BRF school officials explore merit pay

LaCrosseTribune.com
By Cassandra Colson - Jackson County Chronicle
 

BLACK RIVER FALLS — Teachers in the Black River Falls School District could be paid based on their performance as early as the 2012-13 school year.

Superintendent Ron Saari said the district is considering a merit-based pay system in light of the new state law changing contracts and benefits for public workers. 

He said the move would allow the district to reward its “exceptional” teachers.

“We have some staff that work very hard and do an excellent job, and they need to reap the benefits of all the work they put in,” Saari said.

The possible merit-based pay system comes amid districts across the state formulating new teacher and staff handbooks that will take the place of previous contracts.

Handbooks are a state requirement and can be formulated solely by school boards, but Saari said Black River Falls has formed a committee of administrators and teachers who are working together to create the new tool. 

The district will not have the books completed by the start of the 2011-12 school year, so many items will remain “status quo” from the contracts during the transition, he said.

While they are not negotiated contracts, the handbooks outline many components of previous contracts, such as number of sick and personal days, attendance policies, work day length and grievance procedures. 

Many items in the handbooks will be very similar to the former collective bargaining agreement, while some will represent some bigger changes, Saari said.

Teachers’ work days could be extended from 7½ hours to eight, Saari said.

And, he added, the grievance procedure — which needs to be in place by October — will be more streamlined, with a narrower definition of what classifies as a grievance.

A subcommittee to study merit-based pay will be formed this fall, Saari said.

Black River Falls Education Association co-president Todd Fendt said the process is in its early stages. 

Teachers would have preferred a contract extension, he added, so there could have been a full year to formulate the handbooks.

Fendt said the merit-based pay issue is “a tough one” because it will be difficult to judge across subject areas, and criteria will be hard to define.

“I don’t know how it’s going to come out. It’s so early right now,” he said. “I don’t think it’s where we wanted to be in the first place, but it is what it is and you move forward.”