Month: February 2015

The first set of numbers is what a teacher just starting out can expect to make over the next 25 years if they remain effective or highly effective. The second what a sixth year teacher who stays on a professional services contract can expect to make over the same time, their salaries are locked in no matter what their evaluation is.

If the amounts were a dollar or less on the schedule I ignored them. Then at the end I gave teachers on PSC a 500 dollar raise which is traditionally what has happened.

Figuring a teacher has a career where they are effective then a PSC teacher actually earns a little more than a new teacher who has a similar, effective career. A huge disparity however can result because a new teacher can potentially earn hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

Finally PSC teachers in years 10-21 kind of get screwed when compared to teachers not on the grandfather pay scale though I guess you can argue they can make it up later and they do have work protections, which to a lot of us means a lot.

Year 30                 65,800/95,800

I am going to get a raise and a substantial in DCPS terms raise too. My salary is going to go up a little over 1,300 hundred dollars and to give you some scale, a teacher on the old scale would have had to work 5 years to get a 1,300 dollar raise and I was only scheduled to get a raise of around 700 dollars (I am a thirteenth year teacher on step 12 because of the step teachers lost a few years back).  I am also practically guaranteed a raise of 750 dollars a year for the next few years too. On the old scale teachers didn’t get that raise in a single year until year 13. It’s more money accumulating at a faster rate and I think I hate it.

Here is the problem, if you are a second year teacher and you get an effective evaluation then you will get a 1,000 dollar raise. However if you are a tenth year teacher and you get a highly effective evaluation meaning you are the best of the best. You can only get a five hundred dollar raise. Well you could get more if you gave up your work protections.

A first year teacher with four effective evaluations will catch a sixth year teacher on a professional contract in terms of salary in four years, they will surpass them in their fifth.

The contract says hey if you’re in the middle of the pay scale, years 6 through 20, you can make more money but you have to take less security, it devalues experience unless you want to live year to year.

Also it’s my bet that the union is short changing its members by agreeing to the contract. I bet there are a lot more union members on professional contracts than not and people on professional contracts, people who have been around and successful years are really getting shortchanged.

This is a great deal for new teachers but a poor one for veterans.

I am willing to entertain the though I am just too jaded and too critical on this matter. Any thoughts?

To look at the contract: click the link, http://www.dtujax.com/Teacher_Settlement_Feb_2015.htm 

Note the district average was 87 percent completion but First Coast came in at 70 and who knows if that was because of the principals interference or not.


Here are some things that stood out.


My school is a good place to teach and learn, 29%, district average 71%
School leaders promote a safe and productive learning environment, 32%, district average 74%
School leaders support me when it comes to student behavior, 25%, district average 59%
Leaders at my school seek out feed back from teachers, 19%, district average 61%
My school has effective instructional leadership, 34%, district average, district average 68%


In category after category First Coast was way below the district average and when asked why teachers were planning to leave they blamed the school leadership and the learning environment they had created.


Brennan is bad but is Vitti worse? He has known about the problems at First Coast for quite some time but he has done nothing to improve the situation. He is the one who put this bully in place and then allowed him to stay even after last year when teachers balked in droves. How does Vitti expect First Coast to be successful when the principal he chose to lead the school has created both a terrible work and learning environment.


Does the buck for this failure stop at Brennan’s desk or Vitti’s?


To view the complete survey, and friends it is a disaster paste the link into your browser. file:///C:/Users/Chris/Downloads/First%20Coast%20High%20(1).pdf


https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fduvalschools.box.com%2Fshared%2Fstatic%2Fopdlcw1vv0a126wgaj0fwnuy4mmrp2ep.pdf&h=ZAQEl9lUU

The results were specific to my school but I know every school did one. Wanting to see how things were at some other schools I reached out to the New Teacher Project, a group founded by Michelle Rhee and whose main doctrine is you can fire teachers to success and asked if I could see the surveys from other schools, telling them I was thinking about transferring and wanted to get an idea about cultures at them.

They very politely told me to go jump in a lake. Here is their response.