Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive |
Merit System Discussed By Nevada School BoardBY JOHN MILLERPublished Wednesday, May 31, 2000 in the Nevada County Picayune A merit-demerit system will not be instituted in the Nevada School District. Members of the district's Personnel Policy Committee met with the Nevada School Board, Thursday, May 25, to express their views on the matter. Don Callicott, a member of the board, had proposed implementing a merit-demerit system in the district to help improve discipline. He said the idea was to find ways to improve the schools. According to Callicott, the Legislature's answer to dealing with problems is to throw money at it, but this, he said, doesn't get to the grass roots of the situation. "More money is not the answer," he said, "we need better discipline in the classroom." Superintendent Rick McAfee reported on a three-year review of discipline problems in the elementary school. In 1998, he said, 25 percent of the students were sent to the office for disciplinary reasons. This figure dropped to 18 percent in 99, and fell further, to 13 percent, this year. He credited this continuing drop in discipline problems to NES Principal Natalie Sherwood getting the parents involved early on. Files are kept on the students, so administrators will have physical records to examine when problems do arise. On the high school side, McAfee said, the situation is different. This is because the records are kept on files with APSCN, and it's difficult to retrieve the data and sort through it. McAfee said he has a stack of files to go through and will report his findings to the board at the June meeting. He will also run a GPA study on athletes and non-athletes and compare this to the discipline files. Linda Carlew, PPC chair, said the committee is unanimously opposed to the merit-demerit system. The PPC, she said, is pleased with the system in place at NES and doesn't want to see it changed. For NHS, she said, the concern with the proposed system was using extra homework as a means for students to work off their demerits. "It's hard enough just getting the students to do their homework," Carlew said. She said the PPC was also concerned with who would be responsible for keeping up with the demerits. The staff, she said, is "maxed out," and can't take on any more responsibilities. Carlew said the discipline problems at NHS aren't serious ones, but are minor in nature. No teachers have been threatened, the sheriff isn't seen on campus every day and there are no armed guards at school, she added. "We have good kids," she said. "Where you have people, there are problems. It's what happens here." According to Carlew, a committee will be working to tighten up the NHS student handbook where discipline is concerned to make it more effective. She told the board one of the biggest problems is consistency, because, unlike NES, NHS has had a number of different principals. Natalie Sherwood is the only principal NES has ever had. The PPC is working to develop an advisor/advisee program where each teacher has a "home room" with 15 or 20 students. The idea, Carlew said, is for the teachers and students to get to know one another better as people. "We think it will be effective," she said. "The NES program nurtures children, and NHS students need nurturing, too, even though they're bigger." Advisor/advisee programs, Carlew added, have proven to be successful at other schools The PPC has also discussed establishing a disciplinary paper trail for NHS, much like the one NES has. According to Carlew, the PPC prefers studying a new program before implementing it in the Nevada system. By so doing, the PPC can determine how well a new program works, how a district handles its regulations and whether or not it's effective. Another aspect of the merit-demerit program required giving NHS students conduct grades. The PPC questioned how this could be done as high school students have seven different teachers during the day, whereas primary students have one teacher all day long. At NES, the teachers decide on citizenship grades by committee, but it would be a logistical problem for NHS because of the difficulty in getting all the teachers together at one time.McAfee said the APSCN system has no place for conduct grades in its program for high school students. In addition, he said, such grades could not be used in any way with a student's grade point average. Should a conduct program be developed for NHS, he told the gathering, reports could be sent home with progress reports in the middle of a nine-week grading period. There are some school districts in Northwest Arkansas with citizenship grades for their high school students. Any such change in policy, he pointed out, would have to be first approved by the PPC and brought back to the board before July 1, to be implemented for the 2000-2001 school year. Otherwise, the change wouldn't occur until the 2001-02 year. Callicott said the military has 16 weeks to turn a raw recruit into a soldier, while teachers have nine months to work with students. This led to a lengthy discussion on how schools differ from the military. When the smoke cleared, figuratively, a motion to table the issue until the June meeting failed. The measure then died for lack of a motion. In other business, the board discussed the aging bus fleet. Jim Cross, transportation and maintenance director, said the district has five buses with more than 100,000 miles on them, and another with 95,000 on it. The problem, he said, isn't with the diesel engines or chassis, but with bodies. Driving over the rough terrain in south Nevada County literally rattles the bodies apart, he said. The engines, however, can go another 100,000 miles before needing anything serious, if new bodies were put on the chassis. Cross told the board the district uses Amtram bodies exclusively so it can cannibalize body parts as needed. McAfee said the district has been monitoring the bus situation, and at this time sees no way to buy a bus this year. Next year, though, there will be no choice but to buy a new bus. Right now, he said, part of the problem is the two property tax amendments on the ballot for the November General Election. Should Amendment 4 pass, McAfee said, it would actually benefit the district to go ahead and replace the fleet now as the state would be required to pick up the bonded indebtedness. The problem here, he said, is it could bankrupt the state, when it assumes the indebtedness for all of the school districts. As it is, he said, the district will have to reduce faculty size, because salary expenses are exceeding the district's income. Cross told the board the loss in student population has helped the bus situation somewhat, as there are now 11 bus routes being ran now. Before, he said, there were 15 routes. McAfee said the district has been lobbying for a multiplier for density on bus routes based on mileage driven. He also informed the panel Gov. Mike Huckabee is using the "V" word again talking about a voucher system. He said this may not be totally bad for public schools, as more students would be eligible to attend private schools. This, McAfee said, would then force private schools to compete with public schools with more in their student bodies. "I don't think they can do it," he said of the competition. Another problem discussed was the lack of available teachers in Arkansas. Many teachers are either leaving the state for better paying jobs in other states, or simply quitting the profession altogether. "We need to improve teacher salaries in the state," he said.Projected vacancies in the next five years, he said, shows 160 superintendent positions open, 148 high school principal jobs open, 206 elementary and middle school principal spots available and 168 openings for certified operational administrators. Overall, he said, the figures project 802 vacancies in administration alone with no one available to fill them. These statistics don't count the number of teacher positions expected to be open and unfilled in the next five years. Currently, he said, Arkansas is $9,000 a year below average for the region. The Arkansas Legislature is proposing to bridge this gap by 2005. The General Assembly has also proposed giving teachers a $3,000 raise this year, but it will take $126 million to give every teacher in the state this raise. McAfee raised another question, saying the Little Rock School District recently passed a 5 mill tax increase. Under state law, for the funding formula to be equitable all other districts must be within 75 percent of the highest taxed district in the state, which is Little Rock. According to the way the law is written, he said, this means every district in the state just increased its millage by 5 mill, with no one getting to vote on the tax increase. However, he said, no one in Little Rock will talk with him about this situation. This amounts to taxation without representation, and could result in a class action lawsuit against the state. As the meeting wound down, the board was asked to act on a transfer request. McAfee said the policy is to deny all legal transfers, but added the board can act on its own conscience in each individual case. McAfee, as written in the policy, recommended denying the transfer and tossed the issue to the board to decide. The student in question had sought transfer to the Spring Hill district. The student's mother is undergoing treatment for cancer. This is all the information McAfee could legally provide to the board in open session. There were two votes to allow the transfer, two opposing it and one abstention. Abstentions are considered no votes, so the transfer was denied. Search | Nevada County Picayune by date | Gurdon Times by date |
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