The current teachers’ contract, which expires June 30^th, 2012, calls for no salary increases of any kind for this year school (2011-12).

However, the contract also includes this wording on page 76 under SECTION 32. SALARY, EXTRACURRICULAR COMPENSATION, AND OTHER COMPENSATION, item 2C:

Effective upon ratification of this Agreement there will be an index freeze (steps and education), with teachers to resume their normal step adjustment in 2012-2013 (i.e. teacher on MA at step 10 in 2010-2011 will remain on MA step 10 in 2011-2012 but will move to the appropriate education column and step 12 in 2012-2013). The resumption of the normal step adjustment in 2012-2013 shall occur regardless of a rollover.

This means that all continuing education and longevity step increases not received during the ‘freeze’ will get paid out in 2012-2013 in addition to the currently eligible step increases.  Under this scenario, the freeze would really represent a deferral as those eligible would receive double step increases come 2012-2013.

For example, if a teacher qualified for a 5% longevity step and a 3% continuing education step in both years 2011-2012 and 2012-2013, they would receive the following increases:

0% increase in 2011-2012 because of the ‘freeze’

16% increase in 2012-2013 (5% + 5% + 3% + 3%)

To avoid this scenario, the next school board needs to negotiate this out of the next contract and have that contract signed before June 30^th, 2012.  If the next contract is not completely ratified by June 30^th, 2012, the previous contract rolls over and the deferred step increases get awarded.

To learn more:

What are 'step' increases?

Is our district required to pay 'step' increases?

What does the phrase 'absolute salary freeze' mean?

How has teacher compensation changed from 2001 until now?

How does our average teacher salary compare to the rest of the districts in the state?

Teachers' Contract For 7/1/2010 thru 6/30/2012

Based on the recently passed State budget, our district will lose $1.9M in State funding for FY12:

$911K  Less from Tangible Personal Property Reimbursement

$600K  Elimination of Public Utility Reimbursement

$414K  Elimination of State Fiscal Stabilization Fund

Most of the staff in our district belong to one of two labor unions:

BEA (Brecksville-Broadview Heights Education Association)

• Teachers

Recent contracts:

BEA Agreement 7/1/2010 thru 6/30/2012

BEA Agreement 8/1/2008 thru 6/30/2010

BEA Agreement 8/1/2004 thru 6/30/2008

BOSS (Brecksville-Broadview Heights Organization of Support Staff)

• Administrative Assistants/EMIS Coordinator/Secretary/SIS Secretary/BOE Secretary/Receptionist
• Education Assistants/Media Assistants
• Special Education Assistants
• Health Aides / Bus Aides
• Cooks / Food Service Workers
• Custodians
• Maintenance/Mechanics
• Bus Drivers/Instructor/Courier
• Print Shop Operator
• Computer Technician

Recent contracts:

BOSS Agreement 7/1/2010 thru 6/30/2012

BOSS Agreement 7/1/2008 thru 6/30/2010

BOSS Agreement 7/1/2004 thru 12/31/2007

All school districts in Ohio are required to file annual financial data with the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) which then posts Finance Related Data on their website.  The numbers listed below come from the ODE.

 Below are the 20 districts with the highest average teacher salary for FY2010. 

The Five-Year Forecast is filed with the Ohio Department of Education annually. The forecast reflects the district's general operating fund and shows three years of actual information for revenue and expenditures as well as projections for the current fiscal year and four subsequent fiscal years.  It is posted on the district's website and the latest copy can be found here:

Five-Year Financial Forecast

Feb. 29 board of education regular meeting

The Brecksville-Broadview Heights School Board will place a 6.8-mill, dual-purpose, three-year renewal levy on August ballots. If passed, the levy, originally approved by voters in November 1997 and expiring on Dec. 31, would designate 5.8 mills towards operating costs and 1 mill towards permanent improvements.

The board also discussed those proposed improvement projects, which would include a $750,000 roof replacement on Hilton Elementary School and $120,000 to repair and replace bleachers on the visitor’s side of the high school stadium. The proposed permanent improvement projects presented to the board would total $1,101,000.

"These numbers are on the high side," district Director of Business Services Larry Tomec said when presenting the proposal. "Some of the numbers are controlled by what the fund is, and we try to keep a couple hundred thousand dollars in there in case something comes up.

The 1-mill portion of the levy for improvements would generate approximately $766,658 and would cost homeowners $23.27 for each $100,000 of their home’s worth.

The 5.8-mill operating-funds portion would generate approximately $4,446,614 and would cost homeowners $134.75 for each $100,000 of their home’s worth.

The board discussed ways to alter the continuing levy by expanding it to five years, making it permanent or even letting it end and crafting a new levy. In the end, the board chose to target an August renewal.

"We have a lot of work to do between now and August," Superintendent Scot Prebles said. "I do believe, however, in light of what we’ve seen with regards to other district’s levies failing, to assume that another, later option is going to work would be wrong."

The superintendent further acknowledged that voters could be dissuaded by the current levy because of the frequency by which they have to vote on it. "It is a little disorienting that it’s only a three-year levy, which adds to the frustration of the public," he said. "We could consider extending it to five years, to reduce the fatigue at the end of the process."

In response to board inquiries, district Treasurer/Chief Financial Officer Karen Obratil said the district could work with the state legislature to get a law to make the levy a continuing levy after it passes this time around. 

Treasurer Puts In for Retirement

After 11 years of handling the school district’s finances, Obratil submitted her letter of resignation to the school board for the purpose of retiring. "It has been an exciting part of my job," she told board members about working with them.
"We know you appreciate this district and work hard for the district," board President David Tryon said. "You have a board and superintendent who can go to sleep at night not worrying about the things that plague other district," board member Mark Dosen said.

Obratil closed her report for the meeting by telling the board that the district’s General Operating Fund was in line with the percentages of expenditures and revenues for this point in the fiscal year. "That just shows we’re where we should be," she said.

Board Able to Lower Energy Program Costs

The board approved an "Energy Service Project and Performance Agreement" with The Brewer Garrett Co. for a House Bill 264 Energy Conservation Program to improve energy savings in district buildings through installation of energy management systems. Prebles said this was a significant contract for the school district because although the state rescinded $203,000 in rebates that were to go to the $679,000 price, the district got the contract down to only $155 more than it would have been with the rebates.

"The board was vigilant and was able to push the contract price down," he said. The final cost will be around $476,000.

Additional Business

The board agreed to contract with Behnke Associates Inc., for $15,800 in professional planning services for the removal and replacement of the visitor and band bleachers in the high school stadium. This would allow the architect to talk about and begin to draw up plans for the project.

The board agreed to contract with Glen D. Ramage Architect Inc., for $12,160 for architectural design services for the 2012 Hilton Elementary School re-roofing project.

The board approved the waiver for the Body Mass Index Screening Program for the 2011-12 school year, thereby bowing out of the program. "We believe this program is not in the best interest of the school district because we don’t have the staffing to address it," Prebles said.

The board approved a five-year contract to continue using Time Warner Cable Business Class voice, data, video and business class Ethernet for the district through June 30, 2017. "After several years, we’ve had no outages or downtime as a result of the company," Prebles said, adding that by remaining with Time Warner, the district will save about $3,400 per year over the term of the contract because it would have to add new equipment otherwise.

The board also approved professional services security assessment agreements with National School Safety and Security Services Inc. in the amount of $26,500, with Foremost Safety Solutions Inc. for $55,323.

After 11 years in the Brecksville-Broadview Heights City School District, Karen Obratil, district treasurer and CFO, has decided to retire when her contract expires at the end of July.

“It’s time to retire,” Obratil said in an interview before the Feb. 29 school board meeting.

In addition to her 11 years in BBHCSD, Obratil spent 19 years in the West Geauga Local Schools. Her career in education started as a substitute secretary at her child’s elementary school.

From there, she worked her way up the ladder to become an assistant to the treasurer, then assistant treasurer and on to treasurer. When she applied for the BBHCSD position, Obratil said she was excited just to be in the final three.

While some people might wonder why someone would want to be a treasurer for a school district, Obratil welcomes the challenge.

“I like the diversity of the job . . . you’re the problem-solver,” she said. “It’s not without its challenges, but it’s been fun.”

When she looks back on her time with the district, Obratil is proud of her work on 13 levy campaigns and participating and completing a pilot program for a 60-day audit, including being the only district to add a comprehensive annual financial report. She has received many awards for her audits.

However, she is most proud of helping form the Financial Activities Communications Team (F.A.C.T.), made up of volunteers from Brecksville and Broadview Heights with financial or business backgrounds. In their time together, F.A.C.T. has released 36 “Bee Line” newsletters to keep voters abreast of the school’s finances.

“I hope they continue to be as helpful to the district as they are,” Obratil said about the group, which continues to meet monthly. She added that F.A.C.T. is a model throughout the state of Ohio.

“Thirty years is a good stopping-point,” Obratil said. “After 11 years, I think I can look for new challenges. I’m keeping my options open.”

At the meeting, school board President David Tryon acknowledged Obratil’s dedication to the district, pointing to the wall behind him where many of her awards are hung.

“Thank you, Karen, for all of your sweat and tears,” Tryon said. “We know you worked hard for the district.”

At a special March 5 meeting, the board approved a resolution hiring Finding Leaders to assist the district in hiring Obratil’s replacement.

The plan is to have the new treasurer in place before Obratil leaves, so she can help her replacement get some footing in the district.

Efforts to revamp public education are increasingly focused on evaluating teachers using student test scores, but school districts nationwide are only beginning to deal with the practical challenges of implementing those changes.

Only an estimated 30% of classroom teachers in the U.S. work in grades or subjects covered by state standardized tests. Currently, most states test students only in math and reading in third through eighth grades and once in high school, as mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Few states test students in other core subjects, such as science and social studies, and for many other subjects there is no testing at all.

Rolling out systemwide tests and devising ways to measure educator effectiveness require additional spending for states and districts, many already low on cash. And some parents and teachers complain that the effort has translated into more testing for children, taking away from classroom learning.

"Nothing like this has ever been done on this scale, and states and districts have to ensure it's done in a rigorous way so we feel confident the information actually reflects how well teachers are helping students learn," said Mariann Lemke, a researcher with the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, a federally funded research group that advises states.

The efforts began two years ago, spurred by President Barack Obama's Race to the Top education initiative, which has doled out $4.35 billion to states that have embraced reforms. Governors had been pushing similar efforts on their own at the state level. In the past two years, at least 30 states have passed such legislation and are in the process of implementing changes.

Washington state lawmakers passed a bill in late February that will judge teachers on student achievement, and lawmakers in Kansas and Wisconsin are currently debating the issue.

Some states and districts are looking to adopt a system like the one in Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida, where the district created exams for every subject at every grade five years ago in an effort to award merit pay to teachers.

Tennessee rolled out a system this year that ties most teacher evaluations, even those in subjects like music and gym, to schoolwide math and reading scores. In Memphis, the system is being refined, with music, drama and dance teachers creating their own "portfolios" to prove students have progressed under their tutelage.

"No system is perfect," said Kevin Huffman, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Education, "but the question is whether the one we have now is better and more fair than the previous one. And the answer is, indisputably, yes."

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, officials jettisoned 52 end-of-the-year exams last month that were created to measure teacher effectiveness after parents complained. Parents were especially angered by kindergarten exams, administered one student at a time, saying they ate up too much instructional time. The exams were used for only one year before being scrapped.

Latarzja Henry, spokeswoman for the district, said the testing regimen was ditched because the district plans to adopt the new assessments state officials are creating.

Pamela Grundy, the mother of a fifth-grader and co-chairwoman of Mecklenburg Area Coming Together for Schools, a parent advocacy group, thinks parental outcry played a roll.

She said school-board meetings were packed with parents who were "appalled" by the increase in student testing. "We thought it was stifling kids' creativity and warping our children's classroom experience," she said.

Elsewhere in the country, a Louisiana state lawmaker recently filed a bill to delay the new teacher evaluations, citing concerns about adopting potentially costly new evaluation methods that might lack validity.

Memphis music teacher Jeff Chipman is part of a small group of teachers piloting the new assessment based on student portfolios, and he acknowledges the district's challenges.

"We are about teaching kids to perform and experience art, and that cannot be measured with a pencil-and-paper test," he said. "We want to be evaluated on how we help kids grow, but we don't want to turn the arts program into a testing machine."

The dust has barely settled on the March primary, but the Brecksville-Broadview Heights City School District is looking to August for its next renewal levy.

At its Feb. 29 meeting, the board gave the go-ahead to draw up a resolution for the March 26 meeting to begin the process of placing the renewal of a three-year, 6.8-mill, dual-purpose levy on the Aug. 7 ballot.

First approved by voters in 1997, the levy generates approximately $4.5 million for operating expenses and $766,658 for permanent improvements. The annual cost per $100,000 of home valuation is $158.02.

At the meeting, Karen Obratil, district treasurer and CFO, discussed the fact that the levy would expire at the end of the year if it is not approved.

Normally, the district would have a one-year cushion, but opted to not place the renewal on the ballot in 2011 when it had a new money levy on the ballot.

“It is critical to keeping the operations the way they are,” Obratil told the board.

Following the meeting, Superintendent Scot Prebles reiterated that position. Citing aging facilities, reductions already made and cuts in state funding, Prebles said the renewal would maintain what is currently in place.

“Losing an additional $4.5 million would be devastating to the school district,” he said.

An option Prebles discussed, but the board was against, would have let the renewal expire and instead have placed two new-money levies on the ballot.

The superintendent’s discussion was rooted in the fact that voters ask him why the district is on the ballot so much. As it stands right now, renewals will be on the ballot every year through 2015.

The district cannot switch this to a continuous levy, based on state law pertaining to dual-purpose levies,.

Because of House Bill 920, which caps how much a levy can generate to the amount received in the levy’s first year of collection, the effective millage has decreased since 1997.

By placing two separate levies on the ballot — one for permanent improvements, the other for operating expenses — at the current effective millage, the district could collect the same amount of money and spread out the levy cycle.

However, this would have required time to educate voters. Both board members and Obratil were concerned that the money would be lost.

The board and Prebles acknowledged at the Feb. 29 meeting the voters’ continued support of the district when it comes to approving renewals.

After the March 26 resolution, Obratil will request certification from the Cuyahoga County Fiscal Officer. If all goes as planned, the board will vote to approve the renewal at its April 23 meeting.

May 9 is the deadline to file with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections for the August special election.

The release of a trove of data evaluating New York City teachers on their ability to boost student test scores represents a potentially powerful new tool for parents to assess their children's public schools.

Nationally, teachers unions have staunchly opposed releasing such information, and even some supporters of linking teacher evaluations to student-test scores worry the data could be misunderstood or misused.

If school districts across the U.S. were to begin taking similar actions, it could add to pressure on school administrators to improve or to remove their weakest teachers.

In New York, the nation's largest school system, the teachers' union opposed release of the data on 18,000 public-school teachers. A state court ordered the release in response to a public-records request by The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations. It comes 18 months after the Los Angeles Times published a database, calculated by the newspaper, of teacher rankings in Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district.

Michelle Rhee, who pushed through a teacher-evaluation system in Washington, D.C., when she headed the district there, said parents should have access to teacher ratings. But she said the data should be released only if they also included such information as principal observations. The information released by New York doesn't include such observations.

"If we truly want parents to be taking a seminal interest in their kids' education and understand fully what type of education they are getting, then we need to be ready to give them all the information we have," said Ms. Rhee, who is executive director of StudentsFirst, a nonprofit group pushing to overhaul teacher evaluation and pay systems. "You can't say we want parents involved and then limit their access to information."

The New York data cover only grades 4 through 8, in reading and math. Around 80% of teachers aren't covered by the data analysis.

The scores have large margins of error because they are based on limited numbers of students and school years. And there are practical limits. Parents who want to move their children into classrooms with better teachers may find there are none available or the classes are full.

Some parents worry the data could have errors or could motivate teachers to cheat on student exams. Still, many said they would read the scores.

"I think it is good to be able to look it up, especially if you have a problem with a teacher," said Mariza Morales, a 31-year-old Bronx resident who has three daughters in public school. She recalled a friend who was unhappy with a teacher but afraid to say anything.

"I think maybe making it public will give parents the confidence to go in there and make it right," she said. While it is important to remember that the data contain errors, she said, "I'm always going to want more information."

Teachers unions are against making the data public. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, called the release of the New York data "outrageous," saying in a statement that it "amounts to a public flogging of teachers based on faulty data."

Some prominent advocates of using test data to evaluate teachers, such as Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, say making data public can shame teachers without helping them improve. Others say it could scare away potential teachers or sow divisions at school.

"A bad teacher should not be humiliated into leaving. A bad teacher should be given a chance to improve, and if she does not, she should be fired," said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a group that supports judging teachers by student performance. "A Scarlet Letter policy is really a bad idea."

New York's release of the data comes as efforts to improve public education settle around two issues: improving the quality of teaching, and arming parents with more information about schools—and the power to overhaul them.

Over the last two years, at least two dozen states have passed legislation linking student test scores to teacher evaluations, prodded, in part, by the Obama administration's Race to the Top education initiative.

At the same time, a half-dozen states are debating or have passed laws that give parents the power to convert low-performing schools to charter schools—public schools run by nongovernment groups—if more than 50% of them sign a petition.

Linda Serrato, spokeswoman for Parent Revolution, a group that has tried to help parents take control of schools in California, said the group doesn't support posting teacher evaluations online, but does support handing them over to parents. "This is about empowerment of the parent," she said.

There are practical obstacles to evaluating all teachers. Only about 30% of teachers in U.S. classrooms work in grades or subjects that are covered by state standardized tests, a key to generating the kind of data being made public.

In New York City, that number is closer to 20%.

Thus far, efforts to make teacher data public have come mainly from media organizations, which have argued that parents deserve access to the information.

"Public education is paid for by the public, used by the public and of crucial public concern, so these data should be made public," said the Journal's editor in chief, Robert Thomson.

Whether the release of teacher information becomes widespread likely will depend, in part, on how strongly people in other parts of the U.S. push for it, and how successful they are in overcoming opposition.

The New York City data were issued only after a legal battle that lasted more than a year. The teachers' union fought to keep the information private, arguing, in part, that it is riddled with errors.

The city said the public interest in the information overrode concerns about its validity.

Efforts elsewhere to make teacher data public have shown mixed results.

Last month, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback unveiled a teacher-evaluation overhaul that would give parents access to teacher evaluations, but the proposal has faced resistance in the state legislature.

In Florida, a state that has one of the strongest open-records laws, teacher evaluations can be made public after one full school year. The statistics aren't posted publicly, but parents can request them. The evaluation is a basic checklist, and the vast majority of teachers receive satisfactory ratings.

The Akron school board’s decision to sit out the March primary and instead try for a new-money levy in November raises the stakes at the bargaining table for teachers, whose two-year contract expires this year.

Both sides agree that a negotiation demonstrating the teachers’ willingness to sacrifice could help win support for a tax hike in tough times.

But how much sacrifice will be enough?

School officials, parents and voters in four area districts seeking new money on the March ballot — Woodridge, Buckeye, Field and Waterloo — are asking the same question.

Although superintendents have tried to keep cuts away from the classroom, wages and benefits comprise 73 to 83 percent of those districts’ budgets.

This year is different: The size of Akron’s projected deficit next year — $22 million — means the district won’t be able to shield teachers and other staff from steep cuts.

“We tried to stretch our dollars as far as we could by trying to be smart with the cuts that we made,” Superintendent David James said. “The cuts that we have to make now are going to affect everybody.”

Cuts to erase such a deep deficit probably would require the elimination of 224 jobs, James said, and even if the levy passes in the fall, some teachers will lose their jobs.

The five districts in the Akron-Canton area seeking new money this year are confronting the same dilemma: Without new taxes, the deficits of four of them are so steep it would take ?double-digit wage reductions to fill the gap, according to a Beacon Journal analysis of district budget projections.

Akron would need a 12 percent across-the-board wage cut from all employees to eliminate next year’s shortfall.

In some districts, the cuts would be even more severe.

Woodridge is so deep in the hole it would take a 32 percent cut in wages across the board to climb out, according to the analysis.

In Portage County, Waterloo would have to reduce employee wages by 21 percent.

Such draconian cuts would mean losing many good teachers, Waterloo Superintendent Andrew Hill said.

“We’d probably have a mass exodus of people,” he said.

Ohio’s poor economy already has exacted a toll on teachers in recent years, Many have agreed to pay freezes and have increased contributions to health-care costs to help districts balance their books.

Akron’s teachers have gone three years without a raise in base salary and are paying more for prescription drug co-pays and health insurance deductibles.

Those concessions and other cuts, coupled with federal stimulus money, have helped extend the life of a levy voters approved in 2006 longer than school officials expected.

Jeff Moats, the teachers’ union president, said he understands the pressure he and the district will be under to strike a deal that will persuade voters to approve the levy.

“I’m aware of the circumstances and the levy going on the ballot in November,” said Moats, president of the Akron Education Association, which represents 1,700 full-time and 500 to 600 part-time employees. “Teachers are a big force in the levy.”

Negotiations with the teachers typically begin around March 1 and should conclude by late May or early June, followed by the five smaller unions, which typically agree to similar deals.

Jason Haas, newly elected school board president, agreed that the outcome of the contract talks will be a key selling point in November.

“That’s an important question for the next year: How do we approach negotiations and get to a position where everybody leaves relatively happy?” he said.

Akron came close to passing a 5.5-mill levy last November, losing by only 197 votes after an automatic recount.

Haas said teacher pay wasn’t a big issue in that campaign.

“When it did come up, what I did say was, ‘Hey listen, they’ve taken pay freezes [and] we’re working with a joint health-care committee to assess how we can save money,’?” Haas said. “The people I talked to in the fall, they understood that.”

Teachers haven’t received an across-the-board raise in base pay since 2008.

A first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree starts at $34,378. A teacher with 30 years of experience and a master’s degree makes about $73,000 annually.

Defeat follows concessions

Getting more concessions might improve Akron’s chances at the ballot box, but it’s no guarantee.

Just ask Waterloo school officials in Portage County.

Waterloo teachers agreed to freeze their base pay and to forgo scheduled salary increases last year as part of an overall package of savings that trimmed $1 million — a tenth of its budget. The teachers also agreed to higher deductibles for health insurance and higher prescription co-payments.

Voters still turned down Waterloo’s levy request in November.

If voters don’t approve a levy in March, the district will need to cut $400,000 by the beginning of the next school year, Hill, the superintendent, said.

That probably would mean layoffs.

“We’re not far from being at state-minimum staffing levels,” Hill said. “There are no areas we can cut where it’s not going to have some kind of direct impact on either increasing class sizes greatly or eliminating programs.”

Most districts face deficits

Many schools in Ohio face the same dire prospects, according to a recent survey of the state’s districts by Policy Matters Ohio, a nonprofit think tank specializing in economic research and government.

The survey found that two-thirds of Ohio districts face deficits and nearly a quarter of school officials who responded to the survey said they plan to cut teaching staff by about 2.5 to 5 percent.

“Respondents also reported that they have already reduced staff, through attrition or layoff, by 700 positions, more than twice as many as the 331 reductions reported for the last school year,” according to the survey released Jan. 19. “If this rate of reduction occurred in all Ohio districts, then up to 2,500 teaching jobs may already have been eliminated in Ohio schools in the current school year.”

Parents generally hate layoffs because they might lose popular young teachers who lack seniority, and the teachers who remain have larger class sizes and fewer course options.

School officials across the state have combed their budgets to find alternatives to mass layoffs and program cuts.

In 2010, the Martins Ferry school district in southeast Ohio attempted uniform, across-the-board pay cuts to avoid layoffs.

“We actually had an audit from the state, and they came in and they were telling us basically, ‘You’ve got to cut a lot of folks,’?” Superintendent Dirk Fitch said. “We just didn’t want to do that to our students and our staff. We tried to look for an alternative way.”

The district imposed a two-year, 5 percent cut on every employee, including the superintendent.

“The teachers union actually voted to accept it,” Fitch said. “They pretty much saw the need for it and how it would help the district. Up to that point, most of the people had been getting raises.”

But the union representing nonteaching staff objected, arguing that it violated the contract. An arbitrator agreed, finding that the Ohio law dealing with collective bargaining trumps another statute that allows for uniform pay reductions.

“As a general rule, you can’t cut anyone’s salary unless it’s for misconduct or they’re moving to a lower-rated job,” said Don Collins, general counsel for the State Employment Relations Board, which is not involved in the Martins Ferry case. “Most of that is guarded by the collective bargaining agreement.”

Martins Ferry is appealing the arbitrator’s decision.

Some districts have persuaded their unions to accept a pay cut through regular contract negotiations.

Sidney City Schools, north of Dayton, negotiated a four-year contract in June that cut teacher pay and benefits by an average of nearly 6 percent.

“Both our unions agreed to the same reductions, and these same reductions were implemented for all 400 employees,” Superintendent John Scheu said.

The district, which has about the same enrollment as Barberton, will be solvent through 2016 without seeking new money, Scheu said.

Overall, only about 22 percent of requests for new money succeeded in the November election, according to Support Our Schools, a nonprofit that assists small districts with levy campaigns.

Scheu said the low passage rate “sends out a loud and clear message to me that voters will support renewals, but before districts ask for additional sacrifices from their taxpayers, all employees are expected to show sacrifices on their part as well.

“Salary reductions are expected if voters are asked to ante up additional money.”

The Policy Matters survey found that most districts are leery about asking voters for more money. About three-quarters of school officials who responded said they had no plans for ballot issues this year.

Major cuts on table

Toledo City Schools, like Akron, is an exception and plans to try for a levy in November.

Superintendent Jerry Pecko said he hopes voters will appreciate that Toledo’s teachers agreed to a 3.5 percent pay cut in August.

That concession helped the district overcome a $44 million deficit that threatened to wipe out course offerings important to teachers, said Pecko, who had spent 13 years as superintendent in the Barberton and Springfield Local school systems in Summit County before he was hired in Toledo in 2010.

“We had art, music and P.E. on the table. We were going to eliminate them completely,” Pecko said. “That was big in their minds as well. They were adamant that they did not want to see that go. But when your back is up against a wall, sometimes those are hard choices to make.”

Pecko said the district skipped the March primary to give the public more time to absorb a massive reorganization that eliminated the district’s middle schools and created K-8 elementary schools in their place. Holding off until November also will give the public time to realize that teachers made a significant sacrifice.

“These negotiations were important for us to complete and be able to demonstrate that there is sacrifice on the part of the employees,” Pecko said.

He said the pay cuts bought Toledo some time, but the district still will need new revenue.

“We have this year and next year as wiggle room, but we have to pass something in calendar year 2012 and start collecting in 2013,” Pecko said. “If we don’t, we’re going to be in deep trouble.”

In Portage County, Waterloo Superintendent Andrew Hill acknowledged some voters think all the cuts should come out of the employees’ paychecks.

“That’s definitely the mentality that a lot of people have,” he said.

Hill said he understood that attitude. Although Waterloo teachers make less than the average among Portage County districts, that “doesn’t mean much” to people struggling on even smaller paychecks — or no paycheck at all.

Voters in March will have to judge how much sacrifice is enough, Hill said.

“We want to attract and retain top-quality people,” he said. “At some point, the community just has to decide what is it that we want.

“How important are these people? How important are these programs? What is the quality of education you want for your kids?”

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Teachers across Ohio should expect a lot more criticism of their classroom work in the next few years.

Their principals will be in their classrooms more. Or their assistant principals, or even outside evaluators, all watching them, taking notes and essentially grading the teachers.

Don't expect glowing reviews either, or the perfunctory check mark in the column marked "Satisfactory." Each teacher will be graded as Accomplished, Effective, Developing or Ineffective and some will even be fired if they don't improve their marks over time.

"It's going to take a little bit of adjustment for some people," said Deb Tully, director of professional issues for the Ohio Federation of Teachers, one of the two large teachers unions in the state. "I don't know a lot of people who want to be told they're doing just OK when they put their heart and soul into it."

But teachers aren't complaining much -- not about this part of their new state-required evaluations, at least. They see potential for the classroom observation, and the coaching and feedback that should follow, as a chance for constructive criticism, not just judgments.

That's what state officials say they want to happen. Tom Gunlock, vice president of the Ohio Board of Education, said the teacher evaluation framework the board passed in November, and which will be used statewide by the 2013-14 school year, is meant to find the strengths and weaknesses of teachers and help teachers improve their weak areas.

"Everyone thinks this is a cut and dried attempt to fire teachers," Gunlock said. "That is the least of our desires here."

Even the OFT says some teachers may be fired deservedly - if they're poor teachers and don't improve after coaching.

"If they document that someone truly doesn't get better, I'm totally comfortable with that," Tully said. "Kids in the classroom deserve the best teachers we can get for them."

The plan leaves a lot of leeway to local districts, but sets a basic framework all must follow.

State law passed last year requires measures of student academic growth, like standardized tests and the Value Added measure, to make up 50 percent of a teacher's rating. The state board is still working on what tests it can use along with the Ohio Achievement Assessment tests now given and how to measure growth in grades and subjects that are not tested.

Gunlock said he hopes to have a list of measures early next year that districts can use along with Value Added.

Though those measures draw criticism from teachers, the state plan for the other 50 percent of the rating has much stronger support.

The board in November required districts to evaluate teachers with at least two 30-minute visits to each classroom each year, in addition to shorter stops in the classroom. It also calls for teachers to be evaluated based on educator standards the state passed in 2005. Those standards were set with input from teachers.

"Those are things we pretty much agreed make a teacher a good, solid teacher," said Tully. She also said that longer classroom visits by evaluators are better for teachers than the brief pass-throughs that often occur now.

But how much weight is given to different factors - like the learning environment a teacher creates or how much a teacher collaborates with others - will be up to districts.

Gunlock said 139 districts are doing full evaluations of teachers now to test-drive the plan.

After a district does its own evaluation of a teacher using the observations and the 2005 standards, those results are then used along with the student growth measures to set the teacher's overall rating. The state has set a matrix for how those two halves must be combined that puts teachers in the highest and lowest designations only if they excel or fail in each half.

The Cleveland school district is starting its own teacher evaluation plan this year in 23 schools that district chief Eric Gordon says fits within the state plan. Gordon said instead of using a quick checklist that a principal can fill out on a short visit or two, teachers evaluate themselves and principals visit classrooms multiple times, often gathering student work or materials created by the teacher, for a full picture.

The teacher and administrator will compare evaluations and talk about how they differ. Gordon said the evaluation is meant to go beyond just impressions of an observer.

"It's really important that the evaluator find evidence to support claims, rather than just saying it's my opinion," Gordon said. "They have to say, 'I observed this,' or 'I collected that.'"

Though the highest-rated teachers can be observed every two years, all others must be observed yearly. Those observations - and the discussions and coaching that follow - pose a significant challenge, many educators say.

Principals or assistant principals will need to spend the extra time with each teacher, which adds to their work or cuts into other tasks. Julie Davis, executive director of the Ohio Association of Elementary School Administrators, said principals would love to be in classrooms but their days are often consumed with safety or budget issues, parents, discipline and other daily duties.

"In reality, as much as they'd like to do this, there are other demands," Davis said, noting that many districts have already cut assistant principals to save money. "Something has to give here."

Gunlock said, however, that the state board considers the classroom more important than other issues principals face.

"Maybe there's some other stuff you're doing, but you have to let other people do it," he said.

The state also wants to make sure any evaluator, principal or not, understands the state standards and has some perspective outside their district, so the Ohio Department of Education is requiring every evaluator to be certified.

That will require each evaluator to take a course over a few days. Gunlock said prospective evaluators will likely watch videotape of a teacher and write evaluations. The trainer will also evaluate the taped lesson and compare the evaluations. Prospective evaluators will have to pass a test to be certified, he said.

The state has not decided who will pay for the training. The Department of Education has begun its search for trainers, many of whom will be set up through county Educational Service Centers.

Governors of both parties have promoted education reform, but so far no one has delivered more than Louisiana's Bobby Jindal. This week he'll sign two bills that offer a national model for competition and parental choice.

Louisiana's new laws will essentially give all parents an average of $8,500 to use for their child's education as they see fit. They can keep their child in their local public school, but they can also try to get Johnny into a more demanding charter school, or a virtual school, or into special language or career-training courses, among other options.

Nearly 400,000 low-income children—a bit more than hah⁰ of all students—will also be eli­gible for vouchers to attend private schools. State officials estimate that about 2,000 stu­dents will use vouchers this September given private-school capacity limits, but that tens of thousands will do so over time.

Louisiana is also making life easier for char­ter schools, with new authorizing boards, a fast-track for high-performing networks, and access to facilities equal to that of traditional public schools. The new laws seek to strengthen superintendents and principals over local school boards, which are bastions of bureaucratic and union intransigence.

Nearly as dramatic are reforms in teacher tenure. To earn tenure, teachers will now have to rate in the top 10% (measured in part by stu­dent performance) for five of six consecutive years, and any teacher who falls into the bot­tom 10% loses tenure. No teacher in the bottom 10% can get a raise, while layoffs will no longer hit the junior-most teachers first while ignor­ing performance.

Mr. Jindal made school reform a second-term priority after winning a landslide re-elec­tion last November. By then he had appointed or helped elect reformers to the state superintendent's of­fice and board of education. Louisiana voters also had a preview of reform's poten­tial. Since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans schools have become almost exclusively charters— with dramatic academic improvements—and the city has run a small and oversubscribed voucher program since 2008. As for tenure, the reforms attach consequences to a teacher-evaluation system enacted in 2010.

The result: the reforms attracted bipartisan legislative majorities of roughly 60%. Over four votes (two different bills, each having to pass the House and Senate), one-quarter to one-half of Democrats voted for reform, including many black representatives, especially those from New Orleans.

Teachers unions were predictably opposed and even heavier-handed than usual. Michael Walker Jones of the Louisiana Association of Educators dismissed choice on grounds that "If I'm a parent in poverty I have no clue be­cause I'm trying to struggle and live day to day." Unions pushed principals to cancel school—sometimes giving parents less than 24 hours notice—so teachers could protest at the state Capitol. It was a tired act.

Mr. Jindal joins Indiana's Mitch Daniels in passing the most far-reaching school reforms, and now they'll have to follow through to pro­duce better student outcomes. Unions will seize on any troubles as a sign of failure, but success might catalyze similar reforms across the country that could finally improve the life prospects for all American children.

The Council on Foreign Relations is the clubhouse of America's establishment, a land of pinstripe suits and typically polite, status-quo thinking. Yet today CFR will publish a report that examines the national-security impact of America's broken education system—and prescribes school choice as a primary antidote. Do you believe in miracles?

American schools have several national-se­curity duties, the report notes. First is educat­ing workers who can keep the U.S. economy strong and innovative amid global competi­tion, which requires skills in reading, math and science, as well as foreign languages and cultures. The U.S. also needs to produce sharp intelligence officers, soldiers and diplomats, as well as techies who can guard corporate and governmental cyber networks. And don't forget a citizenry that understands how de­mocracy works.

Performance on all these fronts is grim. Only a third of elementary and middle-school students are competent in reading, math and science. Compared to peers in industrial coun­tries, American 15-year-olds rank 14th in read­ing, 25th in math and 17th in science. Fewer than 5% of college students graduate with en­gineering degrees (in China it's 33%), and a third of science and engineering grad students in the U.S. are foreign nationals, most of whom are ultimately denied visas to stay.

The military can't tap the 25% of American kids who drop out of high school, and 30% of those who graduate can't pass the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery. In Afghanistan, according to one report cited by CFR, 33 of 45 U.S. officers in positions requir­ing foreign-language skills weren't proficient by State Department standards.

The good news is that this grim data is helping to change the education debate, moving away from the dogma that fixing schools requires more money. Even excluding teacher pensions and other benefits, per-pupil spend­ing today is more than three times what it was in 1960 (in 2008 dollars).

The CFR reports says this "suggests a misallocation of resources and a lack of pro­ductivity-enhancing innova­tions. . . . U.S. elementary and secondary schools are not organized to promote competi­tion, choice, and innovation—the factors that catalyze success in other U.S. sectors."

Spoken like Milton Friedman, but now en­dorsed by a Council task force led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and for­mer New York schools chief Joel Klein, who is an education executive at News Corp., which owns this newspaper. The authors also include former Fortune 500 executives, leading re­searchers, and even Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers.

There are caveats. Beyond school choice, the task force also recommends that states adopt certain "common core" standards and expand them beyond reading and math to sci­ence, technology and foreign languages; and that Governors work with the feds to create a "national security readiness audit" of educa­tional outcomes. The latter in particular sounds like a gimmick.

Five members out of 30—including Ms. Weingarten, no surprise—offer dissenting views with familiar complaints that charter schools can't grow "to scale" and that private vouchers undermine the ethos of common schooling. As if failing public schools don't undermine far more.

But the real story is how much progress the reform movement has made when pillars of the establishment are willing to endorse a choice movement that would have been too controversial even a few years ago.

When I dropped my kids off at school last week, I had a hard time looking their teachers in the eye. The New York City government had just posted their performance assessments online, and though I'm a strong supporter of teacher accountability and effectiveness, I was baffled and embarrassed by the decision.

So-called value-added rankings—which rank teachers according to the recorded growth in their students' test scores—are an important indicator of teacher effectiveness, but making them public is counterproductive to helping teachers improve. Doing so doesn't help teachers feel safe and respected, which is necessary if they are going to provide our kids with the positive energy and environment we all hope for.

The release of the rankings (which follows a similar release last year in Los Angeles) is based on a misconception that "fixing" teachers is the solution to all that ails our education system.

No single silver bullet will close our educational achievement gaps—not charter schools, or vouchers, or providing every child with a computer, or improving teachers. Each of these solutions may have merit as part of a larger strategy, but on their own they distract attention from the long, hard work required to ensure that our schools are high-performing, mission-driven organizations with strong teams, strong cultures and strong results.

It's true that teachers are vitally important. The current focus on them stems from an important body of research showing that highly effective teachers have a profound and lasting impact on students' academic trajectories, while the least effective teachers hold their students back for years to come.

But the question is how to cultivate high-quality teaching. At Teach For America, we are sometimes accused of relying on the examples of a few super-teachers who overcome every obstacle. In fact, our experience over the past 20 years has taught us how difficult it is for individual teachers—even exceptional ones—to achieve great results working within schools and systems that aren't set up to support them.

A few years ago, my son had a teacher who under the current system would probably be ranked in the bottom quartile of her peers. This wasn't for a lack of enthusiasm or effort on her part—you could see how desperately she wanted to connect with her students and be a great teacher. Knowing my son was in a subpar classroom didn't make me angry at the teacher. It made me frustrated with the school—for not providing this young educator with the support and feedback she needed to improve.

If you ask the principals of top-performing schools the secret to their success, they will tell you that it's about building teams and investing everyone in the mission of high achievement. At these schools, there is leadership and accountability at every level.

Teachers are not left by themselves to sink or swim—they are given feedback, support and professional development. Moreover, they operate in environments designed to meet the extra needs of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds while keeping expectations high.

We should make individual teacher ratings available to school principals to inform their work recruiting and developing teaching faculties, but releasing them publicly undermines the trust they need to build strong, collaborative teams.

Ensuring that every child receives an excellent education is going to require reshaping our schools so they have the mission, culture and operating approach that support strong teacher performance. We cannot produce 3.7 million effective teachers without overhauling the context in which they work.

That's why Teach For America focuses on channeling the energy of our country's future leaders against the problem of educational inequity. Investing in their success as teachers is important not only for today's students but also for cultivating their long-term leadership potential inside the classroom and outside of it—preparing them to drive changes in the ways schools operate, in the ways our school systems promote teacher development, and in the political and community contexts in which schools exist.

We've spent too much time over the past two decades caught up in a blame game. Just as we now know how wrong it was to blame kids and their families for the achievement gap, we should be careful not to get swept up in the trend of blaming teachers. Rather, we need to give all those who are engaged in this hard work the respect and support they deserve.

Ms. Kopp is founder and CEO of Teach For America and co-founder and CEO of Teach For All.

The Plain Dealer editorial board  endorses in 21 school money issues on the March 6 primary ballot. It will not surprise regular readers of this page that we are supporting all 21, despite serious reservations about some districts' commitment to reform and belt-tightening.

That's especially true in the case of the Garfield Heights schools, with a hefty 9.4-mill levy request on the ballot. We were outraged that while kids suffer from reduced options and school hours, both teachers and administrators in the school system continue to take step-up pay increases tied to seniority.

So why not suggest a "no" vote until Garfield Heights' schools get their priorities in order?

The answer goes to the core of the problem in Ohio school funding -- and suggests to this board that merely "endorsing" in traditional levy requests is not enough to spur change, either in school districts or among voters, or in the all-important way Ohio itself handles (or doesn't handle) disparities in school funding.

The Garfield Heights schools are Exhibit A in this problem. No matter what the deficiencies in the district, it's the children who suffer. And they will continue to suffer a slow squelching of academic opportunities on which their future, and the future of this region, depend if the schools can't find sufficient money, as well as the fortitude to change. That's why, with great reluctance, we endorsed the current levy.

Yet it's questionable whether Garfield residents will be any more open to this money request than to the five that preceded it, for obvious reasons: poverty and foreclosures. Nearly two-thirds of Garfield Heights students (pdf) come from economically disadvantaged homes. That's probably the biggest reason the schools have gotten no new voted operating money since 1992.

The district has responded by doing the obvious things -- teacher layoffs and other cuts, paring more than $4 million in recent years -- but clearly has shied away from other difficult issues, such as eliminating negotiated step-pay increases. Now, with fewer teachers and less money, the district has had to cut back drastically on classes and school hours, afflicting the children.

The funding crisis operates at all levels. Because of the level of local poverty, the Garfield Heights district gets about half its revenue from the state, not from local property owners. But those dollars are dropping precipitously. In the 2008-2009 school year, Garfield schools got $5,339 in state money per pupil; that plummeted last school year to $4,662, a 13 percent drop in just one year, as enrollment stayed about the same. Local dollars also fell by 14 percent year-over-year, as tax delinquencies climbed. The difference was made up by a 79 percent increase in federal revenue, but most of that was one-time money. And still, per-pupil spending had to be reduced 7 percent.

So the answer isn't the parade of school levies appealing to ever-poorer parents. It must be found in the sort of daring reforms and consolidations most school districts eschew, as well as a stronger funding commitment from the state tied to innovations. Over the next year, this page will champion those changes, and the people, districts and politicians willing to step up and embrace them.