By Carla Howie
Two days before the Nov. 20 deadline to ratify a mutually acceptable contract, the Zionsville Community Schools Board of Trustees and the Zionsville Educators’ Association reached agreement.
This agreement will span across the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years, with the central issue being performance pay or merit stipends to teachers in lieu of base salary increases.
With state funding continuing to decline, this agreement will compensate teachers from the more than $1 million received from the state’s competitive grant process the school districts had to apply for. The amount of stipends to be distributed for the 2013-2014 school year is $358,285. $787,200 will be distributed in 2014-2015. The grant amount to be received beyond 2015 has not yet been determined by the Dept. of Education.
Through collective bargaining and local decision making, Indiana school corporations created pay structures based on a locally determined combination of four potential factors: annual performance evaluation results, instructional leadership responsibilities, academic needs of students and a combination of experience and education.
Eligibility for ZCS performance stipends
The teachers of ZCS will have to meet 2 factors to be eligible to receive stipends: experience – weighted at 20 percent, and evaluation – weighted at 80 percent.
Experience factor is defined as a teacher must have received compensation (base salary) for at least 120 days during the school year, and must still be employed by ZCS on the date the stipend is to be paid.
Performance evaluation factor is defined as a teacher must receive an evaluation of Highly Effective or Effective on the 2012-2013 performance evaluation. Improvement Necessary or Ineffective evaluations will not be eligible.
According to Superintendent Scott Robinson, “Respect and appreciation to teacher colleagues for helping us forge this agreement. Our collaboration was essential in the award of state grants that now allow pay for performance stipends. This agreement will assist ZCS in handling increasing enrollment and declining state funding.”
Jim Longest, school board president, commended the cooperative effort by saying, “This agreement uses grant funds to pay performance stipends for teaching success and does not deepen our ongoing financial crisis resulting from the state’s broken funding formula.”