Without options, Chandler staff likely to change

By Roger Schneider

GOSHEN, Ind — Late Thursday afternoon, Chandler Elementary School Principal Lisa Lederach scurried to make sure everything was perfect at her home for the guests she was about to receive. After all, they were very important to her.

Later, the faculty and staff of the school she has led the past two school years would arrive, unwind and surely talk a little shop this holiday season.

It is hard for Lederach to believe that just a day earlier schools Superintendent Bruce Stahly was informing this staff that many of them could be transferred to other schools for the 2010-11 school year, victims of the increasingly rigid parameters of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

“Dr. Stahly and Mrs. (Tammy) Ummel did a very nice job of recognizing feelings and making it a very positive meeting,” Lederach said. “It is as hard on them as it is the teachers. It’s not easy for anybody.

Ummel is the executive director of elementary education for Goshen Community Schools.

After months of deliberation, it is the recommendation of a special committee that the staff at Chandler Elementary School staff be changed.

The 40 members of the committee, some from outside the school corporation, met to consider the few options given to them under the NCLB law. On Thursday the Goshen schools administration announced the committee picked the restructuring option.

That is what will be recommended to school trustees early next year.

“If you look at the other options,” said Dan West, a school board member for the past 28 years who served on the Chandler committee, “they weren’t doable,”

Difficult options

As punishment for failure to meet NCLB’s Adequate Yearly Progress for several years, the only other options to replacing staff included closing the school; reopening the school as a charter school; or privatizing the school.

“If you close the school, what would you do with the students?” West said. “Once you start eliminating — what is doable and not doable — the other options are the least practical.”

Restructuring the staff is allowed under state law, according to West and Goshen Education Association co-president Chad Collins. The GEA is the local teachers union.

“The possible change of staff is really mandated by the state,” Collins said. “In some cases that would override the contract. As far as incentive pay, that has to be decided.”

Incentive pay for teachers is also a part of the committee’s recommendation, along with building the professional capacity of staff, non-traditional grouping of students around learning goals, opportunities for extended learning time, parental and community involvement and improving the school environment.

No surprise

While the recommendation of breaking up the school’s staff is something the staff wanted to avoid, Collins said the recommendation is not surprising.

“The committee looked at every option,” she said. “The option accepted is the option selected most often by schools that have to undergo restructuring.”

Lederach said the outcome was rather predictable.

“It was hard because we didn’t have a lot of good options,” Lederach said. “Our choices were pretty limited. We went into this predicting what was going to happen and that’s were we ended up.”

School board president Cathy Cripe said that because of the few options given by the state, the staffing issue was the only recommendation possible.

“I think all the other options are terrible,” she said. “There is not anyone who will take over one school in a town. There just aren’t many suggestions.”

Cripe also believes that resting the blame on the school’s staff as required by the state is not right.

“I don’t like the way the state says ‘You remove the teachers responsible,’” she said. “It’s not fair.”

Cripe said Goshen elementary schools have a high percentage of students receiving free and reduced-price lunches because their parents have low incomes. Also, she said there are many students who are not proficient in English or are special education students.

Both groups of students have to take the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress Plus exam, otherwise known as ISTEP. The results of that exam are used to determine which schools make Adequate Yearly Progress.

“If you have a child who can’t read or write English and they have to take the test, how fair is that?” Cripe said.

West indicated the school board will likely ask Chandler teachers to voluntarily move to other schools.

Funding for these recommendations is supposed to come from the state, according to West. But just a day after Gov. Mitch Daniels announced $300 million will be cut from school funding to help balance the state budget, West wondered if such funding will ever reach Goshen.

More down the road?

If adopted by the school board, the Chandler plan may be used as a blueprint for two other Goshen schools facing possible NCLB sanctions in the coming year. West Goshen and Chamberlain elementary schools also have not been meeting state and federal standards for improvement. Both are also, like Chandler, Title 1 schools, which means they qualify for federal aid due to the high number of low-income students they have. That is what makes them accountable in the eyes of NCLB.

Non Title 1 schools are not subject to the same requirements.

Superintendent Stahly praised the committee members for their work.

“There was definitely consensus on the recommendation with regard to using the restructuring option we chose,” Stahly said.“What we’re putting together now is a document that will be presented at the next board meeting. But, that will still be just a skeleton outline of what we plan to do. Then we will have a new committee that will actually put together a comprehensive plan that we hope then will be approved by the state (Department of Education).”

While Chandler is the first Goshen school to undergo this drastic action, West believes that eventually every Title 1 school in Indiana will face restructuring because of the requirements of No Child Left Behind.

“The way it is set up, all school systems are going to fail,” he said. “It is not a mater of if, but is a matter of when.”

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