Districts and State Increase Teacher Codes of Conduct

Read Amy Stewart's front page story, "Are Students Safe from Predators?" at www.deseretnews.com

Both Weber and Ogden Districts are looking at beefing up the "Code of Conduct", while implementing the state's new "self-reporting" rules and background checks and fingerprinting for relicensure.

Don't be surprised if the the legislature also tackles this issue.

One instance of inappropriate behavior with students is too many, but the percentage of cases compared to the thousands of teachers and student relationships that are not inappropriate is small. Teachers are held to a high standard of trust. Any breach of that trust will reach the headlines of the newspapers and lead on the nightly news.

One new story gives the newspapers the opportunity to revisit all other past stories and gives the impression of some sort of trend. It is our hope that all teachers will continue to maintain professional relationships with their students.

Rick

More Retirement Woes...Continued

Today's Deseret News has an article by Lisa Riley Roche detailing the Interim committee on retirement's meeting yesterday. Read it at http://www.deseretnews.com/

The committee offered no recommendations, but heard four hours of testimony. They were told that the retirement system would run out of money in 30 years if the government's contribution did not increase. The good news came from the system's director, Robert Newman, who reported that the fund had earned an extra $1 Billion this year. Our Ogden Senator, Jon Greiner, raised the most concerns about the audit. He countered that it is only "one half of one percent" of employees who retire in place. (receiving their retirement, salary, and 401 K)

Read the entire article.

Rick

Legislative Audit Blasts "double-dipping" of retirees

The legislative audit of the rehiring of retirees has been released and you can read about it at http://www.deseretnews.com/ . Public Education leads with 2,121 rehirees who receive their state retirement, plus a payment to their 401 (k) program instead of payment to the URS. House Speaker Dave Clark said, "There needs to be and should be some changes." Sen. Liljenquist (Davis County), chair of the committee dealing with retirement said, "We knew it was a problem. We didn't know how deep."

Look for the next session to make some changes.

Rick

WEA Winners of the Blog Contest

Congrats to Shanna Campbell at North Ogden Jr. High, Michael Smith at Rocky Mt. Jr. High, and Bryan Hatch at Two Rivers High for winning $25.00 Smith's gift cards...to help with turkey day.
Stay tuned for December's contest. Rick

UEA Awards

Go to www.utea.org to see the nomination forms for the "Golden Apple Award" for volunteers at your school. Also look for the nomination forms for the "Great Public Schools Celebration".

State Supt. Larry Shumway Proposes Budget

Read Amy Stewart's article at www.deseretnews.com "Ed Board calls for holding line on 2010 Budget" in todays edition.
The state board is proposing a 2.5 Billion dollar budget (same as last year) which doesn't pay for the possible 11,000 to 12,000 new students we will be seeing next year. That equates to a 2% decrease. That, of course, "means fewer teachers, larger classes, and lower benefits and salaries", Larry Shumway said.

Rick Have a nice weekend.

The Perfect Storm: More students, less cash

Read two articles in the Salt Lake Tribune today dealing with public ed budgets:

• Lisa Schenker writes about the increase in students and lower budgets www.sltrib.com
• Another article talks about the lack of tax revenues (down 22%)

It is a perfect storm of low revenues, no stimulus, more students, lack of support to raise taxes, lack of leadership in the state legislature to make the tough choices. (oh, they want to make districts, actually teachers's salaries, pay more of their retirement).

Our per pupil expenditure will continue to drop while the expectations for teachers, higher test scores, increase. Debra Roberts, chair of the State Board of Ed, understates the problem, "It is going to be tough year..."

Rick