Friday, April 22, 2011

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Don't Forget South Central:

My school was successful in creating a New Teacher Support program and through very simple strategies we reduced teacher turnover from 40% yearly, to zero percent in 2009.  These simple strategies included mentorships, pizza welcome parties, new teacher photos bios placed in all the staff members’ mailboxes, bowling nights to build community, and even a new teacher welcome brunch at the Principal’s house.  Our staff was celebrating the solving of the quest to reduce turnover when the budgetary layoffs hit schools.  We lost 23 teachers that year, the year we should have lost zero.  The following year we lost 12, and this year we are slated to lose 28.  The number is higher this year because of the ACLU settlement which did not take into account the individual, unique needs of each school community.  Because of our lower turnover numbers, our school did not qualify for layoff protection, therefore we are forced to absorb even larger numbers of layoffs than other schools in the area with that had no teacher retention programs in place.  Again, an idea that seems great in theory, but poor in practice.

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