Monday, February 10, 1997
Lengthy agenda including results of teacher
survey face AISD Board
By LESLIE STRADER / Staff Writer
A lengthy agenda is on tap tonight for members of the Abilene
school board.
After nearly a month-long break, the trustees will spend time
tonight recognizing the achievements of several school groups,
hearing results of a teacher survey and discussing requiring community
service in high school.
After going through the regular agenda, the board will convene
in executive session, where they will conduct their annual self-evaluation.
The meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. in the board room of the administration
building, 842 N. Mockingbird.
Because of the numerous accomplishments of AISD employees and
students recently, the board will devote a good portion of the
meeting to dispensing accolades.
Trustees will recognize the 1996 Cooper High football team,
the first-place Abilene High Academic Decathlon team, National
Federation Interscholastic Coaches Association Coaches of the
Year Jim McKinney and Leanna Scott, and Mann Middle School students
Brandon Claxton and Bart Rodela for their outstanding art projects.
The board will also receive a proclamation designating Feb.
10-14 as National Career and Technology Week, consider a Lone
Star Investment Pool resolution and select external auditors for
fiscal years ending August 1997 and 1998.
The meat of the meeting will take place in two reports, the
first from the Abilene Federation of Teachers. The AFT conducted
a survey in the fall designed to measure the attitudes and satisfaction
levels of Abilene teachers in all grades.
AFT sent out 1,500 surveys and received a 25 percent return.
The questions covered topics from the school building environment
and teacher morale to feelings about administrators and curriculum,
salaries and benefits.
Scott Kirk, president of AFT, said there were no "bombshells"
found in the teachers' responses.
"I think this is important to do if for no other reason
than ... getting some sense of the pulse of the teachers,"
he said. "I don't think there's anything really astounding
about the findings. The most amazing thing we thought was the
big response we got with most of the people happy.
"I think this is one of those things the school board
will be happy to hear about."
The board will also follow up on a goal they set last spring
of investigating the idea of requiring community service in high
school. At the board's strategic meeting in May 1996, board president
Betty Davis requested the district look into attaching graduation
credits to volunteer hours.
Dr. Jeri Pfeifer, director of career and technology education,
said her office spent several months looking into what other states
and Texas schools were requiring and what Abilene students were
already doing.
Pfeifer's office surveyed high school students and teachers
to get an idea of what was already taking place outside and inside
the schools. Her report tonight will give the results of the survey,
funding possibilities and 11 recommendations concerning where
the district should go from here.
President Davis said tonight will be reserved for discussion
only; no decisions about graduation requirements will be made.
"We just wanted to see if we want to require something
along that line," she said. "I think it's real important,
but I also know there are problems moving kids off campus to do
things. I do think (community service) is part of education."
The board will adjourn the meeting and reconvene in executive
session for the last agenda item, where they will critique themselves
and their job performance via the annual self-evaluation process.
Davis said the board will look at the past year and go over
the goals set in the strategic planning session to see if they
are still on track.
Each board members rates the board as a whole on a scale of
one to five, five being outstanding, in four different areas -
board-superintendent relationship, taxpayer and community relationship,
internal board operations, and school district improvement.
The final section is a narrative evaluation, in which trustees
list "major problems the board faces and significant accomplishments
made by the school system during the past year."
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Copyright ©1997,
Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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