Turning to 2022 23 As the school year nears a close, administrators continue to work to ll vacant positions for next school year. These e orts include the April 28 career fair at the Berry Center, partnerships with universities, and advertising job postings online and throughout the community, o cials said. While district o cials said they remain hopeful about the e ectiveness of their hiring and reten- tion e orts, some experts said they believe change needs to happen before teachers are willing to return to the classroom. “I think in order to see vacant positions being lled again, there de nitely needs to be a move- ment to recruit teachers to show them that they are supported,’’ said Shamim Arastu, professor of education at Lone Star College-CyFair. “That they will get assistance to help in schools … [and] that the teachers will get support to help their students that have needs.” These roles have the potential to be lled by new teachers close to home. LSCCyFair reported 291 graduates over the past ve years were awarded an Associate of Arts in teaching degree. “I think that that motivation is something that is the same for those who are passionate about enter- ing the nursing eld: They want to help others,” Arastu said. “They love those ‘aha’ moments that they can see and know that they were a part of that. They want to make a di erence.” Arastu explained some students start their educa- tion careers at LSCCyFair but transfer to four-year universities after completing their core courses. Should prospective teachers opt out of attending a four-year university, they can use the associate degree from LSCCyFair to teach after getting their teaching certi cations. With these options at people’s disposal, Arastu said she hopes to see the status of education as an occupation be elevated in the coming years. “I think education is a eld that always is going to have a need,” Arastu said. “And I’m hoping that the de cit in some areas becomes less and less as more people realize the importance of becoming an educator and becoming an agent of change and how important their profession is.”
substitutes have free periods and brought in treats to boost morale. At the same time, with a districtwide substitute ll rate of 76.1%, Guilmart said teachers often have to cover classes for their colleagues during their free periods to ll in the gaps. Superintendent Mark Henry commended Trans- portation Director Kayne Smith at the February board meeting for lling in for bus drivers himself. As of early March, the district reported 119 vacancies in the transportation department. One new local business, Taxi Mom, began servic- ing portions of CFISD earlier this year with a eet of van-driving moms as an alternative option to riding school buses. Franchisee Lisa Hassbrock said she has heard grumblings from parents who were dis- satis ed with how long it was taking their children to get home from school. Guilmart agreed the district’s transportation bur- den grows heavier weekly. “So we have students waiting in the cafeteria until I guess a bus can come back from its rst route and pick themup,” Guilmart said. “We’ve had elementary school students crammed into buses during COVID. And those buses [take] a really long time to get these little kids home because they have so many di erent stops because they’re having to combine bus routes.” At the state level, the Texas Education Agency announced the creation of a Teacher Vacancy Task Force on March 10 that will bring together super- intendents, teachers, human resource o cers and other stakeholders from districts across the state to address sta ng shortages statewide. Later that day, the CFISD board heard a plan drafted by a CFISD committee to implement the state’s Teacher Incentive Allotment at its March meeting. If approved by the state-selected review committee, the plan would reward teachers with high marks on classroom observations and posi- tive growth on students’ STAAR scores. The plan is slated for submission April 15. During the 2022-23 school year, there will be data recorded to study the e ectiveness of CFISD’s dis- trictwide plan, which will later be submitted to the state’s committee for review and nal approval or rejection of the plan. Aside from statewide initiatives, Long encouraged people to get involved by appealing to their state representatives to keep education reform on their agendas ahead of the next legislative session in 2023.
CFISD will begin evaluating eligible teachers for a paid incentive based on standardized testing and classroom observation. The district will collect the following data in 2022-23, and nal approval would occur the following year before state funding of the incentives begins in 2024-25. CFISD TEACHER INCENTIVE ALLOTMENT PLAN To receive a designation, teachers at least meet the recognized designation standards in both metrics. Should a teacher meet the requirements of only one metric, they will achieve the lowest designation in which they ful lled all requirements or no designation.
DESIGNATION LEVELS
Recognized
Exemplary
Master
Teachers must meet a certain percentage of student growth as measured by standardized test scores to receive a designation for a monetary incentive. 1 TEXAS EDUCATIONAGENCY STANDARDS FOR TEACHER INCENTIVE ALLOTMENT
RECOGNIZED TEACHER 55% of students meet or exceed expected growth EXEMPLARY TEACHER 60% of students meet or exceed expected growth
55%
60%
MASTER TEACHER 70% of students meet or exceed expected growth
70%
2 TEACHER OBSERVATIONMINIMUM AVERAGE RATINGS Teachers must receive a certain rating in their in- class observations to receive a designation for a monetary incentive.
RECOGNIZED TEACHER 74% of possible points
74%
EXEMPLARY TEACHER 78% of possible points
78%
MASTER TEACHER 90% of possible points
90%
For more information, visit communityimpact.com .
SOURCE: CY FAIR ISD COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
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