PA House Bill 1901: A Game Changer?

PA House Bill 1901 was passed in 2012 and has many provisions which could be a game changer for the school board. I hope they are following it closely. Here is the entire bill. HB 1901

In it, school board directors must give superintendents a minimum 150 day notice prior to the end of their contract during a regular board meeting, or the super's contract will be automatically renewed for the similar length of time. See page 32 of HB 1901. See page 37-38 for terminating assistant superintendents.

On page 36 of HB 1901, the school board must post the superintendent's and assistant superintendents' date of evaluation and whether they met their goals on the district website.

Starting in 2013-14, teacher evaluations will change. NEW EDUCATOR EVALUATION SYSTEM in 2014-15, principals (Nonteaching Professional Employees) evaluations will no longer be based primarily on PSSA scores.

Evaluation Criteria for “Nonteaching Professional Employees.” Nonteaching professional employees will be evaluated in the 2014-15 school year with a new system that considers the following areas of performance:

1) planning and preparation; 2) educational environment; 3) delivery of service; and 4) professional development. PDE is currently working on specific rubrics for pupil services personnel that reflect
these four categories. School-wide student performance measures must comprise 20 percent of a nonteaching professional employee’s overall rating. Specific elements of this measure will be established by PDE prior to 2014-15.

PSSAs will account for 15% of principals' evaluations. See page 42 of HB 1901.

The bill also allows, in terms of school finances, a provision for reopening budgets.

There is so much more in the 95 page bill that I hope readers will enlighten us of more changes.

"The Rest of the Story" rest of the story

Over on Josephine Posti's Center Court blog, Josephine writes The Rest of the Story - Superintendent Buy-outs. Curious that it was posted about an hour ago. Gee, would she be one of those people being forced to read my blog? I wrote about that this morning.

Please take a couple of minutes to read her blog. In it, Posti talks about what keeps school boards up at night.  There was no mention of railroading an over-the-top high school renovation without a referendum, ignoring stakeholders, giving raises to administrators left and right, bullying commissioners to do their dirty work or controlling communication. It is odd how she couldn't control communication with Essential Public Radio.

Another concern Posti has is limiting local control over how many police officers to employ, wording of local zoning ordinances, as well as how we hire superintendents. She writes, "What works for Mt. Lebanon may be completely different from what works in South Fayette..." Funny thing about what works in South Fayette. Today's Trib has this article by Matt Santoni. With rapid growth, South Fayette schools running out of room 

Jennifer Iriti, 38, sought a place where she could settle down with her husband and their 4-year-old daughter. They narrowed their choices to Mt. Lebanon or South Fayette. As a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Resource and Development Center, she wanted a good school district.
"In particular, we were looking for places that had really high-quality teachers, teachers who are happy, who are excited about their work," said Iriti, who chose a house in the growing Berkshires subdivision near the school district's campus on Old Oakdale Road. "I actually called some teachers up on the phone, and I was impressed by how much they liked their jobs and the (South Fayette) leadership."
Iriti weighed Mt. Lebanon's more urban, walkable feel against South Fayette's newer homes. She found three- and four-bedroom houses with yards to be less expensive in South Fayette, and still close enough to Pittsburgh via Interstate 79.
With others choosing to live in South Fayette for similar reasons, its schools are running out of room.

Maybe Josephine can donate the rest of her T-shirts and mugs to the Mt. Lebanon Historical Society.  Or try selling them on eBay and add it to the fee for the feasibility study that they will be approving tonight.

She wants to call the shots.

From 90.5 Essential Public Radio, Josephine Posti believes that school boards should be free to make their own decisions. Busting School Board Buyouts I guess the board didn't learn anything from that fiasco.

Superintendent buyouts: Waste of money and often lack in transparency

Mt. Lebanon made today's Trib article, Legislators target buyouts for superintendents.  Remember the Sable buyout?

The state Senate Education Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved a bill that would limit the value of buyouts for public school superintendents and require that officials detail severance packages up-front in contracts, instead of allowing school boards to negotiate them at the end.

Does anyone remember if our superintendent's contract details a severance package?

James Fraasch, a former Mt. Lebanon School Board member, said that district board's decision in executive session in 2004 to pay more than $500,000 to buy out former Superintendent Margery Sable was one of the main reasons he sought election in 2006.

"That definitely raised my eyebrows," Fraasch said. "I don't know if this law would have stopped what happened, but it would have been much more difficult to do in the dark," he said, referring to the executive session. "I always felt the more the information the public has the better."

Absolutely, James!  You always believed in transparency. But if you were still on the board, Josephine would be livid with you right now.  Or at least you would have gotten an email asking if there was anything she needed to know about the interview.

PS The people in Scranton are reading about us too! Make buyouts bit less super

Don't let this get out

On Tuesday, September 6, 2011, the PSBA (Pennsylvania School Boards Association) published a list of school districts known to have adopted a wage freeze for administrators, teachers, and/or staff. http://www.psba.org/news-publications/headlines/details.asp?id=1767 Here in Mt. Lebanon, the school board (I stopped capitalizing those words) just approved a nice increase for our superintendent which included a salary increase and added vacation benefits. As of 10:00 this morning, last year's goals are still online. http://www.mtlsd.org/superintendent/goals.asp The 2010/2011 goals were not published until November 2010. Dr. Steinhauer's contract runs from July 1 to June 30. When his raise was approved, the school board indicated that they were still working on his goals.  Wasn't that a month ago?
While some school boards are adopting wage freezes, our directors are quick to hand out increases faster than establishing goals. Gee, this isn't a violation of Policy BDD, is it? 
Here is proof that we make up our own rules here in Mt. Lebanon. School entities statewide adopting PSBA Standards for Effective School Governance

Another little tidbit on the PSBA website is this New bills address superintendent contracts. Remember the Sable buyout?