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Luna visits Blackfoot schools |
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Friday, 25 September 2009 |
By Leslie Mielke
FIRTH — Tom Luna, Idaho’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, visited classrooms and spoke with teachers at Firth High School (FHS) Thursday, Sept. 24.
Luna visited classrooms where students were studying drafting, math and street law. A computer lab was also visited. In the library, Luna took questions with some of the Firth faculty members for about an hour.
Luna said he has visited 70 school districts, meeting with educators.
An issue brought up by more than one Firth teacher was how is education going to find, attract and recruit good people?
FHS teacher and coach Brett Hill said teaching is really a service. “The rewards that come from education are inestimable.”
“It’s really a service to students and then you receive reciprocation from the kids,” Hill said.
Luna said education is competing with private industry. The workforce is seeing the need for a higher level of math; high tech jobs require critical thinking.
FHS Counselor Peggy Hunt said her son is in college taking classes to be a physical education and history teacher but he doesn’t want to become a math teacher. “What do I tell him?”
“Kids see no future in [education],” Hunt said.
“Students are making market place decisions,” Luna said. “We need to give bonus incentive and differential pay to teachers who are willing to teach in hard-to-fill positions, in struggling schools, taking leadership roles, such as working as a mentor or with the curriculum or in schools with considerable growth.”
“This is not just for math and science teachers,” Luna said. “If a school is struggling to keep a music teacher, that position would be consider a hard-to-fill position and would be compensated as such.”
Luna spoke about the Idaho Education Network which offers broadband connectivity to every high school, college and university. “This is an intranet service, not an internet service,” he said. “It will be managed at the state level with a single vendor.”
Qwest is that single vendor. Qwest covers 80 percent of Idaho, Luna said. To cover the remaining 20 percent, contracts will be made with other vendors.
This year, 40 percent of the school will be connected to this network. Year two, another 40 percent will be connected and in year three, the final 20 percent will be connected, Luna said.
“This provides a virtual option,” he said. “This is not a comfortable medium for [adults] but this is a comfortable world for students.”
The Idaho Education Network is patterned after the Utah Education Network. “Classes from remedial math to Mandarin Chinese are offered through this network,” Luna said. “Professional development opportunities are also available.”
How is this network paid for? asked one teacher. Through matching e-rate funds, $30- to $40-million is funding this project, Luna said. It does not use state funds.
Luna said the percentage of the “state pie” grew for public education in last year’s legislature. “Two years ago, the percentage of the “state pie” that went to education equalled 48 percent; last year, that percentage equalled 52 percent.”
The difference was the amount of money distributed in the pie was less because of the economy, Luna said. State revenue was down $400 million last year, he said.
Charter schools were addressed.
“Charter schools are one choice parents have in public education but they must measure up to what their charter says,” Luna said. Three charter schools in Idaho were closed last year for not meeting their charter.
“Charter schools have a higher level of accountability but they do have more flexibility,” Luna said. “I would be willing to give more flexibility to public schools.”
“Funding for charter schools is based on the number of students, the same as public schools,” he said. “Charter schools do not have access to local property taxes.”
“There is less tax burden because charter schools use money from the funds they are given to build buildings,” Luna said.
Firth’s Superintendent Sid Tubbs said one concern about charter schools was that money to fund charter schools and money to fund public schools come from the same fund.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 28 September 2009 )
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