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McDaniel said the implementation of the plan would cut more than $7 million in salaries from the system’s Fiscal Year 2014 expenditures, a move that, according to him, has become a necessity following 10 straight years of budget cuts from the state.
“We probably looked at a dozen plans across the state,” McDaniel said when asked how they came up with the RIF plan for County Schools.
“We looked at some of the ways they were written and how they invoked their plans. Then we wrote our plan and put touches in it with consideration for the people in mind.”
Performance is starting point
Any employee of Floyd County Schools can be considered for termination or a downgrading of position through the Reduction In Force plan.
The written RIF process states that evaluations of an employee — as well as administrators’ observations and knowledge — will be the first and foremost factor in who stays and who goes.
If employees in a certain area are considered equal in their skills and expertise, only then would other factors, such as tenure status, level of certification, and length of continuous service with Floyd County Schools, come into play.
More specifically, the first level of criteria that will be reviewed for all employees is their 2011-12 annual evaluation. An employee will be affected if an “unsatisfactory” was reported for that person on any instrument.
If this first pass-through doesn’t eliminate enough employees to meet budget concerns, then a second level of criteria will be reviewed.
Little change in evaluations next
Repeated performance concerns will be taken into account next.
Those who got a grade of “basic” on two of their last three annual evaluations will be affected by the RIF plan — as will those whose current Professional Development Plan repeats the personal expectations submitted in their previous PDPs.
McDaniel’s presentation indicates the process is meant to “provide sufficient flexibility … to ensure that the quality of the district’s programs are not compromised and the needs of the district are met.”
Third level groups staying employees
The third and final level of criteria, which becomes applicable if the previous two levels do not pare down the number of employees to the point that meets projected budget needs, divides the remaining employees into three sub-groups: tenured, non-tenured, and classified.
Employees are considered to be tenured if they have been offered a fourth consecutive contract from the start of their careers, or the second consecutive contract when they’ve transferred from another school system.
The state has set the date for all teaching contracts to be in by May 15.
Tenured employees will be placed into categories based on their position, and then positions allowed by the budget will be filled as determined by an employee’s seniority within the system.
When those positions are filled, remaining tenured employees that are certified teachers will be reassigned as such and take precedence over any non-tenured employees.
The rest of the tenured employees that remain, once all of the available teaching positions are filled, will not be offered a new contract if the target-budget has still not been met.
The process is similar for non-tenured and classified employees.
Non-tenured employees will fill available teaching positions, and classified employees will fill spots that do not require a person to have a teaching certification.
Factors in paring down these rolls include performance concerns, types of certifications or qualifications, special needs of the district’s programs and students, participation in extracurricular activities, current and projected student enrollment in certain programs and participation in a state or federally mandated program.
Once all of teaching positions and classified positions are filled, the rest of the employees in these categories will be affected by the RIF plan.
Most of the employees that were laid off were good workers that had no bad evaluations what so every! Some of those let go were awarded as teacher of the year just the year before!
By claiming they let the unsatisfactory teachers first - they don't get to deflect the questions about just why each individual teacher was let go. Why teacher A over teacher B? We deserve to know who is left teaching our children.