Sept. 19 Board Meeting, District Survey, Remarks

Board Notes
September 19, 2006

Highlights from last night's board meeting:

1) Approval to purchase 25 acres of land at the intersection of East Division and FR 193 for the site of new Hickory Hills School. The land purchase price was $825,000. Details on the sale of the current location were discussed during a closed session.

2) The district released the results of a Springfield School District Survey (pdf file) that outlined how voters feel about district overall performance and their opinions and priorities regarding SPS.

When rating long-range plans for the district, voters gave their highest marks to "Increase teacher salaries to remain competitive on a statewide and regional basis" (67% strongly favor, 23% somewhat favor) - second highest favorable rating was "Hire more teachers to reduce the student/teacher ratio in classrooms" (58% strongly favor, 29% favor somewhat).

Remarks to the Board

Board Members
President Hoeman
Dr. Ridder

I just want to comment on the newly released district voter survey. As the district develops a long-range plan to guide us over the next several years, it was gratifying to see that Springfield voters chose as their highest "favorable" rating (90%) the increasing of teacher salaries.

This solid community support for raising our low ranking in teacher salaries dovetails nicely with our district Goal #3 - to recruit, develop and retain a high quality staff - and it bodes well for the future of our district.

It is also noteworthy that the next highest favorable rating (87%) was to ensure the district hires more teachers to reduce class sizes. The survey confirms that the voting community "gets it" when it comes to teacher compensation and class size issues.

I read another survey this week that I think underscores the importance of our own survey results. It came from the National Center for Education Information, a survey that views trends in education. Among the more interesting findings was the recognition that the K-12 teacher force is aging rapidly. After holding relatively steady for decades, the proportion of teachers who are 50 years of age and older has risen from 24% to 42% over the past ten years.

This means that over 40% of the teaching population will be retiring within the next ten to fifteen years. Our schools must be prepared to compete for the best teaching talent to replace this veteran core. With our community behind us, now is the time for Springfield to make a commitment to create a long-term pay plan that raises our low salary rank and makes us more competitive when recruiting teachers statewide.

Improved student achievement will be the ultimate result.

Thank you for your time.