Summarize the financial condition of the district. If you had more money, list areas that need additional funding.
Carbon School District’s finances have been managed very well. Through the economic downturn, we have still managed to renovate and update facilities and keep a sufficient number of staff to continue to provide a quality education for Carbon County’s youth. However, recent projects have had an impact on available funds. Over the next few years, we will need to be cautious regarding the projects we take on.
As for what we would do if we had more money, there are several priorities. Here’s my wish list if we had a magic lamp handy. They are not in any particular order.
1. Books, books, and more books. We need a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction books that are leveled. We need enormous quantities of books at each level in every elementary and middle school. These books need to be leveled so we can match just the right level of text to each student for accelerated reading improvement. We cannot afford to send any students to middle school reading below grade level. This is a giant priority!
2. Teacher Salaries. In today’s world, teachers are an endangered species. This species tends to migrate to where they get paid the most. It is important for rural Utah to do everything we can to pay teachers well. We think the teaching profession should be raised to at least the lower end of middle class earnings. For Carbon School District to recruit and retain high- quality teachers (the most important factor in student learning) we need to find a way to provide competitive salaries.
3. Facilities. Helper Middle School is a very old building. Carbon High School is also a patchwork of old and newer structures. If we had unlimited funding sources, we would want to replace Helper Middle School and renovate/replace Carbon High School. However, we don’t have the funds to do either at this time. The school board is very interested in exploring options, and I’m confident we will be able to find viable solutions to our problems even in the absence of a magic lamp and its three wishes.
What are Professional Learning Communities (PLC) and how do they work in this district?
There is a quote from a pioneer in the implementation of professional learning communities by the name of Rick DuFour. He said, “Teacher learning and student learning go hand in hand or they don’t go at all.” This quote gets to the heart of what professional learning communities are.
They are a collaborative team of teachers and administrators working together to “learn” how best to serve students. In PLCs, teams of teachers determine what is most important for students to learn and determine how they will know if students learned those important standards or not. They use this data to make decisions about how to help struggling students to learn those important skills and how to help students who have already learned to keep learning at higher levels.
This work is not easy and it takes years of practice to become fluent in the process. We are still learning how to do this effectively. We are learning together and reflecting on the process. Each day we get just a little bit better at it. Soon we will be fluent in the process and we will see a corresponding increase in student learning as a result of the teacher learning.
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