After reducing the superintendent’s contract days from 260 to 240 and consolidating principal positions into one K-12 position due to declining enrollment and funding challenges, ISD 166 Superintendent Beth Schwarz asked the school board in a work session on November 16 to consider adding back some administrative time for both her and Principal Gwen Carman.
“I do feel like at this point my job responsibilities are bigger than I can give adequate service to,” said Principal Gwen Carman, in her fourth year as principal. She said she expects to work outside her contract agreement in evenings and summers but is feeling like she’s gone beyond what is normal for a job like hers.
Carman said she would like more time with teachers, more time to observe students and classrooms, time to follow through with discipline by talking to parents, teachers, and students, and more time to work on the curriculum. Q Comp, a quality improvement initiative sponsored by the state, is taking up a lot of her time as well, she said. Even scheduling classes has become difficult and time-consuming with fewer students in the district.
School board member Terry Collins did not take these issues as a reflection on Carman’s performance. “It’s not that the job is too big for you,” he said. “The job is too big.”
Superintendent Schwarz said there are times when it would be helpful for her and Carman to go to conferences and state meetings together. She said she thinks they should consider hiring a part- or fulltime licensed professional, such as an assistant principal, who could make decisions when she and Carman were out of the building.
Collins asked if there were other reductions that could be made to compensate for adding another administrator. Schwarz said people get upset if jobs are reduced or eliminated to create other jobs. She said she would rather be tasked with adding what was needed and making it work within the budget.
Collins said reductions could be made through attrition. He asked if Schwarz was thinking they could hire from within if they added an administrator. Schwarz said that by the end of the year, teachers Todd Toulouse and Mitch Dorr and school counselor Bryan Hackbarth would all have their principal licenses but that she feels “very strongly” that they should be open to hiring from outside the district.
Schwarz said that because of time constraints she thinks she’s doing an “adequate” but “not excellent” job as Community Education director and in her oversight of the facilities and transportation department. She said she also thinks she should be spending more time on the school’s early childhood education program.
“If we want Community Ed to thrive, they need more than a part-time Community Ed director,” Schwarz said. Schwarz’s contract calls for 10 percent of her time to be spent running Community Education. She said with the Upper Shore Fitness Center moving to the Cook County Family YMCA (the new community center), Community Ed will no longer be operating out of a deficit.
Maybe they need to figure out what the public wants from Community Ed, said school board member Deb White. The program used to have a lot more adult classes, she said, and they were much cheaper than the classes offered by North House Folk School, for example.
Superintendent Schwarz said both Q Comp and the acquisition of new technology, which are positive endeavors with a lot of potential, have taken a lot of her and Carman’s time. “We feel like we’re on the cusp of something,” she said, “and yet we feel like we’re just so swamped. When you enjoy doing something and you’re passionate about it, it doesn’t feel like extra work, but it is. … We’re physically exhausted.”
Schwarz said the lack of time keeps them from maximizing revenue streams such as philanthropy and Title funding.
When asked what duties she would want to shift to others, Schwarz wasn’t sure. She said perhaps someone else could run Community Ed, but she would still want to oversee its budget.
Schwarz said that at a rural schools conference she had recently attended, ISD 166 was the only district with an Indian reservation that did not have an onsite Indian education director. She suggested that they consider hiring an assistant principal with a Native American background and competency that could function as both a Native American education director and an assistant principal.
The people involved in finding new personnel affect whom they find, Collins said. He said including Grand Portage Indian Education Director Haley Brickner and “Indian educators in the school” would be helpful in searching for the person Schwarz suggested.
They need to go out and recruit at conferences focusing on Native American issues, Schwarz said.
“I would love it if you and Gwen brought us a request to attend the national Indian Education Association Conference,” Collins said. If the school doesn’t meet families’ needs, he said, parents will take their kids elsewhere for school and the district will lose even more funding.
Motions
With member Leonard Sobanja absent, the board unanimously approved a motion to offer Superintendent Schwarz another contract, to begin July 1, 2013. A motion to make it a three-year contract was tabled to the December meeting.
School board member Jeanne Anderson said she wanted to know how the staff was feeling about the superintendent this year. Last year, the local teacher’s union sent a letter to the board expressing dissatisfaction with Superintendent Schwarz. White said it seems that things have improved a lot since the board started doing frequent performance reviews with Schwarz.
The board unanimously approved a motion to add a 10-day stipend to both Schwarz’s and Carman’s contracts for their Q-Comp duties. Along with several teachers, they are each getting a $500 stipend for sitting on the Q Comp Quality Oversight Committee, but their jobs also require many staff evaluations that were not required before the school started participating in Q Comp.
ACA user agreement
The school board reviewed the Arrowhead Center for the Arts (ACA) facility use manual with Facility Manager Sue Hennessy. Superintendent Schwarz said the ACA has been breaking even and has at times contributed up to almost $5,000 to the school budget.
The ACA wing was built with grant money, but the school pays for maintaining it. The school is currently using it for band, art, social studies, and English. Renting out the space helps pay for maintenance costs.
“The school district puts a lot of money into that area,” Superintendent Schwarz said.
“It’s hard to factor in intangibles,” said Mary Sanders. “The kids are really getting a lot out of it.”
Hennessy manages use of the facility by numerous community groups, including the Grand Marais Playhouse, which she runs as well. She said the partnership between the school district and the Playhouse is unique. “It’s hard to separate my hats,” she said. The Playhouse will always need a technical manager, she said, but the school could not afford to keep such a person on staff. She has been trying to find a way to get grant funding that recognizes this partnership, but many of the major grants do not fund programs this small.
Hennessy is paid $13,000 a year for working 20 hours a week as the facilities manager. She gets paid as an independent contractor for technical work, but her Playhouse salary has not increased in 10 years. Mary Sanders said Hennessy works another job to be able to have health insurance.
Discussed at the previous day’s regular school board meeting:
. Betsy Jorgenson said the addition of staff development days this year is enhancing her teaching. The longer school day also leaves her feeling like she can get more done with her students, she said.
. The board discussed the two exit surveys that were conducted with graduating seniors this year, one by Jeff Kern and the other by a professional survey company. Board member Terry Collins said it seemed like students felt the school was lacking consistency in discipline. “Students somehow know when they’re on the B list,” he said.
. Jeanne Anderson reported that 34 girls have been participating in a middle school girls group sponsored by the Violence Prevention Center.
. Thirty-eight students attended free day at Grand Marais Family Dentistry, and eight were referred on for further care.
. This is the last year Leif Lunde will be doing the DARE program. The Sheriff’s Office will continue to have a program in the school, but it might be different from DARE.
. The school will be negotiating the purchase of several replacement vehicles for staff use and for transporting small numbers of students. Deb White hoped the school would offer the used vehicles at low prices to community members rather than getting very little for them as trade-ins.
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