|
||||
|
September 18, 2001 By Aspen C. Emmett Since last week’s release of the Colorado school accountability report cards, supplemental information including average teacher salaries, school attendance, weapons violations and substance-abuse statistics has also been released, giving school districts a more in-depth look at their educational institutions. The statistics do not affect the accountability report this year, but may be incorporated into the overall assessment of schools in the future, school officials said. While Montezuma-Cortez High School received a "low" rating in last week’s CSAP-based report, it fared better in other areas compared to years in the past. The drop-out rate was down by nearly half since the 1998-1999 school year, and in comparison to the state average, MCHS has a far higher percentage of teaching professionals teaching the subject in which they received their degrees. Re-1 Superintendent Bill Thompson said the percentage of teachers teaching in their subject field — about 20 percent higher than the state average — is due to an old accreditation program that the district has continued to uphold. "We’ve kept that same process so we can keep people teaching in their areas if we can find them, because that’s where their strengths are," Thompson said. "I guess we’ve also been fortunate to get people in the proper area." Additionally, across the Re-1 school district, the average for teachers’ years of teaching experience is four to five years higher than the state average, at 15 or 16 years. But in gloomier news, the reports reflect a high percentage of drug- and alcohol-abuse incidents at Cortez Middle School — nearly twice of that of state averages in similar academic rankings, which places CMS among the top 20 middle schools in the state for drug- and alcohol-abuse incident reports. Southwest Open School was the only school in the district to report any assaults or fights, although Dave Crews, director of secondary education and personnel for Re-1, said there were actually some fights at the schools. The fights, however, were not of the magnitude that they qualified to be reported in the category described by the state because none of them were officially charged through law enforcement. "We had no altercations where there were charges filed," Crews said. CMS recorded the highest number of total safety and disciplinary incidents with 488, compared to MCHS’s 156 incidents. Thompson cautioned, though, that the figure included a number of disciplinary actions for everything from attendance to gum-chewing. "I think that’s every kid that’s ever been sent to the office," he said. The report also shows that the district is slightly below the state average on salaries and, for the most part, is in line with the rest of the state on its students-per-teacher ratio. Thompson said that although the district provided the information to the state, he doubts that the figures are completely accurate, adding that teacher salaries continue to lack competitiveness and pose a problem for the district’s recruitment efforts. He suggested that at some point it may be necessary to seek a mill-levy override for more funding even though bond issues were difficult to get approved in the past. "This district has never gone to the public for a mill-levy override," Thompson commented. "We had a rough enough time passing a bond issue for needed facilities that we didn’t ever feel it was possible to get a mill-levy override passed. But I think that if we’re ever going to get to a point where we can compete with other places in the state on salaries, we’re going to have to approach that with the public. "We’re not the lowest-funded district in the state, but we’re in the bottom quarter of the districts. One year in the 1980s, we spent fewer dollars per student than any other district in the state, and some people still said we were spending too much money." Thompson said that the focus in the meantime will be on staff development. "We know where we stand now, and I think our teachers and principals are working hard now to make a difference. We know we’ve got to move up," Thompson said. "We have to continue to provide the staff development to our teachers to help our kids increase their skills and learning ability." Assistant Superintendent George Shumpelt said he thought the accountability reports were well done. Although this year the report cards rely solely on academic performances, in the future other statistics may be included in the school assessments. Among other statistics of note in the report:
|
||||
|
Copyright © 2001 the Cortez Journal.
All rights reserved. |
