Some teachers at the Culver Community Schools Corporation will be among those getting some extra money, thanks to a Teacher Performance Grant awarded by the state.
Interim Superintendent Chuck Kitchell told the school board Monday that the corporation has been given a total of over $40,000 to distribute to teachers, based on their evaluations over the last couple of school years. “It’s one of those things where, by law, you have to give highly effective teachers a little more more money and effective teachers a little less money and any teachers that are considered improvement necessary or ineffective cannot be in the pool at all and get no money,” he said. “So as we went through our formula to figure out the amount of money, the highest stipend a teacher’s going to get through this grant is $729 and the lowest is $446, and then we take out taxes and all those other things out of that.” Corporation treasurer Casey Howard pointed out that any new teachers who started this year would also be excluded, since the grant is based on previous years’ evaluations.
Kitchell says the state has a specific funding formula it uses to distribute the funds to the state’s school corporations, “In a nutshell, it’s based on previous years’ scores and growth of those kids, and as you look down through the list of all the schools, every school gets a different amount. It’s not based on size or those things; it’s really based on the performance of your kids. So $40,000 for us, I think, is really a pretty nice pat on our back to say our kids have moved forward pretty well.”
The school board voted to accept the Teacher Performance grant, unanimously.
There was also some good news for the High School Drama Club during Monday’s meeting. The school board accepted a donation of $1,000 raised for the club through a GoFundMe campaign.
