Because of the economic downturn, local school officials are looking at the possibility of having to cut teachers and other staff members for the 2010-11 school year.
In deciding how to make those cuts, one of the tougher decisions that members of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school board will have to make is whether years of teaching experience or such factors as growth in student achievement should count more.
At their meeting last night, board members looked at a potential list that, if adopted, would make student growth a more important factor than experience.
But job position would be more important than either of those factors in determining who would be cut. If, for instance, board members decided to tighten the budget by reducing requirements for physical education or by eliminating foreign-language classes in elementary schools, then all the teachers in those categories could be cut.
When board member Buddy Collins asked, "You would keep a first-year physics teacher over a 20-year PE teacher?," Superintendent Don Martin said, "That is correct."
The other factors would come into play only if it were a question of, say, needing to eliminate one of two English teachers. As Drew Davis, the school system's attorney, put it, board members would have to decide what the order of the tie-breaker factors will be.
No consensus emerged among board members about what the order should be.
For some, growth in student achievement was a more important consideration than length of service or evaluations.
Others thought that an evaluation would give a more reliable picture of the quality of the teacher than student growth.
No action was taken last night. Board members plan to continue to discuss the potential policy.
In other business:
□ Board members unanimously approved drawing new attendance lines that will affect students at three elementary schools: Diggs-Latham, Bolton and Ward. The school system is combining Diggs and Latham into one new elementary school. The shifting of boundaries will send some students at Latham to Bolton and some Latham students to Ward.
Students in the fourth or fifth grades next year will be grandfathered in -- as will be their siblings. But bus transportation will be provided for only two years. So some families will have to decide whether it would be better to go ahead and have younger children go to another school or to plan to provide their own transportation after that.
□ Board members unanimously elected Donny Lambeth to another one-year term as chairman and Jane Goins as to another one-year term as vice chairman.
kunderwood@wsjournal.com
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