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BSD receives grant to compensate effective teachers
Bloomfield School District received some exciting news Thursday morning.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett announced Thursday morning at the Statehouse that out of 70 schools to apply for the Excellence in Teaching Performance Grant, Bloomfield was one of 28 schools to be awarded the grant.
Bloomfield School District Superintendent Dan Sichting explained the 2011 state legislation passed a $6 million grant to allow eligible schools to provide cash stipends for teachers rated "effective" or "highly effective" based on the school's performance evaluation system.
Bloomfield School District received $76,231.
"It appears the number is based on about $1,300 per teacher. Obviously corporations with more teachers got more money," Sichting noted.
Sichting noted the definition of teacher is a superintendent, principal or educator who is subject to performance evaluations.
Sichting said receiving the grant showed how hard his teachers, students and administrators worked to implement the RISE Pilot Performance Evaluation system in the last year.
"This is a testament to the hard work of our building administrators and teachers. They have been working very hard in implementing RISE and the new laws that were passed last year," Sichting said.
Bloomfield was one of six schools in Indiana to test the RISE Pilot in its school district, which based teacher performance on information regarding each teacher's individual growth model, student learning objective, teacher effectiveness and the school-wide teaching measure.
The school tested the pilot, and offered insight on the issue of giving too much weight to ISTEP testing.
The grant is written to provide teachers with the cash stipends during the 2013-14 school year based on 2012-13 evaluation results, but Sichting said that is subject to bargaining.
"The grant will enable us to reward teachers who are doing an awesome job. With the economy in Indiana the way it is -- with funding cuts and changes to the funding formula -- this may not have been an option for us. We feel very, very fortunate," Sichting said.
Sichting added the school has already seen a data increase in the high school since the RISE Pilot has been implemented in the school.
"We hope this will enable us to reward those teachers who have been working hard and making a positive impact on student achievement," Sichting said.
He added the state has allocated a $9 million grant to be divided up among eligible schools next year, and Bloomfield School District intends on applying for the grant again to continue rewarding their effective teachers.