Hi! My name is Nikki Olszewski and I am currently serving as the Union treasurer. Thank you for hearing this month’s D128 Union message. I would like to take a moment to thank all school staff, student volunteers, and parent organizations for making the d128 staff feel valued during Staff appreciation week. In light of this week, I would also like to acknowledge the D128 ESP Union, our sister union. We would not be as successful as we are without our ESP’s hard work and help both in and out of the classrooms. Know that you are truly appreciated. Our Union recently sent out a pulse survey to our members. One of the questions was, “How would you rate the current trustworthiness of district administration and its decision making?” The question gave a rating of a six point scale, 1 being “I don’t trust at all what’s being communicated” and 6 being “I have utmost trust in what the district admin is sharing.” Of the 145 members that responded, 133 members rated this question as a 1 or a 2. Let me say that another way… 91.7% of the staff members gave a response indicating that they have little to no trust in the district administration and its decision making. Not one staff member rated the question above a 4 on a 6 point scale. So tonight, I would like to focus on the theme of trust between the teachers and the district administration and help explain why the level of trust has broken down over the course of the last few years. I am going to paint the picture by sharing my personal journey, specifically focusing on the move to heterogeneous classes and the proposed intervention program. While my story is only one account, my path mirrors MANY other frustrated teachers in the district.
I am a 23 year veteran of this district, and I have taught every model of the Algebra 1 intervention program for 21 of those years. In April of 2023, I attended a meeting and was told that the team taught classes for our striving learners were not successful and were going to be eliminated and replaced by heterogeneous classes. This was news to me. Why hadn’t anyone talked to me, or any other teacher in these classes before deciding to eliminate the program? Where’s the data that backed this and what is the measurement for determining whether a program is successful?
The district responded by showing us that students in these programs were not meeting standardized test scores, yet they only used data from COVID classes to back that claim. They showed us that the percentage of minority students and low income students are more prevalent in the team taught classes. When the students get to the high school level, they are well along on their academic path. D128 educators excel at meeting students where they are and helping them grow in their knowledge. Why were we not shown growth data over the span of the four high school years in these student populations to determine the success or failure of team taught classes? Where is the data that shows how many students graduated out of team-taught classes from year to year due to the success they had with the supports and foundations they received in those team-taught classes? The district admin told us that the students placed in team taught classes were stigmatized. Was there a survey sent out to the students to ask how they felt about the program? I invited Director of Equity and Inclusion, Mr. Larry Varn, to observe my team taught class last year and he was surprised that students told him it was one of their favorite classes, and that they loved having two teachers and a smaller class size to help them learn. Another reason given for the district admin’s push for heterogeneous classes was to expose all students to grade level curriculum. I would like to clear up that myth by letting you know that our 9th grade team taught level curriculum IS grade level. We teach the same lessons on the same days and give the same assessments. The only difference for the team taught class is a smaller class size, another teacher in the room to help, and specifically for math at LHS, another period to process the content. After the meeting last April, teachers were starting to get concerned. While heterogeneous classes is a noble initiative, we were not sure based on the data presented to us that this change was needed in our district. We were being asked to take our most vulnerable students and remove the supports that enable them to stay at the same pace as their peers. The data and rationale presented were not convincing us, and we wanted to spend more time researching and processing this major change.
Despite our concerns, we were told we needed to press on and this change was coming in the very near future so we needed to start planning. But the good news was that we were told that in lieu of the team taught classes, we were able to design an intervention program for our striving students. At the May 8th 2023 School Board Program & Personnel Committee meeting, Dr.Hermann stated, “We have really smart staff, and we really believe that they are going to design something that supports all learners.” So, our team taught teachers spent countless hours developing an intervention program that we thought would work for our striving learners to get the support they were going to need. Our plan was to put teachers in a room working with a small handful of our most vulnerable students a few times a week pre-teaching or reteaching curriculum during a full period study hall, PAWs, or tutorial class. After months of planning for the best option to help our students, the admin presented their intervention plan, only to find it contained little of what we had planned . Imagine how our trust in leadership was shaken when part of the district admin’s plan went directly against what we wanted. The current plan calls for taking our team taught experts, the ones who have years of experience helping our striving learners understand our content curriculum, and having them teach students basic skills through computer based lessons like Nearpod. The plan calls for putting mostly support staff (not our content experts) in charge of reteaching/pre teaching curriculum during a half period lunch. Let me echo our sister Union’s concerns mentioned during public comment today, that we are unsure if this position is truly in the current ESP job description. As stated by Ms. Cardinale, “Is this a way for the district to yet again get high quality work at a lower salary?” Let me reiterate that one of the main reasons the admin wanted to go away from team taught classes was that they felt it created a stigma for these students. In this plan students would be required to leave their peers during their lunch to get extra help. Talk about putting the spotlight on them! We were promised in the P&P meeting last May by Dr. Hermann that, “Our TEACHERS will come up with what they feel is right.” This current plan does not feel right. We are moving away from a striving learners program that taught grade level curriculum, in a small class setting, with extra teachers in the classroom, to a program in which striving learners are put in larger classes sizes, with one teacher, and they may or may not get the help they need during a half period lunch with an ESP member who may or may not be a content expert. How disheartening for us teachers to give up countless hours on a committee to design an intervention program that we feel is best for our students only to have the district administration change that program to their liking without consulting us.
I wish I could say that this has happened only to the intervention team, but truth be told, our district administration is developing a habit of changing part or all of committee plans at the 11th hour. For example, when the Grading and Assessment plan was rolled out to staff in February 2024, a last minute component was added by the district administration that gave special education co-teachers no say in the grading policies for their own classroom. What’s worse was that the plan was presented to staff as what “the teachers have decided” when teachers on this committee reported that they were never consulted about this last minute change. The result of the administrations’ dismissal and adjustment of teacher work without a discussion with those teachers is a frustrated staff. In fact, in the survey I mentioned earlier, there was a question asking if members feel valued in their work by district administration. Again, the question contained a six point rating scale, 1 being I don’t feel heard or valued and 6 being I feel very seen and heard. 124/145 teachers, or 85.5% of those surveyed, rated this question a 1 or a 2. Not one Union member rated this question a 6; that they feel very seen and heard. Our trust is broken. It seems that our voice, our thoughts, our expertise, our concern for what’s best for our students, and our time means little to the district administrators who override our hard work.
So we push on, the intervention program is happening, the plan is not our own and is constantly changing by the administration, and we have 4 weeks left of school and have only been told a draft version of what will occur next year. The district has ensured all the stakeholders that we are trained and ready for heterogeneous classes. At the April 15th board meeting, VHHS principal Jon Guillaume stated that training can be dated back to 2015. But training for differentiated instruction in classes that are grouped by ability level is not the same as training for differentiated instruction in a heterogeneous class. Not to mention that this training from 10 years ago did not address the post-Covid student or the needs facing our teachers today. Good ideas from our instructional coaches have only been available to teachers who volunteered to give up their lunch period. We have had a few brief sessions offered during institute days specifically towards heterogeneous class preparation There may be a summer course offered but we have not heard anything about this yet. In the May 8th, 2023 P&P meeting the board members asked Mr. Varn how teachers will be trained to meet the needs of students; Mr. Varn responded that the partner we will be working with to train our staff is the Equal Opportunity Schools, or the EOS program. To date, the only thing that program has done is identify students who could potentially be diagonal movers. The district admin said they hired an educational consultant, Tony Frontier, to help us prepare. Yet the only thing we accomplished through our time working with Mr. Frontier is to align content standards across the district. Neither of these consultants focused on instructional training for teachers in heterogeneous classes. Once again, our trust is broken. We were given no time this year to work with our peers to prepare and brainstorm pedagogical strategies.
In that same survey I mentioned before, 120/145 union members, or 82.8%, stated that the morale in the building amongst staff members is as low as or nearly as low as they can remember. Why is morale so low? I believe that it is due to the lack of trust between district administration and the teachers. How do we fix this broken partnership? What will help us at this moment in time? What do we ask for as a Union?
District administrators, our “ask” to you is to please LEARN from the mistakes that have been made over the last few years. Moving forward, our message to you is please TRUST your staff in all phases of planning for a change. INVOLVE us in the research process to ensure change is needed. ALLOW us to design the programs that you promised we could. If there are changes that need to be made to the programs we create, WORK WITH US to find a solution we can ALL back. Give us the SUPPORT and time we need that does not coincide with our much needed breaks like our lunch, or our summer, to work with our colleagues to make meaningful, productive change. And finally, ACKNOWLEDGE when timelines need to slow down so that we ensure our initiatives are implemented properly.
Board of Education, our “ask” to you is that you continue to ask questions and challenge our district administration to be the leaders that our teachers, students, and community needs. Leaders that we can place our trust in once again.
President John Qunicy Adams said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” Only when the stakeholders truly believe they are valued, heard, and respected can our trust in district administration and their ability to lead us be restored. Thank you for allowing me to speak on behalf of our Union on these matters tonight.