School District to meet mandated class-size reductions by hiring teachers

A major portion of the Palm Beach County School District’s solution to meet mandated class-size reductions next year will soon take the district across the Sunshine State and to the Keystone State to fill new classes with teachers.

The district plans to hire up to 190 new elementary school teachers by the start of next school year in order to maintain an 18-student cap in core elementary classes such as English and math.

Pat Kaupe, director of recruitment and retention, said she could not say exactly when the class-size hiring blitz would begin, or how many jobs would be filled by outside teachers, because the district is required by its union contract to make those jobs available to internal candidates. Chief Financial Officer Mike Burke said the district will probably move some teachers who have not been teaching a class, such as reading coaches, back into the classroom.

Kaupe said the district is focusing its recruiting efforts not only on recent education graduates from Florida universities but also on Pennsylvania graduates. That state has a reputation for good teaching colleges and a lack of jobs for its graduates.

The district receives rsums from impending college graduates up North throughout the year, and it has been doing video interviews on the Internet using Skype with candidates too far away to interview in person, Kaupe said.

Palm Beach County’s average teacher salary, $48,537, was the ninth highest in the state last year, according to the state Department of Education. But that salary was well below large South Florida counties like Broward and Miami-Dade, as well as some smaller counties like Flagler and Okaloosa.

Though Broward County has a higher average salary, the district points out to recruits, Broward laid off 568 teachers last year. Palm Beach County School District laid off none.

Kaupe said the district, which has about 12,000 teachers this year, typically hires more than 1,000 teachers every year because of turnover and retirement, so hiring another 190 for elementary classrooms shouldn’t be an issue.

We’ll be in good shape in August, Kaupe said.

Students ‘need good degrees’ to train as teachers

Trainee teachers should have a 2:2 to work in schools, says an ATL survey. 

More than six-in-10 said graduates should gain at least a 2:2 before being allowed to train as secondary teachers and two-thirds claimed they needed a decent grade to work in sixth-forms, it was revealed.

The disclosure follows Government plans to ban students with a third-class degree or worse from state-funded teacher training courses.

As part of a wide-ranging plan to boost teaching standards, the Coalition is also proposing to introduce psychometric tests to gage candidates’ suitability for the classroom and make it easier for heads to sack poor-performing staff.

Teachers have been hugely critical of the proposals, saying they smack of elitism.

But a survey carried out by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers to coincide with the union’s annual conference on Monday suggested that majority of staff backed plans for minimum degree standards.

Some 62 per cent said trainees should have a 2:2 to work in secondary schools, rising to 66 per cent for sixth-forms. Some 58 per cent of those surveyed said students needed a decent degree to work in further education colleges, but the rate dropped to 44 per cent for primary schools.

However, many members insisted that degree classification alone was not enough to guarantee a good teacher.

One teacher from a school in Cheshire said: “Snobbery over university education does not affect the quality of teaching.

“Some Oxbridge graduates I work with are not respected by their pupils as they do not have the necessary interpersonal skills.”

Mary Bousted, ATL general secretary, said: “Teaching is a profession, career and vocation. It is important that those entrusted with teaching our children are highly qualified and have the highest skills possible.

“I am not surprised that the majority of teachers and lecturers think anyone going into teaching needs to have the minimum of a 2:2 subject degree.

“But they, and I, are clear that what is most important is teaching skills – how good someone is at imparting knowledge and being able to inspire young people of all abilities to learn and want to learn.”

Teacher condemns ‘junkets’ for senior school managers

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers said some senior managers were still enjoying training courses and fact-finding missions – often at top hotels – even though schools are being ordered to rein in their spending during the downturn.

Members have also criticised the continuing use of private consultants who are being paid “exorbitant fees” to give advice to state schools.

A resolution to be debated at the union’s annual conference in Liverpool next week will call on ministers to “stop this misuse of taxpayers’ money” at a time of swingeing public sector cuts.

It comes just a week after the Local Government Association accused the Government of imposing a last minute £155m stealth cut in school funding this year.

Hank Roberts, an ATL official from Brent, north London, suggested that some schools were failing to play their part by blowing tens of thousands of pounds on unnecessary luxuries such as consultants and expensive training courses.

Speaking before the conference, he said: “It’s completely out of order. This is wrong at any time, but especially at this time, this shouldn’t be going on. We are in a time of economic difficulties.”

His motion – to be debated on Tuesday – claims that vital on-the-job training for classroom teachers is being stripped back while “some senior managers attend junkets in expensive hotels”. He will present more details next week.

It emerged last year that nine head teachers had visited South Africa at a cost of £16,000 to the taxpayer.

The state school heads from Rochdale stayed in a four-star hotel during the five-day trip to Cape Town, which saw them visit different schools as part of a “professional development” scheme.

The trip was paid for by the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services – a Government quango – at a cost of £1,773 per person.

In 2009 around 20 British heads visited Mauritius for a three-day trip to attend an education conference.

They were put up in a five-star beach front hotel complete with a golf course, watersports, spas and a beauty salon during a trip that cost £40,000. Individual schools footed the bill.

Mr Roberts’s resolution will also criticise the fees paid to a “small number of private consultants”, claiming that their advice is “sometimes useless or worse”.

Speaking on Friday, he claimed he had been told of a case in which consultants were paid around £1,000 for a day’s work.

In another, they received £700 for an afternoon, he said.

“Education is not a performance-making institution where you can come along with an idea to save money. We’re educators,” Mr Roberts said.

In one case, he said, private consultants were brought in to help with a restructuring. This is something schools and unions can deal with themselves, Mr Roberts said.

Detroit schools send layoff papers to all teachers

About 5,500 Detroit Public Schools teachers will get layoff notices as the troubled district prepares for an expected drop in fall student enrollment.

The layoffs would take effect July 29, the district said Thursday afternoon in a release.

Non-renewal notices also will be sent to 248 administrators.

The notices are part of a process to allow the district time to assess staffing needs heading into the start of the 2011-12 academic year, according to the release.

The 5,466 employees covered under the Detroit Federation of Teachers contract also will get letters stating that after May 17 some provisions of the collective bargaining agreement with the district may change under a new state law giving broader powers to Robert Bobb and other state-appointed financial managers.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed the financial manager legislation into law last month. The changes include the authority to toss out union contracts to help balance the books.

“I fully intend to use the authority that was granted under Public Act 4 …,” Bobb said Thursday in a statement. “As a result, we have been meeting and conferring with the Detroit Federal of Teachers and all unions, as required by law, and those meetings have been fruitful.”

Detroit has lost about 100,000 students since 1997, when enrollment stood at 175,168. It has about 74,000 students now, but that could bottom out at about 56,500 by 2014, Bobb has said.

With the enrollment losses has come the loss of millions of dollars in state per pupil funding.

Bobb was appointed in March 2009 by then-Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm to fix the district’s finances. He has closed dozens of schools, reworked vendor contracts and instituted other cost-cutting measures but has been unable to erase a massive budget deficit that now stands at $327 million. His contract has twice been extended and is set to expire at the end of June.

Within months of his arrival in Detroit, Bobb has been at odds with many teachers who claimed he was on a mission to cut jobs.

News of the layoff notices are not a surprise to the rank and file, teachers’ union president Keith Johnson told The Associated Press Thursday.

The current contract requires a 60-day notice before layoffs are made, he said.

“We knew the layoff notices were going to go out,” Johnson said. “They gave one to everybody. It is a notice in case layoffs become necessary.”

How many layoffs actually occur will depend on fall enrollment figures, teacher retirement, resignations and terminations, he added.

“All these factors come into play,” Johnson said. “The state insisted that the district make the effective date July 29. Conveniently, that’s the last day of summer school.”

Layoffs historically take place the last day of summer vacation in late August.

“What they are ignoring is it could cost the state and district money neither can afford,” Johnson said. “I will inform our members that if they have not received a rescinding letter by Aug. 1 to immediately apply for unemployment.”

Other bargaining units are expected to get layoff notices by April 30.

Amaker stays at Harvard

After taking a day to meet University of Miami athletic officials and consider the situation, Tommy Amaker has decided to remain the men’s basketball coach at Harvard.

Miami had placed Amaker atop its wish list as the replacement for Frank Haith, who recently left the Hurricanes to become Missouri’s coach. With Amaker out of the mix, the Hurricanes are expected to focus on University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee coach Rob Jeter.

Harvard is expected to make an official announcement later this afternoon, reaffirming Amaker’s commitment to a program which produced a 23-7 record and a share of the Ivy League title — the program’s first — with Princeton this season.

Amaker visited with Miami officials here Monday.

But after spending a day pondering the possibility of moving back to the Atlantic Coast Conference, the former Duke player and assistant coach informed Miami that he was not interested.

Admit more poor students or lose public cash, Oxford is warned

Universities such as Oxford would not receive taxpayers’ money in future unless they improved access 

The Deputy Prime Minister said much more needed to be done to ensure poor and ethnic minority pupils were given the opportunity to study at the best universities. He even suggested that universities such as Oxford would not receive taxpayers’ money in future unless they improved access.

His comments came a day after David Cameron said it was a “disgrace” that only one black student had been admitted to Oxford last year — a claim the university denied. Mr Clegg said the Prime Minister was “absolutely right” to make his point, and then broadened the attack.

“Here’s a fact: last year, only 40 – four zero — children who had been on free school meals — in other words from the more disadvantaged families in this country — got into either Oxford or Cambridge, and that was a lower number than the year before,” he said.

“So we do need to make real efforts to say to universities: if you want to continue to get support from the taxpayer to educate our young people, you’ve got to make sure that British society is better reflected in the people you take into the university in the first place.” Mr Clegg has paid a heavy political price for backing the Coalition’s rise in tuition fees and is desperate to ensure that a wider range of students are able to make it to the top universities.

He added: “One of the objectives behind our controversial reforms in the funding of universities is we’re saying to universities: ‘Look, if you want to charge graduates more money for having the benefit of going to university, you’re going to have to do a lot, lot more to get under-represented youngsters from poor backgrounds, from black, minority ethnic backgrounds into your university.’”

Anthony Smith, a former president of Magdalen College, Oxford, told Politicshome.com, that Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron showed how little the Coalition understood the impact poor state school standards had on universities and accused them of “making ignorant accusations of ethnic and social bias”.

“Only a very blind politician would consider it appropriate to threaten to deprive them [universities] of the financial means to continue their work, as Nick Clegg has just done,” he said.

Prof David Eastwood, the vice-chancellor of Birmingham University and a former chief executive of England’s Higher Education Funding Council, attacked the “cheap shots” fired by politicians and suggested that many talented state school students dropped out at 16.

In a swipe at Mr Cameron, he said: “I think it’s deeply unhelpful to expect higher education to fix problems that are structural in education.

“Anyone who knows about progression in education knows that 16 is the key age and it is at 16 that we lose a lot of talented people, particularly from ethnic minority backgrounds and poorer backgrounds.”

He added: “Those who take [university] access very seriously do tire at cheap shots at higher education when, actually, what we need to address is this problem of progression from the early years right through.”

The row coincided with Sheffield University — in Mr Clegg’s constituency — becoming the latest to announce that it planned to charge the maximum tuition fees of £9,000 a year. More than 30 universities have declared their intended fees for next year, with the majority planning to charge £9,000, which was intended for “exceptional circumstances” only.

Aaron Porter, the outgoing president of the National Union of Students, accused the Coalition of becoming “more arrogant, incompetent and reckless with every day that passes”. “We are seeing, with every day that passes, how the Government’s policy is descending further into chaos,” he said.