, do not develop proper accountability guidelines, including monitoring and oversight processes, to detect or address matters suffuse in the Mason County OEPA report.

Most boards of education, however, do not develop proper accountability guidelines, including monitoring and oversight processes, to detect or address matters suffuse in the Mason County OEPA report.

This is lamentable because state law outlines various procedures and methodology to accomplish this end.

For instance, in negotiating or re-negotiating contracts with superintendents, county boards may establish a means to receive information necessary to oversee -- govern -- school districts. (For the curious, the link to the 2003 statute is http://www.legis.state.wv.us/WVCODE/Code.cfm?chap=18&art=4#04.)

While this writer concludes that the state's school system OEPA “evaluation process” has problematic provisions, especially in terms of the process for state takeovers, county boards are hardly absolved when OEPA calls and local structures and procedures for oversight and monitoring are found lacking or, most often, absent.

That the MCBOE journey became characterized by delimiting options is telling – many county boards face similar travails but cannot pull themselves out of the morass – a point OEPA Executive Director Kenna Seal, Ph.D., made in his state board presentation. That the Mason County Board secured the leadership to steer the ship from the shoals of what appeared to be tortuous or misplaced administrative drift became critical, helping avert state takeover, although every county board will not be fortunate enough to find a Suzanne Dickens when this set of circumstances arise. That the West Virginia School Board Association does not provide county boards guidance in how to establish adequate oversight and monitoring strictures makes a compelling point for more practical, realistic county board training protocol. This is WVSBA’s mea culpa. 

That the West Virginia School Board Association does not provide county boards guidance in how to establish adequate oversight and monitoring strictures makes a compelling point for more practical, realistic county board training protocol. This is WVSBA’s mea culpa. 

The Mason County OEPA must become a wakeup call for county boards and superintendents.

As association director, I, too, have gotten the message.

An online version of the Mason County Board’s OEPA report is available at http://oepa.state.wv.us/documents/49-MasonCo.SchoolSystem_000.pdf

This writer’s musings about the state takeover process are included in the October 29, 2010, issue of this publication - http://www.wvsba.org/publications/The_Legislature/newsletter/10-29-2010.html#lastword1

 

Audit Tizzy.

I offer these words by New York Times op-ed columnist and blogger Ross Douthat (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/opinion/29douthat.html?_r=1&hp) in describing partisanship and conviction: "Instead of assessing every policy on the merits, we tend to reverse-engineer the arguments required to justify whatever our own side happens to be doing."
While it appears the proposed public education audit first proposed by the Manchin administration and inherited by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and his folks is on hold, the above words are apt.

In terms of deconstruction, the Manchin administration's call for an Expression of Interest (EOI) as a means to secure audit vendor proposals seems to be the most  publically-stated point of contention.

The Manchin administration's call for an Expression of Interest (EOI) as a means to secure audit vendor proposals seems to be the most  publically-stated point of contention.

Critics say a Request For Proposal (RFP), the “typical” approach, would prove less ambiguous as to audit "intent." Of course, "intent" is the rub and was this summer when the audit was approved conceptually by legislators -- support was tentative or tenuous at most, with some legislators, including Senate Education Chairman Bob Plymale, D-Wayne, warning of a possible "witch hunt" mentality.

Moreover, two other factors come into play: First, the audit was proposed by the American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia in 2008, garnering then-Gov. Joe Manchin's attention, though he never acted upon the proposal; second, the audit’s scope has been criticized as far from comprehensive, including the assertion that "higher education" should be audited. (In a point that is overlooked, the state of West Virginia's colleges and universities was reviewed in a Legislative Auditor's report issued early this year. That report was discussed in the House Education Committee and at the West Virginia School Board Association Winter Conference.)

A final criticism, again relating to intent, includes the use of audit findings. Historically, school  employee organizations publicly concluded that county boards used enhanced or freed-up Public School Support Plan (PSSP) local share dollars to increase the number of school administrators (or to fill “available teaching slots" with school administrators or for quasi-administrative purposes). Based on that logic, AFT-WV strongly contends that fewer dollars reach the classroom or are available for employing teachers -- more so the latter than the former.

AFT-WV strongly contends that fewer dollars reach the classroom or are available for employing teachers -- more so the latter than the former.

Among state education officials, the typical rhetorical point has been to say that performing an audit would be "fine" -- just not this audit. Or, better stated, use of an EOI focus is somewhat suspicious since it is not an RFP. Using just a bit of deconstruction, an EOI may allow the successful vendor or vendors to provide the governor's office and audit team, which includes two state Board of Education members as well an assistant state superintendent, targeted areas to audit with the vendor's or vendors' proposal(s) reflecting such, based on negotiations between the vetting organization and vendor(s). In shorthand, the RFP route allows agencies facing an audit to determine what areas or "what" is to be reviewed as opposed to the more expansive EOI approach.

One can read between the lines from here.

The second rub: Assuming there is interest in the audit saga beyond that of the public education/legislative community -- a notion which has not been well-documented -- does the establishment stance come across as simply bureaucratic opposition to outside or external review? Again, assuming there is public interest in this issue, does it appear the party line can be perceived as an attempt to shield agency spending priorities from scrutiny, e.g., technology, some Global21 initiatives, and the state's PSSP?

Does it appear the party line can be perceived as an attempt to shield agency spending priorities from scrutiny, e.g., technology, some Global21 initiatives, and the state's PSSP?

(Just last week the state Board of Education voted to seek more than $273 million for technology efforts with one member quoted as saying, “These are very large numbers in the least…”)

For the third time, providing there is palpable public interest in the matter, continued opposition to the audit may appear as defensiveness played within the context of good inside baseball, which so often characterizes education policy debates.

A lingering question: Will auditors examine the "return on investment for education dollars spent" scenario Manchin hammered at his appearance before the state Board of Education prior to the two special education sessions earlier in the year?

And, making a stop at the political arena, a few House of Delegates members, including Delegate Woody Ireland, R-Ritchie, are quoted as saying the WVDE needs greater oversight. The audit may be their best vehicle to realize this end, although the oversight question is fraught with statutory and constitutional issues galore and has failed to garner support of the legislative leadership.

Finally, costs for the audit appear to be so prohibitive that the scope may be narrowed or curtailed. And, besides, the 2011 regular legislative session is only 13 days away, meaning the issue can be placed within the legislative context again.

NAEP: Dead Last (Not Really).

 It is easy to take the fading news state high school seniors were dead last in a recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test out of context. First, 11 states volunteered to become involved in testing of 12th-graders. The testing took place in 2009, with results issued Nov. 18, 2010. NAEP normally does not test seniors -- a point lost on many state news media commentators and pundits.
Second, State Superintendent Steve Paine rightly notes that the testing took place prior to the West Virginia Board of Education’s increase of assessment content and rigor meant to put students' academic achievement on par with peers around the nation.

State Superintendent Steve Paine rightly notes that the testing took place prior to the West Virginia Board of Education’s increase of assessment content and rigor meant to put students' academic achievement on par with peers around the nation.

And, most of all, the West Virginia Department of Education volunteered to participate, realizing that the results might not make favorable news. (Other participating states were Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and South Dakota.)

West Virginia seniors' average NAEP score was 141, compared to the national average of 152.

The National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP, previously studied fourth- and eighth-graders' reading and math abilities, but this is the first time it has studied 12th-graders. The test monitored 1,670 schools nationwide and about 50,000 high school seniors.

Moreover, WVDE officials pointed out that Massachusetts and other well-heeled states were part of the mix, even though studies show West Virginia ranks fourth in the nation in taxpayer support of public schools.

Paine also was quoted in the Charleston Daily Mail as saying he hoped the scores "provide a call to action for what we need to do to improve achievement at this critical grade" and that he is confident the steps "outlined in Global21 will lead to real student achievement across all grade levels as we help our kids to be globally intelligent and resilient in a digital world."

The "call to action" observation garnered commendation both from the Daily Mail and from MetroNews' Hoppy Kercheval, who said, "As bad as the news is, at least West Virginia knows where it stands. The state school system deserves credit for volunteering to participate in the study. But what happens now?"

Privately, some policymakers are fearful that legislators or critics of public education may try to exploit the findings to argue that West Virginia's schooling initiatives – “code” for Global 21 -  does not translate into increases in student achievement – or at least hasn’t.
Test results can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2007468

The state Department of Education press release in which the state superintendent commented on test findings is included on the WVDE website and published in the December 1, 2010, issue of The Legislature.

Also refer to http://www.wvmetronews.com/index.cfm?func=displayfullstory&storyid=41540 and http://www.wvmetronews.com/index.cfm?func=displayfullstory&storyid=41371

O'Cull is executive director of the West Virginia School Board Association.

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1: (Point to this writer as well. I argue public education interests should have input, helping vet the audit process - http://www.wvsba.org/publications/The_Legislature/newsletter/08-31-2010.html#news2 )
 

 

Commentary

 

 

‘Seven words that can kill anything’

By  Patricia L. Hamilton, CAE

There are seven words that can kill anything: "We have always done it that way."

Are we planning for the future of county government? Are we anticipating changes that need to be made? Are we working to keep county government modern and relevant for future generations? This has been an ongoing theme throughout the 50th anniversary of the West Virginia Association of Counties this year. I have recently been doing some research on the "younger generations" and their expectations and how much life has changed since the "baby boom" generation started college or entered adulthood. Here’s some food for thought:

This year’s college freshmen think email is too slow.

Most have never aimlessly twisted the coiled handset wire while talking on the phone.

They have always lived in a world that was accessible and accommodated those with disabilities.

In the year 2000, there were zero iTunes downloads. In 2010, 10 billion.

In the year 2000, there were 400,000 text messages sent. In 2010, 4.5 billion.

Today’s twenty-somethings will go through an average of seven jobs in their 20’s, more than in any other stretch.

Revolutionary changes that used to be thought of in generational terms, occurring over a span of thirty years or so, are now happening within a decade or less. The challenge for county officials is to meet the needs of these young adults who have grown up with technology and whose earliest memories probably include computers. Everything from elections to payment of property taxes to public service careers needs to be re-evaluated in light of changing technology and different expectations of younger citizens. The times they are a’changin’ and failure to keep up with it will send county government back to the stagnation that had occurred by 1960 which led to the organization of the West Virginia Association of Counties.

Make a text box - Revolutionary changes that used to be thought of in generational terms, occurring over a span of thirty years or so, are now happening within a decade or less

Hamilton is Executive Director of the West Virginia Association of Counties

 

ETC.

 

 

 

Meanwhile in California...

More than 250 parents in Compton who are using a new California law to force their failing school to be taken over by a charter school operator, the first such move in the country. Under the law, if 51% of parents at a school sign a petition, it "triggers" one of four actions, including takeover by a charter school. In this case, 61% of the parents signed the petition. (New York Times, 12/07/10)

 

Wisdom

New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.” -  James Evershed Agate (1877 – 1947), British diarist and critic

 

Soundbites

“A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.” – Quotation attributed to Mark Twain describing the term “sound bites.”

 

“Dr. Paine started some great initiatives and I look forward to the opportunity to help the state move forward with his efforts. He will be missed.” – Incoming state superintendent of schools Ted Mattern.  

“Some of our students perhaps did not give their best efforts to the WESTEST2 in the past.” – Betty Jordan, executive assistant to state superintendent
“Technology is a huge issue for the future, and there’s not an easy solution to this. We are looking at the adoption of digital textbooks for one-to-one computing in some pilot counties.” – Steve Paine

“We have to figure out how to engage students in their own education and get them accountable to help with their own learning process.” – Kathy D’Antoni of Division of Technical and Adult Education Services

“I think our biggest problem that lies with school dropouts is at home. I don’t think it lies in the school system. I don’t think our school system is a failure like a lot of people beat the drum about.” – Delegate David Walker

“Those folks who say that the education system in West Virginia is broken need to get involved.” – Delegate Woody Ireland
“It doesn’t make sense as a resource management system to say we’re just going to fire all the bad teachers and we’re just going to hire better teachers.” – Joan Devlin

 

 

Last Word

“The wide world is all about you; you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot fence it out.” – J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), British writer and author of the richly inventive epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings.

Digital schools aren't W.Va.'s only priority

 

It will be difficult for lawmakers to fund pensions, raises and iPads

Members of the state Board of Education want to embark on a four-year, $271 million project to move public schools more fully into the digital age.

Certainly that will have to happen over time. Computers have revolutionized every other aspect of modern life. They can positively affect public education as well.

But the price tag is a bit of a shock.

The board wants taxpayers to provide more than $169 million for 282,130 "mobile student devices" at an estimated $600 each, as well as $19.8 million for notebook computers for 22,000 teachers.

Laptops for teachers seem reasonable. And as textbook publishers move to digital products instead of books, students will need some sort of device to access their "textbooks."

But a hardware purchase of such gargantuan dimensions should be very carefully considered. Technology changes rapidly, and taxpayers would not look kindly on expensive technological mistakes.

Furthermore, even a four-year funding plan may be too optimistic.

"These are very large numbers to say the least," state school board member Michael Green said. "I guess I'm surprised we're in a situation where we can ask for this much money."

In a state with $15 billion in unfunded pension and health care liabilities, that's a pertinent observation.

Legislators also face other pressing concerns - funding teachers' pensions for one, and responding to the board's call for teacher pay raises for another.

Brenda Williams, executive director of the education department's Office of Instructional Technology, said the technology would help the schools move to online content.

But she said school systems need a "dependable infrastructure" before they can make that switch.

Included in the $271 million request is $47.2 million to expand Internet bandwidth and hire more than 700 technology support and technology integration specialists.

More than 700?

What's the total compensation cost on that over, say, 10 years?

Used by permission of the Charleston Daily Mail. This editorial was published December 27, 2010.

 

Marketplace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Legislature is published by the West Virginia School Board Association. It provides county board of education members, state policymakers, school administrators and the education community information and opinions regarding West Virginia legislative issues. The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect official opinion or policies of the WVSBA, unless specifically stated.

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