[Southsider2k12]

Three big things happened tonight at the MCAS board meeting.

First of all the board approved a two year contract with the teachers which included things such as a 2% raise, a little bit more help with insurance costs (teacher currently pay about $8000 per year for their family plans), and coordinated extra curricular activities. On the other side of the coin, it is now easier for adminstration to remove deficient teachers and all teachers must post their grades electronically so that they are viewable on-line for parents.

Secondly despite the efforts of Mr Burgwald, the board has put off redistricting for another year, on the recommendation of Dr Eason-Watkins. The only boundaries that will change with be to shrink Edgewood a bit to alleviate overcrowding.

Thirdly uniforms are moving into our school system in some form in all likelihood. They are looking for individual schools to serve as pilot schools with uniforms for the 2011-12 school year. No mention of which schools those will be, though apparently some have volunteered.

[Southsider2k12]

The press release on the teachers contract

http://mcasnow.mcas.k12.in.us:81/departmen...o-year-contract

And the powerpoint with details in the contract.

http://mcaswiki.mcas.k12.in.us/@api/deki/f...rch_22_2011.pdf

[Ang]

http://thenewsdispatch.com/articles/2011/0...54004055352.txt

Board approves new contract for teachers

By Alicia Ebaugh
Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:07 PM CDT

MICHIGAN CITY — This time, it didn’t take more than two years of negotiating to come up with a new contract for Michigan City Area Schools teachers.

“Evidently there was trust on both sides, and that’s very important,” said School Board President Jim Kintzele.

The school board on Tuesday approved a new two-year contract for the Michigan City Education Association, after just two months of talks. It will take effect July 1. The contract provides a 2 percent raise for all teachers next school year, with the possibility of another raise the second year. It will also increase by $500 each year the amount the district pays toward family health coverage. But Associate Superintendent Xavier Botana said administrators also bargained to add many things parents of students wanted to see, like mandatory use of electronic grading and parent-teacher conferences.

“We dealt with some hard issues, but we all had a strong sense that we were working together for the betterment of the school system,” Botana said.

Family health insurance currently costs the district $14,500 per teacher. But Kintzele said teachers already pay more than $8,000 a year for that coverage, and premiums are expected to increase.

“There are people who think public employees pay $1 a month for their insurance, and I can tell you it’s not true here,” he said.

Phyllis Stark, MCEA president and Michigan City High School business teacher, said she was thankful the district put faith in its teachers through this contract. But many area school districts have not granted raises like the 13.5 percent increase seen for MCAS teachers over the past four years. Some — including food service and transportation workers who belong to the Michigan City Classified Association — have had no raises at all since 2008.

“Our teachers work hard every day. I believe this contract provides fair compensation in key areas for our members, including a modest raise, more flexibility regarding benefit days, and a small offset to rising health care costs,” she said. “We are aware these are hard times. The final goal of both parties was to do what is best for the students, and I think we accomplished that here.”

The contract creates accountability for teachers in several ways, Botana said. It features an agreement to establish school-based leadership teams, involving staff and parents to ensure collaborative decision-making and planning. Teacher evaluation processes are clarified, and the period of remediation for struggling teachers is reduced to nine weeks.

“If they don’t improve in the year they are identified as struggling, they probably won’t improve after that,” he said.

Parents will be able to follow their children’s progress through the district’s online Parent Access portal; the contract formalizes the use of the electronic grade book system that enables the regular flow of this information to parents. The contract also stipulates that two parent-teacher conferences will be held at schools annually. Parent conferences were successfully piloted at all schools this year.

Teachers who will retire this year and not benefit from this contract are provided a 2 percent stipend for their last year.

The spectre of the last contract negotiations involving former superintendent Michael Harding, in which teachers picketed school board members’ homes and threatened to strike in response to stalling from administrators, still loomed large for most involved. That contract expires June 30. Kintzele and Stark said this experience was much less contentious.

“I believe this is a step forward for us as a corporation,” said Superintendent Dr. Barbara Eason-Watkins. “This contract has been negotiated in a strong spirit of cooperation.”

[Southsider2k12]

http://thenewsdispatch.com/articles/2011/0...7b900598759.txt

MCAS will tackle school boundaries issue next year

By Alicia Ebaugh
Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, March 24, 2011 5:07 PM CDT
MICHIGAN CITY — Michigan City Area Schools will wait until next year to examine redrawing school boundaries, school board members decided Tuesday.

But related overcrowding issues, like that at Edgewood Elementary School, need to be addressed as soon as possible, Superintendent Barbara Eason-Watkins said.

“We’ve got a school with a capacity of 300 students, but there are 350 students enrolled there this year,” she said. “There is no music room or teachers’ lounge because they’ve been taken over for classroom space. We need a recommendation on Edgewood so guidance is available to parents and staff there for next school year.”

Current attendance boundaries for the city’s nine elementary schools and three middle schools were drawn up with differing student populations in mind, Associate Superintendent Xavier Botana said. That means some schools’ boundaries, like Edgewood’s, have been fractured into more than one part of the city. The school serves a huge central swath of the city from Gardena Park to Interstate 94, but also a portion of the city’s West Side.

Board member Beryle Burgwald argued those boundaries were poorly drawn because race was a factor in considering them, and race-based boundaries have been found to be unconstitutional.

“Anyone who looks at the maps can see they are race-based,” he said.

Burgwald’s resolution to fast-track the redistricting process and create a committee to resolve these issues, however, died for lack of support at Tuesday’s school board meeting. Eason-Watkins told board members earlier that night she wanted to wait for a few reasons. She said she expects “substantial” population movement within the district this fall, especially at Lake Hills and Pine elementary schools, which will become magnet schools. They are proving to be popular, she said, with 146 applications already from outside the schools’ attendance districts.

“We need to see how this will affect student populations at other schools first,” Eason-Watkins said.

Also, Botana said he recently discovered current policy and maps don’t accurately depict how those boundaries have been changed.

“Some minor changes have been made over the years that weren’t accurately documented,” he said. “Before we start a real conversation on redistricting, we need all of our data in one place with accurate descriptions.”

Redistricting may not be needed immediately, anyway, because they are not solely race-based, school board attorney William Kaminski said. He said an attorney with the Indiana School Boards Association examined MCAS policies regarding attendance boundaries and determined they were not in violation of federal or state law.

“Race was not the sole factor used in determining district boundaries. It was just one factor,” Kaminski said. “The policies probably do still need to be changed, though. It will be incumbent on me to take the opinions we receive and work with Dr. Eason-Watkins on a new policy.”