FRANKFORT, Ky. — With less than two weeks until the start of a new school year for Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS), the Efficient and Effective School Governance Task Force met for the second time in Frankfort to find common ground to improve the district.
Task force members peppered JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio with questions about keeping teachers, out of control student behavior, and, of course, transportation.
"From what we started last year with, we've made some significant progress; still got a ways to go though," Pollio said. "We're having to make tough decisions around who gets transported, and that's something we don't want to do, but what we've had to do."
The transportation meltdown from last school year has been a driving factor in the legislators' push to form the task force.
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In his recent evaluation, the JCPS school board outlined Pollio's shortfalls in identifying staff shortages as the root cause of the transportation crisis and lack of effort to address teacher vacancies.
"Coming back from the pandemic and facing the shortages that we face in so many of our critical roles, we've been very assertive with identifying the need to increase our compensation for all of our staff," Pollio said.
Here are where current JCPS teacher salaries stand:
- Rank 3 (starting salary): $48,038
- Rank 1 (25 years): $94,207
- The average teacher salary: $76,224
To help motivate teachers to commit to teaching in choice zone schools, or schools that have higher needs, JCPS is offering a minimum of an $8,000 stipend.
"How many teachers took advantage of that? Because, I mean, that's almost a lifestyle change $8,000," asked Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield.
"Our focus was getting more people involved, but then also retaining teachers," Pollio responded. "So, we did have a good number who jumped at that opportunity from the beginning. We will see here in September, as we wrap up our hiring numbers, what that retention will look like. It is still a challenge. I'm not going to say that it's not still a challenge in our highest need schools to bring in staff, because it is. It is a tougher job."
Pollio said the district's retention rate of teachers is 96%.
Task force member Kentucky Representative James Tipton, R-Taylorsville, shared a conversation he had with a JCPS teacher of 22 years, who chose to retire this year.
"She didn't talk about salary, she talked about discipline," Tipton said.
"In the past two years, we have had a significant decline in the number of what we would call 'egregious behavior incidents,'" Pollio responded. "There's no doubt it is a challenge. It's been a challenge for my entire 30 year career, which is the balance between high standards for student behavior and expectations of students, while at the same time making sure students are in school so that they can learn, while at the same time having to face scrutiny from a variety of various educational groups, both Federal and State, as to whether we are disproportionately impacting certain student groups."
Another concern from the task force was about chronically absent students.
"Students zero to five days absent really does not cause a negative impact on their outcome scores," Pollio said. "So, if we can keep a student under five days absent, it really has little impact. Once they hit more than five days absence, that's when student outcomes begin to become impacted."
The next JCPS task force meeting is scheduled for Aug. 19 at 1 p.m.
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