Agenda - 11-10-1998 - Attachment #10

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teachers through aggressive recruiting, professional development, compensation, working conditions, rewards, motivation and accountability. The Task Force recognizes the critical importance of having the best possible teachers in the system and having a favorable student to teacher ratio. Success at maintaining a high quality pool of teachers not only requires aggressive recruiting, but also a system that supports the teachers through professional development, appropriate compensation, supportive working conditions and appropriate acknowledgment of their success. The district needs to find the resources to expand the number of teachers and provide levels of compensation sufficient to recruit the best teachers into the district. However, money alone does not ensure that the working environment is supportive of the teachers' efforts. School administrators, parents and the students themselves need to contribute to creating the supportive environment that makes the best use of the available teachers' skills. At the same time, our district also must effectively address any situations in which a teacher or staff member is not competently fulfilling his or her professional responsibilities and contributing to the mission of the schools. Summary • Resources need to be identified to hire and retain more, highly qualified and committed teachers to improve the teaching staff and reduce class size. • Administrators, staff, parents and the students themselves need to create a supportive, professional working environment to maximize the talents of our teachers and thus the accomplishments of our students. • Teachers and other staff who are found not to be satisfactorily meeting their responsibilities need to be assisted in succeeding and removed from their positions if these efforts are not successful. 4. Emphasize the community's responsibility to all schools and all students In recent times, some parents have suggested that the school system should have open school choice, allowing each parent to choose which school in the district their child will attend. Other parents have been advocating to establish charter schools which receive per pupil support from the district bqt have autonomy to hire teachers and set curriculum with few limits. There also is some parental interest in having school vouchers which would allow each student to use public funds for education to pay private school tuition. All of these efforts derive from a genuine concern of parents to get the very best education for their children; however, a public school system is more than just a vehicle for a parent to acquire a quality education for their own children. A community school system is the means through which the entire community commits itself to achieving excellence in education for all children. Public schools are a collective effort in which all citizens, whether they have children or not, contribute according to their means to, support education for all. The successes and failures of each student should be of concern to all citizens, not just the parents of the respective students. When citizens lose sight of this basic premise, then the whole system begins to unravel. Schools are only as strong as the collective support they receive from the citizens. Vouchers, charter schools and school choice have the potential to undermine this collective community support and siphon resources away from the system to provide special settings or privileges for certain students over others who cannot afford to take advantage of these opportunities. Any considerations of school choice, charter schools or vouchers should weigh carefully the impact against this important collective community commitment toward maintaining the highest quality school system committed to achieving the best possible education for all children. The Task Force finds any form of a voucher system to be unacceptable because it diverts public funds to private schools and disrupts the diversity of the student body. Similarly, charter schools, under existing legislation, may divert a disproportionate amount of funding from the existing schools and also may disrupt the diversity of the student body. The Legislature has authorized charter schools under the aegis of the local board of education, the State Board of Education or one of the state universities. Therefore, the Task Force tt