Feds require seven troubled schools to replace principals to receive grants Federal dollars » Schools get money to transform

Feds require seven troubled schools to replace principals to receive grants
Federal dollars » Schools get money to transform

By Lisa Schencker

The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 06/10/2010 08:11:28 PM MDT

Seven low-performing Utah schools are about to undergo dramatic changes as recipients of about $13 million in federal cash.

The feds hope the School Improvement Grants lead to real changes in the schools. Some educators, however, have mixed feelings about making such dramatic moves.

The grants require the seven schools to replace their principals. The schools also must increase learning time for kids, use educator evaluations that take student data into account, provide additional teacher training, reward educators who improve student achievement and remove those who ultimately don't after receiving additional support, among other things.

Grant recipients include: Dee, James A. Madison and Odyssey elementary schools in Ogden; Northwest and Glendale middle schools in Salt Lake City; Granger High in West Valley City; and Bluff Elementary in the San Juan School District.

The new grant offers a type of federal money to schools that might not have been eligible for that money in the past, and it offers them relatively large amounts over three years to help them turn around their performances.

"It's not just throwing a little bit of money at a problem and saying this is a Band-Aid," said Ann White, Title 1 coordinator at the State Office of Education. "It's expensive to do the kind of reform they're being asked to do and it's going to take a lot of effort on behalf of everyone on the staff and at the district level."

Many
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educators say they are excited to get the money and make the changes, but some are also nervous about what the changes will mean.

"I think there are some people who are excited, some people who are overwhelmed, and some people who want to move out of the schools because of the extended time commitment," said Virginia Ellison, president of the Salt Lake Teachers Association. "The feelings are all mixed and all for different reasons."

Salt Lake's plan for Northwest and Glendale lengthens the school day and the year for students, asks teachers to stay for 45 minutes after school each day for meeting and/or training, and will mean bonuses of up to 18 percent of their base pay for some educators for meeting student achievement goals. The district will also, however, transfer teachers who have not, over a period of several years, improved their students' proficiency in math and language arts. Teachers may also request transfers in or out of the schools over the next two years.

"It's actually kind of exciting and scary at the same time," said Linda Stout, an eighth-grade history teacher at Northwest.

The principals of both Salt Lake schools will be replaced, and it has not yet been decided where they will go next school year, said Jason Olsen, district spokesman.

The Ogden district is transferring a number of its principals across the district to help move the principals at its three schools receiving grant money, but no principal will be out of a job, said Rich Moore with the Ogden district.

The district plans to use the money at the three elementary schools to provide additional coaching for teachers and administrators, provide extended-year and extended-day options for students and pay teachers bonuses for helping their classes make at least one year of academic growth, among other things.

In the Granite district, Granger High will use the money to offer an after-school program for academically at-risk students, hire more math and language arts teachers and provide more support to sophomores to help them better transition to high school, among other things, said Rob Averett, Granite Title 1 director. Jerry Haslam, Taylorsville High principal and recent Huntsman Award for Excellence in Education winner, will take the reins from Arthur Cox, who was retiring as Granger principal in June anyway.

In the San Juan School District, the 76-student Bluff Elementary also will offer more training for educators, try to hire a full-time instructional coach, and pay teachers up to $5,600 more a year for boosting student achievement and other improvements. Lynnette Johnson, student services director for San Juan, said the grant comes at an ideal time considering the principal was leaving anyway at the end of this school year along with about half of the school's teachers.

"We went from a small school that was making some progress with a principal and stable staff to a school that needed some transformation," Johnson said.

A State Office of Education-organized review panel selected the four school districts to receive the money from a pool of seven districts and charter schools that applied. Twenty Utah districts and charters were eligible to apply.

To apply for the cash, districts had to choose one of four models to turn around their schools: replace their principals and half their teachers; convert into charter schools; close their doors; or replace the principal and improve the school through curriculum reform, training for educators, extending learning time and other strategies.

All seven schools' will use the fourth option, also known as the transformational model, to improve their schools.

"The transformational model makes a lot of sense because it not only does replace the leadership, but it has a lot to do with learning," White said.