Education at a Crossroads 3/14/2011: LN Auditorium Notes from Matt Arnold Requirement for kindergarten: Early childhood is of concern. State funding is a matching grant. Bosma: Mandatory early childhood is not a universal agreement among parents. MSDLT board member said that it's what's best for children that matters - not what parents want. Bosma wanted to introduce himself first. Merritt: Early childhood learning is important and when funding is there, there will be full-day kindergarten. Bosma: Charter schools are public schools with public school children with public school teachers. Breaux: Charter schools taking money from public schools. Against charter schools. House Bill wants to require only 50% of teachers at charter schools to have licenses. Merritt: MSDLT doing a great job of preparing students for college. Charter vouchers would take away 2.5 million dollars from MSDLT according to board member - Bosma: school funding formula is changing dramatically and will benefit MSDLT. Bosma: funding for MSDLT will increase ever so slightly. Charter school students/reps wearing yellow scarves clapped at all charter school positive comments. Bosma: we welcome school board members to come down and see how the new funding would benefit MSDLT. Board member said she'd be at his office tomorrow with Robin Phelps. Breaux: thinks monies should continue to go to urban schools instead of schools where enrollment is increasing. Curriculum and instruction not discussed as ed reform - only funding - but not how it's spent Breaux: she states that all of education funding issues deal with class issues - race and ELL. ELL cuts would be from $200 per child to $100 per child in MSDLT. Bosma: can't raise taxes to help education - not gonna happen

Audience clapped loudly in favor of raising taxes for schools. Merit pay for teachers - Merritt: depends on many factors decided at the local level and evaluation of teachers. Merritt: everyone's evaluated in corporate America, why not teachers. Local school district grades the teacher and helps them to do their best. Rep from Bennett's office: two criteria for teachers - years of experience and degrees beyond BS. Research shows no correlation between pay and teacher performance. Board member: likes local control of merit pay and evaluation. Bosma: state law says evaluation should never acknowledge test scores. New laws would require every teacher to be evaluated every year. Test scores can track each child and must show growth within a year. Breaux: schools are not corporate America and scores are subjective ways to evaluate their performance. Rating teachers in order to get merit pay is not right. Any additional degrees would get no change in pay. How does that reward teachers for continued education. Is it possible that increase of funding is required for technology? Chu: yes you could argue that. The teaching force has increased exponentially during the time. Impact of class size is minimal. Some research says you might get bigger bang for your buck with increased class sizes. Bosma: everyone wants good education in our state. Board member: the conversation in the public is down-trodden and disheartening. Feelings of despair among families. Breaux: there isn't a "better crop of teachers" out there and we shouldn't pay current teachers less because we have the best teachers. Bosma: continued to argue with Breaux. A member of the audience shouted out at Bosma and Bosma told him he wanted to talk with him afterwards. Board member: offer true funding to students in the public schools instead of taking away that money. Only 2 questions were asked and not many answers provided – more argumentative. Bosma stated that new funding formula would help MSDLT, not hurt it.