Ypsilanti principals rally around student service coordinators, whose jobs are set to be eliminated
Ypsilanti Public Schools principals don't want to lose student service coordinators in the district's deficit elimination plan, and they've spoken out at the last two school board meetings.
Sharine Buddin, principal at the Perry Child Development Center, told school board members Monday that she recognized the district’s financial struggles, but principals across the district would have a much harder job without student services coordinators.
“We’ve made huge adjustments to our buildings this year, and we continue to provide a high-quality educational environment for students and families,” she said. “We’ve done that with the assistance of the student service coordinators. They were wisely added to buildings to address needs we’d seen and still exist, and have allowed elementary principals to provide strong leadership.”
The deficit elimination plan required by the state says eliminating the student services coordinators will save about $1.3 million over the next four years. The plan is meant to eliminate an estimated $26 million deficit in the next four years.
Student service coordinators usually handle discipline issues, freeing principals for other duties, supporters say.
The deficit elimination plan was originally passed in late January, with revisions to the document approved Monday. The elimination of the coordinators was still in the document as of Monday.
Connie Thompson, principal at Adams STEM Academy, and Kevin Carney, principal at Erickson Elementary School, have spoken to the school board at recent meetings about the student services coordinator positions.
At the school board meeting on March 14, Estabrook Elementary School principal Joe Guillen, who is also the head of the Ypsilanti Principals and Administrators Association, said the coordinators are important to ensuring safety in the district’s schools.
“The position has made a big impact in our schools, and we wanted to bring it to your attention,” he said. “We’ve said this before, we believe this position has an enormous amount of accountability and responsibility.”
The student services coordinator positions are part of the Ypsilanti Education Association, but Guillen said he believes the positions eventually need to be an administrative position.
YEA president Kelly Powers has spoken in support of the student services coordinator positions on numerous occasions, including at Monday’s meeting.
She said the increased amount of teacher evaluations that principals will have to perform to comply with state law beginning next year, performing them annually as opposed to once every three years, will limit principals’ ability to deal with disciplinary issues.
“I can speak for all elementary folks when I say without those positions we will not have a safe environment in our schools,” Powers said. “There are parents coming in daily who want to speak to somebody and someone can be there.”
Kyle Feldscher covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com or you can follow him on Twitter.
Comments
Moonmaiden
Sun, Apr 3, 2011 : 2:04 a.m.
If the principal's were any good they would handle the situation and not speak up at the Board meeting. I guess I'm getting old, but I do remember when principals's could handle these duties.
peachy
Wed, Mar 30, 2011 : 11:34 p.m.
Missypsi, The Governor's child goes to Greenhills.
Steve in MI
Wed, Mar 30, 2011 : 1:30 p.m.
YPSD administrators, you should give up now. You are a poor, minority-dominated district, and the Republican powers in Lansing have determined that your students don't deserve any academic support. I had an informal interview last week with one of their tea-partying supporters. He explained to me that if poor-students - particularly those with non-white skin - are worth anything, they'll pull themselves up by their historically disadvantaged bootstraps. The argument was that there are instances of success in every pool of failure, thus if a school has problems it's the fault of the individual students and their parents. Apparently Republican governance teaches that this not the broader community's (i.e. the state's) problem; it's the local community's problem and the individual students' and families' fault. Besides that, if the schools do fail, they can be replaced with charter/private schools. Which will be able to indoctrinate children in the religion of the tea-partiers' choice. Which the public schools can't do. Which, according to the local tea party coordinator, is what's wrong with public schools in the first place. If civic-minded people would just allow the schools to teach Christian principles, the far Right wouldn't be forced to wage jihad against the public school system and its personnel. And one wonders why we can't "all just get along"....
snoopdog
Wed, Mar 30, 2011 : 12:29 p.m.
"We've made huge adjustments to our buildings this year, and we continue to provide a high-quality educational environment for students and families," Test scores don't back this up. "We've said this before, we believe this position has an enormous amount of accountability and responsibility." Give more evidence please. "I can speak for all elementary folks when I say without those positions we will not have a safe environment in our schools," I can believe that the high school can have safety issues but you are telling us the elementary schools are not safe, that is sad.
missypsi
Wed, Mar 30, 2011 : 1:53 a.m.
Remember last year, when YPSD closed one elementary school (Chapelle) and one middle school (East)? Well, that crammed all the district's children into two fewer schools, which means that the remaining schools are at (or beyond) capacity. The principals are now dealing with, in some cases DOUBLE the students, and double the problems. They absolutely need a coordinator to handle discipline issues so that they can respond to student, teacher, and parent needs, while managing some very overcrowded schools. I know that at the elementary level, these student service coordinators act as vice principals, so in response to one of the posts, NO they do not currently have vice principals in addition to "coordinators." People, instead of attacking principals and teachers, why don't you just look around. Those in power are DESTROYING our public school system, and enriching themselves and their friends, all of whom, I'm sure, have children in PRIVATE schools. Its truly a disgusting state of affairs, tax relief for the richest on the backs of our children. Governor Snyder, where did your children go to school?
larry kramer
Tue, Mar 29, 2011 : 9:32 p.m.
these "coordinator" jobs likely belong to friends or relatives
towny
Tue, Mar 29, 2011 : 9:25 p.m.
I thought that was part of the high payed principals or vice principles duties. Should they both not know whats happening in there school as far as safety. Sounds like another padded position. Eliminate it. Just fat, fat, fat and more fat.
BornRaisedYpsi
Wed, Mar 30, 2011 : 1:49 a.m.
There are NO vice principals at any of the elementary schools. These coordinators fulfill a very important role at the elementary schools, typically one that deals with student discipline. The principals of these schools - most schools - are dealing with teachers, the public, the school board, the administration, getting funding and grants, and did I mention the public? In most corporations that I know of, the CEO or president doesn't deal with disciplinary actions - it's left to the HR departments or department heads and that is the function of these so-called fat, fat, fat positions.
Top Cat
Tue, Mar 29, 2011 : 5:25 p.m.
I worked in government for 4 years and anytime a person has the word "coordinator" in their job title, that meant that no one was really knew what they did.