Are Teachers Interchangeable?

At its May 2 meeting the ISD 197 School Board was asked to approve personnel changes affecting more than 90 different individuals.  In addition other staff reassignments were planned within each building that did not require board approval.  Shuffling 30% or more of the staff is a serious game of musical chairs.  There admittedly is little the school board can do at present to prevent this.  But it is a fair question to ask whether this is desirable.

Let’s first consider why this occurs.  Staffing a school is a complex matrix of licensure, experience, performance and seniority data.  When a decision is made to reduce the budget by eliminating part or all of a position, the affected individual has an opportunity to take a different position from a less senior individual for which he or she has the necessary licensure so as to maintain full-time employment.  This has a cascade effect until ultimately the individual with the least seniority takes the reduction.  Impact on the high school choir teacher was the most visible this year and serves as a good example to explain how these dominos fall.

DOMINO 1 – The grant funding elementary school counselors expired so the salary for these individuals needed to come from the general fund.  It was decided that a portion of the needed funds would come from specialist’s time at the elementary schools.

DOMINOS 2 and 3 – Several elementary principals decide to include music with other specialist’s time to reduce in their buildings.  This began a sequence often referred to as bumping where the more senior individual had opportunity to take full-time positions leaving part time positions for the less senior teachers.

DOMINOS 4, 5 and 6 – An elementary music teacher with a general education dual license was assigned to teach a regular classroom.  A middle school choir teacher moved to the high school.  And the less senior high school choir teacher was left with a part-time elementary choir position.

Justification for this practice is based on an argument that teachers are qualified to teach any class for which they have licensure.  The argument is essentially that teachers are interchangeable.  So regardless if a teacher has found success teaching choir at the high school, a new teacher will have similar success and the change might even help to keep both teachers fresh as they learn to work with different aged children.

Some state legislators disagree.  House file 945 and Senate file 636 both contain language allowing a superintendent to identify individuals who in their opinion deserve to be protected from the bumping rules.  The proposed language says:

“the superintendent may exempt from the effects of paragraphs (b) to (g) those teachers who, in the superintendent's judgment, are able to provide instruction that similarly licensed teachers cannot provide.”

Opponents to this language argue it is ripe for abuse, allowing a superintendent to show favoritism to specific teachers.  To use the domino example, they argue a superintendent will deliberately choose to “protect” certain dominos so they can pick which domino falls.

Yet is this necessarily unreasonable?  In his classic business text, Good to Great, Jim Collins makes the following argument regarding the importance of having the right people in the right position.

In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances.

So who is right?  Are teachers interchangeable?  Or do superintendents need the authority to get the right people in the right seats on the bus?  And if some teachers are unique, what policies are needed to assure all unique gifts are equally valued?

This blog is the sole responsibility of Dewayne Dill.  It does not represent any official opinions, statement of facts or positions of the ISD 197 School Board or School District. Its purpose is to contemplate the broader context of issues the board considers.