Refunding Academic Coaching in Pinellas County by Reducing Benefits for School Board Members

The Pinellas County School Board (PCSB) has decided, in order to reduce the deficit for the 2010-2011 school year, to eliminate extra pay for teachers who provide academic coaching to the students enrolled in speciality programmes. These programs include the International Baccalaureate (IB), the Center for Advanced Technologies (CAT), and the Pinellas County Center for the Arts (PCCA). The school board believes that these programmes are not essential to the education of the students, and that by cutting them the county would save $700,000 a year.

However, the Academic Coaching programmes provide essential services to the students enrolled in these programs, such as the IB Programme. Academic Coaching payment covers many non-negotiable requirements of the Diploma Programme, including the advisement on the Extended Essay, as well as Creativity, Action and Service (CAS), both of which are required for the IB Diploma. These aforementioned requirements are also necessary for IB students to receive a State of Florida Diploma. To jeopardise these programmes would jeopardise the amount of passing students in the School District.

Besides the benefits of Academic Coaching for the student, the extra salary is the key thing that draws teachers into teaching these programmes, which require more time in all aspects than their traditional counterparts. To eliminate the incentives for teachers to be in their current position is to eliminate new International Baccalaureate teachers, as well as possibly lose current personnel.

The IB, CAT, and PCCA programmes are shining examples of what is possible in education here in Pinellas County. To defund them would only harm the working examples of quality secondary education, something this county desperately needs. The State of Florida awards funds to counties for the amount of students that obtain a diploma, and they award even more funds for students that pass programmes like these. To effectively dismantle these programmes would only increase the budget defect even more.

Retaining funding for Academic Coaching could be easily accomplished by decreasing the employment benefits for the members of the School Board. According to the operating fund for 2009-2010, the School Board members get on average over $242,000 in benefits per person a year. The School Board is also currently the only group that gets benefits worth more than their salary, which averages to over $129,000 per person a year. With the above information in mind, the signatories of this petition wish for the employment benefits for the school board members to be decreased by 40\%, in order to fund the academic coaching programmes in Pinellas County.