New teacher evaluation system, technology updates considered by the Mt. Gilead BOE

By Tay­lor Kaser -

Changes in the way that teach­ers per­for­mances are eval­u­ated were explained at the Mt. Gilead Board of Edu­ca­tions reg­u­lar meet­ing on Feb­ru­ary 19. Cur­ricu­lum Coor­di­na­tor Barb Gen­tille Green used a slide show pre­sen­ta­tion to help explain the new state man­dated changes.

All teach­ers at Mt. Gilead schools will now have to be up to the Ohio Teacher Eval­u­a­tion Sys­tem (OTES) stan­dards. A major com­po­nent of the new sys­tem is that teach­ers will be mon­i­tored twice yearly while work­ing with a class, by admin­is­tra­tors. The observer will then write a detailed review of the performance.

Pre­vi­ously, senior teach­ers were mon­i­tored every other year, with newer instruc­tors being eval­u­ated once yearly.

Teach­ers will be graded as: accom­plished, pro­fi­cient, devel­op­ing, or inef­fec­tive. Those that are rated low will then fol­low up with admin­is­tra­tors to develop a strat­egy to help them improve, explained Green.

Both Green and Board Pres­i­dent Jeff Sweeney agreed that the new will be an improve­ment to the sys­tem, and aid in help­ing the teach­ers themselves.

Tech­nol­ogy Direc­tor Ryan Cur­tis informed the board that dis­tricts server project migra­tion is now com­plete. All of the old com­put­ers have now been moved to the new sys­tem, and all staff com­put­ers are on the new infrastructure.

A recent trans­porta­tion in ser­vice day instructed the dis­tricts bus dri­vers on safety. Addi­tion­ally, dri­vers for all of the dis­tricts around the county were invited to attend the four and one half hour day of instruction.

Guests speak­ers addressed the dri­vers, said Trans­porta­tion Super­vi­sor Brenda Legros, includ­ing Lt. Toby Smith from the Mt. Gilead State Patrol Post. He dis­cussed safety and how to deal with poten­tially dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. Other speak­ers, includ­ing Susie Sex­ton from the Tomor­row Cen­ter spoke to dri­vers about iden­ti­fy­ing seri­ous emo­tional issues that stu­dents may face.

Legros explained that the main focus of the day was safety, as a result of the dis­tricts close inspec­tion of school security.

Changes in the lunch­room are cut­ting wait time and giv­ing stu­dents more time to eat, reported Food Ser­vice Direc­tor Cindy Jen­nings. Pre­vi­ously, she noted that it took almost the entire lunch period to move all the stu­dents through the lunch line. After vis­it­ing other dis­tricts, Jen­nings imple­mented some of the new meth­ods she learned. The lunch line wait time has been cut in about half, she stated.

Also approved by the board, was the accep­tance of a bid from Vasco Sports Con­trac­tor for clean­ing and resur­fac­ing of the track. The esti­mated cost of the project is $45,000.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.