Herricks to Have Teacher Evaluation Plan Ready by Summer

The Herricks School District will be drafting a performance review plan for its teachers and administrators before the end of the school year and submitting it to the state before the end of the summer.

“No way of putting it off,” superintendent Dr. John Bierwirth said at the April 17 meeting of the board of education at the , noting that the district would . The district originally was slated to begin evaluations in 2014.

“We have been working like crazy,” he said, having recently been in Albany for a task force meeting on the subject on April 5 for the training and teacher evaluation module.

A committee is in place and principal Dr. Jane Modoono has pulled together the 4 different models available that meet the state’s annual professional performance review (APPR) standards. The APPR is a new requirement that all teachers evaluated yearly and is more detailed to the report that the district currently conducts.

The committee chose one and asked the board to approve the components at the April 26 meeting which includes training on evaluations for principals and teachers.

“They are outrageously expensive; you have no choice,” Dr. Bierwirth said of one component. “This is the full-employment ant consultant and a variety of other people.”

The district would complete the plan for evaluations before the end of the school year and have it ready for submission before the end of the summer “so that teachers can start teaching to the extent possible in September rather than just concentrating on just (this),” Bierwirth said. “Principals won’t be so lucky. They’re going to have to do dozens and dozens and dozens of observations. It’s frightening how much time principals are going to have to spend, all administrators are going to have to spend in observations. And (assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction Dr.) Deidre (Hayes) and I will have to spend a certain portion of our time observing the principals observing teachers to be able to verify the principals are doing it correctly.”

“Who’s observing you?” trustee Peter Grisafi quipped.

“You do, you all,” Bierwirth said pointing to the board. “There has to be inter-regular reliability between Deidre and myself.”

The superintendent said that the district can use technology in performing the evaluations and will ask the board to purchase iPads running the evaluation program for administrators to conduct the observations “which then then means... the administrator doesn’t have to take a whole lot of notes and then send that immediately to the teacher.”

The specific components of the plan would be coming to the board in their various pieces in future board meetings.