McGinley: Teacher Pay Top Priority

Funding remains tight for the Charleston County School District but maintaining and increasing gains in student achievement will cost more, according to the five-year plan the administration shared with board members Monday.

"My top priority is to keep the great teachers we have that have enabled us to make the progress we have made," Superintendent Dr. Nancy McGinley said. "You can have the best programs in the world but if you lose the teachers it doesn't matter."

McGinley is pushing the board to reinstitute Step raises and Cost-of-Living salary increases for all district staff, which have not seen Step raises for three years and have gone without Cost-of-Living raises for the past two years. The salary increases will cost the district approximately $12 million according to District Deputy of Strategic Planning and Communications Elliot Smalley.

As outlined in the plan, during the 2012-13 school-year all staff would get at least 3 percent Cost-of-Living raise to their salaries, and teachers would get two years worth of Step increases, other staff will get a single year's Step raise. The cost to the district in the first year would be $12.2 million. With the Step and Cost-of-Living raises restored the district predicts staff costs going up each year during the five-year plan. In the second year (2013-14) the additional cost of the raises that year will be $12.5 million, in year 3 (2014-15) the cost will be $12.8 million, during year 4 (2015-16) the annual raises will cost $13.1 million and during the final year of the plan (2016-17) the cost will be $13.5 million.

The district will also be changing the way it interviews and screens potential new hires by centralizing the process so that all teacher applicants go through an initial interview and skills analysis with the district. Once the applicants make it past the first round all of the qualified applicants will be placed into a pool from which individual school principals can select candidates to interview for open positions.

The administration also outlined potential changes to a number of CCSD programs with a major focus on literacy.

Over the past three school years the district has implemented several new literacy programs for struggling students. For the 2009-10 school-year the district created a Third Grade Academy program in 12 schools to help struggling students in the third grade catch up with their grade level peers. Based on the success of the Third Grade Academy program, in 2010-11 the district created First Grade Academies in all elementary schools. This school-year the district added to its literacy programs with interventions for kindergarten students and second graders who were falling behind.

The intervention program allows kindergarten and second grade teachers to spend additional time with the students that need it.

Looking forward the district plans to continue the First Grade Academies and the kindergarten and second grade interventions program. It plans to add a third grade intervention program and expand the Third Grade Academy from the current 12 schools to every elementary school in the district. Eventually the district would like to add Academy programs for Fourth, Fifth and Sixth grades as well.

The increases in the programs will affect 2,300 Charleston County students at 45 schools next school-year. By the final year of the plan the programs will affect 2,500-2,700 students in those schools.

Currently the Elementary Literacy Pathways - as the programs are called - cost the district $4.5 million per year. With the changes the cost of the programs would increase over the course of the plan to include an additional $3.5 million in 2012-13, $2.9 million in 2013-14, $450,000 in 2014-15, $460,000 in 2015-16 and $470,000 in 2016-17.

"Maintaining our Literacy Academies in First, Second and Third grades is extremely important because that's where we're making the biggest difference," McGinley said. "We're seeing stronger students coming up through those programs and in a few years we won't need the interventions in middle school and high school because we're catching them early."

The administration's plan also seeks to expand school choice options over the coming five years. Currently the district has nine countywide magnet schools, six constituent district magnets, nine partial magnets and eight charter schools.

North Charleston Creative Arts Elementary School, a new partial magnet school, opened this year for kindergarten and first grade students. Over the course of the district's five-year plan the school will move into a newly renovated building in 2013-14, and is expected to be at full enrollment of 450 students by the 2015-16 school year. The school is costing the district $1 million to operate this year. Next year costs will rise by $500,000. The following year an additional $640,000 will be required to run the school. During the 2014-15 and the 2015-16 school-years additional operating costs will be $180,000 each year. By the 2016-17 school-year additional operating costs will be $20,000.

Another route for expanding school choice options is expanding the district's Montessori School options. With four Montessori schools operating this year, the district wants to expand the offerings to include a Montessori program in each zone in the district, which will require additional staff, additional training, additional materials and additional facilities.

Board members were informed that hundreds of families that applied for spots in the existing Montessori programs didn't get in to the programs because there simply was not enough capacity to keep up with the demand. Creating additional Montessori programs will cost the district an additional $730,000 in 2012-13, $530,000 in 2013-14, $1.2 million in 2014-15, $910,000 in 2015-16 and $770,000 in 2016-17.

Despite challenges finding the money to increase the program the bigger problem may be finding qualified teachers for it, as only one college or university in South Carolina, Lander University, offers a Montessori program.

McGinley also wants to expand the district's early learning services to reach 100 percent of all high need 4-year-olds in the district and 55 percent of all other 4-year-olds with Pre-K programs.

Currently the Pre-K program serves 1,764 4-year-olds, or 67 percent of all 4-year-olds in the district. It costs $8.3 million to run. Expanding the program will add $1.1 million in 2012-13, $1.15 million in 2013-14, $1.2 million in 2014-15, $1.25 million in 2015-16 and $1.3 million in 2016-17. That doesn't include any capital costs that may be necessary for additional facilities.

The plan also calls for something students in the district's Innovation Learning Zone - which includes Burns Elementary, Chicora School of Communications, Dunston Primary, Hursey Elementary, James Simmons Elementary, Mary Ford Elementary, Midland Park Primary, North Charleston Elementary, Pinehurst Elementary, Sanders-Clyde Elementary, Morningside ARMS Boys' Academy, Morningside EXCEL Girls' Academy, Baptist Middle/High and North Charleston High - probably won't like at all; a longer school year to the tune of 20 days.

Associate Superintendent Dr. James Winbush, who leads the Innovation Learning Zone told the board that the longer school year would help the higher proportion of at-risk students in the zone because the majority of learning loss each school year occurs over the long summer.

The change won't be without challenges as administrators will have to re-work the schedule for the schools in the zone as well as teacher and staff contracts and work out various other issues that come with keeping those school running an extra four weeks each year.

The change would also come with a first year (2012-13) cost of between $3.5 million and $3.6 million, however the additional operating cost drops dramatically after the first year to $200,000 in 2013-14, then rises each year afterward by $50,000 to $250,000 in 2014-15, $300,000 in 2015-16 and $350,000 in 2016-17.

Other ideas and costs in the plan were less concrete Monday with the administration and board members discussing the possibility of creating centralized service centers throughout the district that could handle a lot of the administrative tasks now done at each individual school, such as registering students, verifying addresses and assisting the non-English speaking parents of students in the district.

No votes were taken Monday, but all of these issues will come before the board at some point during the budgeting process, McGinley said.

"That's why we're presenting this to the board because some of these issues they are going to have to take a stand on," she added.

And those decisions could be very difficult to make as District Chief Financial Officer Michael Bobby doesn't expect to get any additional funding from the state and said the administration doesn't plan to ask for a property tax increase either.

"Two statements have been made about school funding, one from the governor and one from the state superintendent of education, and neither of them proposed any new money for education," Bobby said. "In Charleston County the state pays less than half of the cost per student, most of the rest is from local property taxes, and so far we are assuming no property tax increase."