Esteemed colleagues:
We’ll start this issue of the Monitor with a helpful hint. Have you ever sent an in-district email only to have it bounce back as undeliverable due to a bad email address? Here’s how to find ANY School District 40 employee’s email address: access webmail; look at the white column on the left of the page; at the bottom , click on Public Folders; click on “Contacts”; click on alphabetical letter of recipient’s last name. Now, if there are several pages of people with names beginning with, for example, “B”, click on “B”, and if the name is not on the first list, USE THE ARROW to advance to the next page’s list of names beginning with “B”, etc. Easy!
There is a wealth of information to be found in the Teachers Evaluation Handbook, but where do you find that? Go to the district website; then Departments; then Human Resources; then Current Employees; open Teachers Evaluation Handbook. You’ll notice that our Agreement (contract) is also available in this section. Now, if for some reason you want to request an alternate evaluator, the authority to do so is found in the Teachers Evaluation Handbook. Send a letter to Lanty McGuire, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources citing this reference, and requesting an alternate evaluator.
Few tenured sixth grade teachers applied for positions at the middle schools. Interviews will be conducted soon and hiring decisions made. Vacancies that remain will be offered to those qualified teachers who were force transferred last year. Remaining vacancies will then open for tenured teachers to apply for a transfer. Finally, any vacancies available will be posted for all applicants.
Negotiations will not commence until the last week of April, or first week of May. We have to wait until the five Board of Education members who will have won election are seated at the first meeting in April; and committee assignments are announced at the second board meeting in April. The MEA negotiations team will meet soon to create a survey to be sent out to all members in February. Because Illinois legislators increased the income tax to 5%, school districts can anticipate a regular revenue stream from the state, which positively impacts our education fund reserves. Instead of facing a $7.5 million budget deficit, we now are looking at less than $4 million. There will be fewer non-tenured teachers dismissed and not rehired than last year. Exact numbers, of course, will not be known until the Board of Education makes its budget reduction decisions in February. I am optimistic about negotiations this year. We will work for a multi-year agreement, which is in the best interests of both the Board and certified staff. I don't believe we will face pay decreases, but there may be some cost adjustments and changes in our benefits.
Questions arose about our first day inservices each semester. The ISBE requires all school districts to have a minimum of two all-day inservices, which must be devoted entirely to professional development activities. This precludes using any part of these two days for "working in our classrooms". Now, because some middle school teachers who were scheduled to move to new rooms