In his biggest management move since coming to Harford County Public Schools, Superintendent Robert M. Tomback has planned a central office reorganization that he says will allow the school system to do more with less.
New central office positions will be added and others will be eliminated in the next school year, which Tomback said would result in a cost savings of $186,000 and a more “effective and efficient” organization.
The most notable changes are a new number two position, the Associate Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, reporting directly to Tomback; and a new Executive Director of Middle School Performance.
The new associate superintendent position creates a layer of management between Tomback and all departments relating to instruction, including the new middle school position. The structure is new to Harford County, but not unique; large public school systems such as Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel, all have similar positions, albeit with differing titles. Notably, Tomback came to Harford from Baltimore County Public Schools.
In HCPS, the new associate superintendent position will mirror a similar organizational structure already in place for supporting services, where the chief of administration position, currently held by Joseph Licata, oversees functions such as operations, finance and human resources, and reports directly to Superintendent Tomback.
In presenting the new organization plan in late April to the Board of Education and to the public, Tomback said the associate superintendent spot would coordinate education services, with curriculum and instruction. The new middle school position, Tomback said, was created to provide the special attention needed to improve student performance.
Both new positions have been advertised, but the application deadline is listed as July 30, 2010 or until the position is filled. Speculation within HCPS is that Tomback plans to bring in his own people.
Roger Plunkett, who came to Harford County less than two years ago, will not be part of the new leadership team. Tomback’s reorganization eliminates Plunkett’s position as assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. While he was invited to apply for another central office job, Plunkett also got calls from three other Maryland school systems and accepted an offer from Baltimore County Public Schools for the next school year.
Plunkett, who is close to getting his doctorate, has passion for his work and an amiable disposition. Sources say news of his departure was met with tears among some senior staff.
Plunkett was upbeat, telling The Dagger “It’s been a great experience and I’ve met many wonderful people in the community and in the schools.” Plunkett wouldn’t comment on Tomback’s plan, but said “I’m looking forward to seeing the greater community come together to develop a strategic plan for the school system.”
In addition to the announced changes on the instructional side of school management, HCPS is buzzing with rumors that some school-based positions will be phased out after the next school year and that other roles will be fortified.
Specifically, sources say that instructional facilitators, whose duties include observing and evaluating teachers, will be phased out after the next school year and that secondary level department chairs will take on teacher evaluation duties.
Teri Kranefeld, spokesperson for HCPS, told The Dagger that the roles of instructional facilitators and department chairs are currently under review.
Kranefeld also said that some secondary level teacher mentors, who observe but do not evaluate teachers, will be reassigned to fill teaching positions needed in the 2010-11 school year.
HCPS has a total of 24 instructional facilitators and 40 teacher mentors, at the elementary and secondary levels combined.
Superintendent Tomback’s official plans also call for a reorganization of supporting services, including the addition of an engineer position to serve facilities management, and planning and construction. Two project manager positions will be eliminated.
Tomback said the entire reorganization would bring together separate leadership groups “allowing us to be more coherent, more cohesive, more coordinated and more cooperative as we fulfill our mission which is to increase student achievement, to build teacher and leadership capacity, as well as to provide support services to schools in the most effective and efficient manner.”
Below is the new organizational chart for Harford County Public Schools effective July 1, 2010:
This sounds like a start, but I have some questions. Did Dr. Tomback speak with the teachers and get their input before making these changes? Did he speak w/ the administrative staff? Did he base these calls on his experience in Balt. county and hope it will work here?
The teacher facilitators and observers need to be in the classroom. The teachers who “evaluate” teachers need to be in the class and practice what they preach. I would like to see if their ideas and direction actually work. I do think that combining depts. is a good thing. I hope that the effort is successful, but I would encourage Dr. Tomback to hire w/n the county. He has much talent here if he would allow it to be tapped. Like depts. ought to be together, tho, not instruction with engineering/facilities. That makes little sense.
The idea of phasing out the Instructional Facilitator is a good idea. One of their salaries is the equivalent of two newly hired teachers. At schools with limited turn-over, their role seems to be limited to helping administration observe teachers and constructing professional development for professional days. Observations can easily be re-absorbed by administration and professional development is seldom meaningful…no loss there.
I agree but at a school with a high turnover them and mentor teachers are still needed!
I don’t know if I agree. Granted, I have been out of the classroom for 6 years and did not teach in Harford County. But when new teachers came to my school, they were “buddied” with an experienced teacher who taught them the ropes. I know that as an educator, I had no problems working a little bit with a new teacher helping them with planning and time management. If this is no longer allowable, then perhaps the mentor is the answer. But after talking with people currently within the system, schools lived without facilitators before and can live without them again.
Not arguing Cdev…but I have to wonder how schools functioned when I was in the classroom without those positions. The answer is that we functioned and we functioned well.
True but in a school where out of 90 teachers 37 are new to the county or teaching (yes that happened at EMS a few years back) it is just not practical to do that. Maybe the facilitator is not needed as much as the mentor at schools like that but when you have a huge turnover as happens at some schools you need to be prepared to support the new teachers or they will fail.
Wow, that is a huge turnover! Was that due to teacher transfers or was this an instance of a new administrator cleaning house? I will admit, in a grave circumstance like this one, the “buddy-system” would not work! However, the mentor teacher would be a great asset here. No one wants teachers to fail because that would mean that the students would fail as well. But if we are talking about cutting budgets, a highly paid position that is not necessary at most schools would be the way to go.
Perhaps the position should be kept only at schools that fall under the circumstances that you mentioned OR be created when circumstances like that occur.
If I remember correctly it was the year before the new principal was hired so it was a matter of teachers leaving the profession. I am not saying every building needs a mentor or IF; but some buildings will need them for certian amounts of time and the concept should not be tossed but maybe hired for specific buildings and their need evaluated on a year to year basis.
CDev – That idea makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the good discussion. On some threads, people take their disagreements personally and begin an online argument. It was nice to hash this issue out with someone with valid points! See…and we came to a compromise. We should run for the School Board! HA!
I don’t have the time to do that job to my level of satisfaction with my own job preformance. Maybe in the future I can, but not today.
I hear you! At this stage of my life, I don’t think I would be able to handle the stress of such a position!
I think having teacher mentors/specialists etc. in every school shows the need to be more flexible and progressive in treating schools differently. Many schools don’t need these teachers and some do but yet they were everywhere. What happened to the principal’s job when they used to know what was going on with their staff. Afterall, they were the ones who hired and have to fire. Don’t they need some firsthand observation.
Why can’t they pay one of the “Peer Teachers” as you would a coach? I am sure somewhere along the line, that was probably done anyway.
Kate do you know what is involved in the mentor processs and how much time is involved? If you wish to ask an experienced teacher to make that commitment you would have to pay them more then that amount of money! If you don’t no one would do it!
If someone needs mentoring that bad, then maybe they shouldn’t have the job. I don’t believe that with all of the internships that teachers have in college, and the planning time during the day that they would come into a class and have no clue on what to do. I have had too many teachers tell me that those jobs aren’t needed across the board.
My own firsthand experience this school year is an example of their limitations. Brand new teacher with 3 English classes of over 30 students. I asked her what they were doing to help her and her answer was not much. Mostly about grade books. On the flip side my daughter had a foreign language teacher with 30+ students who has been a teacher for many years and she couldn’t control the class. How would a teacher mentor have helped her? Maybe having more teachers and less students in the building. Yes I know it doesn’t all work out quite right especially with these career clusters but I personally would like to see excellent teachers paid more money, get rid of the ones who can’t do the jobs, and have more teachers have face time with more students.
The idea of paying “excellent” teachers more money to work in challenging schools has been tried but the analysis of these programs is that scores do not significantly improve. Unfortunately the reality in a lot of these situations is that there are far too many factors beyond a teachers control that create hurdles to student achievement such as poverty, lack of parental support (or abuse), medical issues, lack of educational resources (computers and books) at home, etc.
Teachers are easy targets for politicians and others who want to make noise but often their “solutions” exacerbate current problems or cause new ones. Politicians, most without any real knowledge of educational practices or school system experience, like to throw around numbers. They have become a major contributor to the problems we see in some schools. Their legislation along with state education bureaucrats have turned students into products measured by the scores on HSA and similar tests. The State Board of Education claim that only 13 students statewide did not graduate last year solely because they failed HSA requirements is an absolutely ludicrous manipulation of data. Any thinking person knows this but it sounds good on a press release because politicians might be held accountable for creating a system that produced too many failures.
Teachers do not make products like toasters and cars. Our goal is to teach students to be thinking human beings and that is much more difficult to quantify than a paper test.
Well said.
However, when one reads “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America” we learn that our education system is becoming nothing more than a machine spitting out “human-bots” specifically trained to: take orders and NOT think for themselves. The ENTIRE educational slate needs to be wiped clean of all the bureaucrats and let the teachers do what they’ve been trained to do: teach reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Interested Observer:
Many of us in the field of education believe the system is turned upside down. Teachers have been directed to do more paperwork for the bureaucrats you mention so they can have data for analytic purposes. Teachers do not mind doing this kind of work if they see some real benefit for them and their students as it relates to the classroom. The problem presents itself when the data has no relevance or real practical application to classroom instruction. This unproductive time only serves as an impediment to teachers having the time to prepare thoughtful lessons and other requirements such as content research, grading, etc. You need only look at the recent controversy concerning the attempt by Baltimore County school system officials to implement the “AIM” program. It was only after much public outcry that the program was scraped.
Many of these bureaucrats have forgotten the real purpose of K-12 education (to educate children) and believe the public school system is there for their own purposes, which often is about their own need for power and gratification, and to use the schools as their own petri dish for conducting experiments concerning education theory and social constructs.
Everyone in education must remember the primary reason the system exists – to educate children to be the next generation of productive citizens in order to keep our society viable. Bureaucrats need to recognize that their needs should be the last to be considered and those of students and teachers need to be first. The common refrain from teachers is for bureaucrats and administrators to get out of the way and let them do their jobs. Now that would put the burden on teachers to match greater instructional freedom with higher student achievement, but that is a trade the vast majority of teachers would make in a heartbeat.
He’s talking cost-savings…what about this…word is going around HCPS that Tommback is still going to receive his 10% contracted pay raise this year! What the heck – how about showing support of your employees and decline it – or is he just like the big bank execs – who take away from the little people but still make sure they get their big fat bonuses…as a parent, I don’t believe this demonstrates best interest of students and/or employees!
this is an excerpt from one of the previous Dagger articles when he was hired…he is not feeling the ‘pinch’ like the rest of his employees, for sure!
…With that said, here are some highlights from the contract…
– An annual bonus of up to 10% of the superintendent’s salary dependent upon the outcome of a performance evaluation, the form and process for which will be proposed by the superintendent and approved by the school board.
– Annual cost of living adjustments (COLAs) and longevity pay, at the same rate and on the same schedule applicable to other supervisory/administrative employees within HCPS.
– Health, dental, life and disability insurance, provided at no cost to the superintendent.
– Annual payments for unused vacation, personal and sick leave.
– One-half of the cost of the employee contributions and all of the employer contributions to the Maryland State Retirement System each year and $10,000 in contributions to a qualified tax-deferred annuity in year one, increasing by $1000 each year thereafter.
– An all wheel drive vehicle, including the cost of gas, insurance, maintenance and repairs.
– A home office, including personal computer/laptop, personal digital assistant (PDA)/ cell phone, fax machine and printer.
In my magic world, lets play the what if game for a minute…
If the teachers could teach reading, math, writing and science, then the children would be able to think for themselves.
If the “big guys” get out of the way, and the teachers could ask for help if needed, and get the help requested, then the students would learn more by mastering the basics skills. (math, reading, etc.)
If the students were given the choice to leave or stay, remember, this is my magic world, then the teachers could teach and the students would actually acquire basic skills enabling them to succeed and progress within the world, apart from television, cable and internet. The teachers of the world hold our future in their hands, and the ability to learn is either encouraged or disparaged and teachers spend more time with our children shaping ideas than do most parents. Think about that for a second, between television, computer time, daycare, most of our children do not think on their own, let alone read for the sheer pleasure of it. Many of our children have no interest in learning, so they drag down the others. Many of our children don’t have any responsiblities and don’t know how to do anything, independently, so I think the teachers that we have now have mountains to climb each day and I give them much credit for returning to the dungeons each day. (How about that visual? My magic world, remember?)
On another note, the savings from Dr. Tomback’s restructuring is around $185,000.00 out of a 4.5 mil budget? Is that accurate?
The savings is superficial when you consider the changes were made to create new high level positions that he plan to fill with his cronies from Baltimore County. Just wait and see – I venture to say we will see a greater migration as the year moves forward.
yes that is about 4% of the budget.
I understand that it is difficult to see the benefits of some positions within schools unless you have experienced their handiwork. So, here are a few things I have personally experienced. I have worked in 3 schools, one in an affluent neighborhood, one that pulls from every neighborhood in Harford County, and one on the Route 40 corridor. Unless the administration in each school holds teachers accountable for what they teach and how they teach it, we are always going to have quite a few teachers that we don’t want our children exposed to. A good Instructional Facilitator helps the principal put into place Instructional Expectations and they help hold the teachers accountable….things sometimes we take for granted.
For instance, teaching from the time the bell starts the class until the time the bell rings to end the class (not finishing 10 minutes early, having students line up at the door or letting them sit around doing nothing); having rigorous classroom instruction that is engaging to students….giving students tools to use in all classes, rather than lecturing for 60 minutes and then handing out worksheets; asking teachers to analyze their grades and take a look at reasons that students might be failing certain parts of what they taught and then asking teachers to examine different ways to re-teach the material to enrich students that already have mastered the topic, while providing support to those who need it; asking teachers to think outside the box in order to differentiate their instruction to meet the needs of all the learners in the classroom…..and how about actually teaching a class instead of showing full length movies as an excuse to sit in the class and grade papers. Finally, in many schools, teachers were finished teaching after seniors graduated several weeks ago…what about the other 3 grade levels of children in the building?
To many, these might seem like things teachers should do automatically, and to some, these might seem like silly little extra pressures to put on teachers. As a teacher myself, day after day, it sometimes seems easier to pop in a movie, or to finish class with 30 minutes left and let the kids hang out for a while….but that’s not what we are here for, right? A good Instructional Facilitator asks the hard questions, helps the principal to keep an eye out for classrooms where students are getting the short end of the stick, makes sure the instruction is of a high quality and if its not, puts forth a plan to support the teacher so we can help that teacher to either get better or find their way out the door.
We have spent far too many years wishing we could get rid of the dead weight in our schools, but lets face it, the principals can’t do everything. I know that not every Instructional Facilitator works at the high level that I mention….but if you ever work for one…you automatically begin to learn how to bring your ‘A+ game’ everyday and you start thinking differently about students and education than ever before.
It makes me sad for our students to know that by pulling this particular support from schools, we have the potential go back where we started.
Again, I can only speak for my experiences. But in the situations that I’ve worked with an excellent Instructional Facilitator, you wouldn’t believe the high quality of instruction that began to take place in those buildings.
What do you think the roll of the Dept. Chair, Assistant Principal, or teacher mentor should be? These are the people that should be observing the classroom teacher on a regular basis and know if an individual teacher is struggling.
Every IF is going to try to justify their job–truthfully few are worth the money. So basically–according to Sunny they do not trust grown ups to do their job and they are glorified adult baby sitters making 90,000++ a year. Many IF’s are on a witch hunt to justify their jobs– and will come up with ‘data’ to support the need for them. It would be alot cheaper to put camera’s in every classroom so principals could sit in their offices and monitor each teacher and classroom–bet each camera wouldn’t cost 90,000+.
As a candidate running for a seat on the Board of Education from District A (representing Edgewood, Joppa, Joppatowne) I want to hear your concerns and recommendations for improving Harford County schools. I am a teacher in the Baltimore County Public Schools system and would very much like to hear from teachers working all across Harford County. Please remember that once elected these individuals will have a countywide impact in setting school policies. So everyone has a vested interest in who is elected even if you cannot vote for a specific candidate. I can be reached at bobfrischboe@gmail.com.