2013-2014 Resource Priorities

  • Enhancing educator compensation (“Teachers”)
     
    teachersupport In order for our school system to become more competitive in retaining and attracting top teaching talent, we must make progress in increasing our base salary for educators, while simultaneously ensuring the sustainability of our strategic compensation system, APEX. The budget proposal includes a combined pay increase of 2.5% for teachers and $1.27 million to support APEX.

    Sustaining instructional improvement initiatives  (“Teaching”)
     
    literacy Sustaining important classroom-level investments that are helping to fuel our strong academic progress. We must continue to support initiatives such as early literacy efforts, teacher supports, professional development, teacher leadership, magnet and community schools, interventions and tutorial services, and academic enrichment for our students.

    Facilitating personalized learning supported by technology (“Technology”)
     
    technology Instructional technology can allow teachers to better personalize and differentiate their instruction, and enables educators to continuously and seamlessly adapt their teaching to meet the unique needs of their students. We seek the resources to begin a 1:1 technology effort (one technology device for each one student, and each one teacher) at a select sampling of schools across our school system through the School Technology Challenge competition.

    Bolstering student safety efforts  (“Safety”)
     
    safety
    As we collectively seek to respond to heightened expectations for school security that have emerged after the Sandy Hook tragedy, we must implement a foundational level of school security resources at every school, including a current-generation video camera system, a school access control strategy, and an armed, uniformed School Resource Officer or School Security Officer at each of our schools.
     
     
     
    budget