Staff Writer
The Wake County School Board is holding the final vote next Tuesday on restoring tenure rights for teachers. Tenure rights, also known as career status, are earned based on a teacher’s performance in the first four years of teaching. Since 1971, North Carolina teachers who were successful during this probationary period received tenure, but through a legislative amendment in a 2013 hearing, the General Assembly voted to eliminate career status for all teachers by 2018. Some of the securities of career status include: only fired for one or more of 15 specific reasons, obtain in writing the reasons for their dismissal and have the ability to request a hearing from the school board. State Republican legislators who passed the change referred to figures showing just 17 tenured teachers had been fired, but supporters of tenure rights say career status doesn’t mean a guaranteed job and many ineffective teachers were weeded out while in the first four years. Supporters of tenure rights believe teachers will be protected from being fired without cause. The North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE), the largest group representing educators in North Carolina have praised this decision. “This shows a commitment by the Wake County school board to its teachers,” says NCAE vice president Mark Jewell, “This is a very smart policy move for Wake County schools in order to keep good quality, highly effective teachers. It’s going to make a teacher not want to leave Wake County to work elsewhere.”
Foods
I and II teacher Megan Keith is in her third year of teaching in Wake County.
This means that she isn’t eligible for receiving tenure rights, but she still
supports them being restored, “I think it’s great and they should [restore
tenure rights] for all those teachers who need help [from being fired without
reason].”
However,
there are still critics of reinstating teacher tenure rights. The major cause
for concern is that having teacher tenure will prevent ridding the schools of
ineffective teachers and that few bad teachers were fired when teachers were
able to obtain career status. Terry Stoops, director of education research
studies for the John Locke Foundation, believes that it is good to remove
career status and wait while the issue is resolved in court, “With the case on
appeal and possible changes in state testing, it seems there are too many
factors in play so waiting and seeing is the best policy.”
At
the moment, restoring tenure rights is under review by the N.C. Court of
Appeals. With this proposed school board policy, teachers can get many of the
same rights at a local level they would have received at a state level. The vote,
which will be held on February 17, will also decide how to distribute $3.75 million
of local funding into teacher salaries. Wake County’s assistant superintendent
for human resources Doug Thilman says, “Our goal is to make sure our teachers
felt they had protection and support. With the elimination of career status,
our policy was written to provide as much support as we could.” Under this new
policy, a teacher with at least five years of experience, no career status, and
has good evaluations the prior three years can only be fired for one or more of
15 identified reasons, including inadequate performance, immorality,
insubordination and neglect of duty. On the topic, Dr. Dixon says, “I think it
is a very positive statement from the Wake County Public School System to
teachers that shows they respect the hard work that they do and that tenure is
important for teachers. [Wake County feels] like [the teachers have] earned it,
and they’re willing to stand up and say we’re going to figure this out for the
teachers.”
