School closing discussion, part 5

In this final excerpt from the School Board's discussion about issues related to school closing, Board member Annie Woodward questioned Superintendent William Andrekopoulos about high staff mobility at some schools.

He responded: "Human capital is a very important question. We have some provisions in our contract that allow for teacher mobility beyond what the administration thinks is right. We've tried to get that out of the contract. We've been able to have some success with the MTEA on minimizing that part of the contract so I think that might help a little bit, but I think we do have concerns...of stability of staff, retaining high-quality teachers in certain parts of the city. That is something that we're interested in working with the MTEA on dealing with that."

He continued: "With regard to the principals, in some of these schools early on that we identified that needed improvement we made principal changes because we thought it was the right personnel decision to do to put a better educational leader in a particular school. That wasn't all the cases, but in some of the cases. Principal stability is extremely important and we value that in a school. However, if we have an assessment...that the principal is not making a difference in the school, whether we use the evaluation process or other processes, we do exercise them, because the ultimate goal is to have stability. Occasionally, we will have principals come to us and ask for a transfer. Occasionally, principals will also have a promotion opportunity to go from one school that's smaller to a school that's larger, which actually they view as a promotion opportunity....The ultimate goal is to have both principal and staff stability."

Category:

Education

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• Milwaukee Public Schools
• MPS
• Blogging MPS
• William Andrekopoulos
• Annie Woodward
• school closing