There are new rules and guidelines for collective bargaining and teacher evaluation coming from the Department of Education, following legislation passed in the most recent session of the General Assembly.
Dr. Robert Klitzman, Superintendent of the Eastern Pulaski School Corporation, explained the new guidelines to his board at the last school board meeting, including a time limit for bargaining.
“The time to bargain is greatly condensed,” said Dr. Klitzman. “By law, you can only bargain with your Association as those two units in August and September. After that, the State intervenes and gets you going through the process. That is a short period of time. The good news for Eastern Pulaski Schools is that with the cooperation of our Teacher’s Association and Kyle Johnson, we were able to do an agreement for another year prior to the Governor’s signature so we’re in the envious position of being able to sit back and kind of watch how things unfold and learn a lot more about how this new law is going to really act.”
In the past, teacher evaluation that tied into compensation included just years of experience and degrees earned. That is only one component of the new legislation. It can only count from 0-33% of the evaluation. The rest of the evaluation is based on leadership, needs of the school, student achievement, and student growth.
