District Advisory Committee Minutes
October 5, 2011
The District Advisory Council was called to order at 4pm, October 5, 2011 at the district office
board meeting auditorium.
Those members in attendance: Drew Bissell, John Lengers, Andy Dewey, Reba Goodman, Ruth
Henderson, Paulette Bogert, Marie Pousson, Keith Kalman, Natalie Abrameit, Rhonda SkillemJones, Sharron Breedlove, Ben Hernandez, and Mike Stackhouse. Also in attendance were
Bernadette Cardenas, Bill Horwath, Carla Stevens, Michelle Pola, and Chip Zullinger.
The meeting was called to order by Chip Zullinger. It was announced that future DAC meetings
need to begin at 4:30pm as agreed upon last year. Meetings before that time make it extremely
hard on teachers to attend. The first order of business was the election of Co-Chairpersons for the
2011-2012 school year. Upon unanimous consent Drew Bissell and Andy Dewey were elected to
serve in those capacities.
Review Draft of District School Improvement Plan
Bernadette Cardenas presented an overview of the District School Improvement Plan to the DAC.
The District Improvement Plan is a document that is required by the Texas Education Agency for
all school districts each year. After the presentation overview she asked for input and thoughts
about the plan. Andy Dewey suggested that the district add an additional target to the Plan. This
target would stipulate that we produce students that were prepared to be good citizens and to
become a productive citizen and a contributor to society and life long learning. He suggested we
need to do something with the social/emotional learning of our students. We need to articulate
this as a goal of our school district.
Within this discussion were the continued need for vocational training of students and their ability
to get a job after finishing school, even if they don’t go to college. The narrow measures that we
use currently to determine student success are much to limiting for the life long needs of many of
our students. Local employers are looking for specific skills that students know in order to hire.
There was considerable discussion among the group that not all students were going to go to
college. Examples of needed services that do not require a college degree, but are critical were
brought as examples. Electrician, plumbers, HVAC techs were all listed as examples of some of
the services that we need to train students toward these opportunities as well as college.
Mrs. Cardenas suggested that each member of the DAC complete the feedback forms provided
and return them to her. She stated that the direction she has gotten from the DAC would be
returned to the district leadership team for consideration.
Discussion then turned to EVAAS and student growth concerns. The term “negative growth” was
suggested as a demeaning term toward teachers and the district should give consideration to
changing that terminology.
Teacher Appraisal System Discussion
Bill Horwath begins the discussion with a review of last year’s progress. He began with an update
on where we are using a PowerPoint presentation. Bill advised that each campus would have an
ETI representative who is responsible for getting information about the work and bringing that
information back to the campus. There is a further responsibility for the ETI representative to
bring information from the school back to the work group to establish a two way communication
feed loop as the process moves forward. Bill stated that “We are trying to build out as many
feedback channels as possible.” Working groups for the appraisal system are starting to get
restarted and surveys will be administered throughout the year. Emails are being analyzed for the
feedback given around the appraisal work. We are organizing and categorizing feedback that we
get to influence the work development.
Is there a way for teachers to give anonymous feedback? Several DAC members offered that you
would not get valid feedback on the appraisal work unless there is a way to protect teachers from
various forms of retaliation. There was general agreement from both Bill Horwath’s team and the
DAC members that we should figure out a mechanism that allows critical feedback from teachers
and that that information would be blinded from identification of individual comments.
On the evaluation process itself, it is incumbent on the administrator to work in partnership with
the teacher toward teacher improvement and not a “gotcha”. If this is used as a teacher
development instrument it can be a very positive step for the district.
Questions were raised about the 10 minute walkthroughs that are currently taking place out in the
buildings with school administrators. Is there any reason a teacher has to be assigned a number
based on a 10 minute observation? A DAC member observed that there are all kinds of stress and
escalation of concern from teachers as a result of the walkthroughs. “We’re in September and
everybody is at each other’s throat. We have to open up the lines of communication because there
are all kinds of rumors going around.”
Bill again emphasized that the line of communication is critical and this is where we need to hear
from the DAC and from teachers. We want to know what is, or is not, working. There should not
be an overall negative rating as a result of a 10 minute walkthrough. DAC members continued to
note that these walkthroughs were a huge moral killer.
Bill continued indicating that we had gotten complaints about the PeopleSoft system and that we
were scrapping that for the time being. He also noted good feedback on the rubric as a way to set
common understanding of what good teaching is. Also noted was good feedback on the goal
setting conferences in general. This is a process of resetting expectations around a new system of
teacher appraisal.
The DAC group took 15 minutes in small groups to give feedback around these questions.
1. Have you heard any useful feedback from teachers and appraisers as they implement the
A&D system?
2. Do you feel that appraisers and teachers know where they can access resources and
supports for the A&D system?
3. What additional supports for appraisers and teachers would you like to see the district
develop?
4. Additional comments
A&D stands for Appraisal and Development
IPDP stands for Individual Professional Development Plan
PPA stands for Prescriptive Plan for Assistance
It was suggested by the DAC that any time we use acronyms we should print out the full meaning
in the body of the document before referring to them in acronym form.
Feedback forms were collected at the end of this portion of the meeting and given to Bill. It was
agreed that additional forms would be distributed to the DAC members not in attendance today.
Aspire Awards Program
Carla Stevens then presented an update to the group on the Aspire Awards Program through a
PowerPoint presentation.
The budget for this years Aspire program is about one half the amount of the previous year
awards due to budget cut backs. It is estimated that this year’s awards will be in the range of $20
million dollars.
One of the participants at the DAC was concerned about removing writing from the 2011-2012
ASPIRE Awards. Carla Stevens later updated the answer to the question raised.
“We are continuing to use TAKS writing results for the 2010-2011 award model that will be paid
out this January. However, STAAR writing is not possible/probable to add for the 2011-2012
model as we use passing rate data and that will not be provided by the state until possibly
November. This does not give us information to set targets on now for the model, and the data
will arrive too late to include in the calculations for the 2011-2012 payout as we are finalizing
everything in November. For the 2012-2013 model, we can revisit the STAAR writing issue”.
As the meeting concluded Drew and Andy asked that the email addresses of DAC members be
shared with the distribution of the minutes. Future agendas of the DAC will share in the agenda
development with the newly elected Co Chairs of the DAC as directed in board policy.
With no further business the October 5, 2011 meeting of the DAC was adjourned at 5:20pm.