Crane taking look at Career Ladder pay program

The Crane Elementary School Board will consider continuing its Career Ladder program among other agenda items at its regular board meeting today at 6 p.m. at 4250 W. 16th St.
 
Career Ladder is an incentive pay program for teachers to earn extra money based on improved academic performance of targeted students, Janet Shields, Crane's director of curriculum and professional development, said.
 
"It's a tool to attract and retain effective teachers and the incentive is compensation," Shields said.
 
Career Ladder funds come out of the maintenance and operating budget and are allocated for $3,515.86 per student and amounts to a total budget of about $1,460,000 for the program, said Larry Wicks, director of management services for Crane.
  
In order to continue the program the Board must annually approve the district's base tax level which this year is 5.5 percent or 11 cents per $100 of assessed valuation of residential homes in the district, Cindy Didway, Crane superintendent said. The program is in place within 27 school districts across Arizona but Crane is the only one in Yuma County with the program, she said.
 
And on the recommendation of the Arizona School Board Association (ASBA), a nonprofit governed by representatives of the public school districts, the board will vote to adopt Policy JRCE informing parents and students about the collection of biometric data.
 
"We don't have any current collection of data or plan any future use of biometric data but it just let's parents know of the policy in order to comply with state and federal law," Didway said.
 
Some biometric data is used to open certain laptop computer programs and no one can be certain what future technological requirements may be, she said. Biometric data is any unique physiological or behavioral characteristics to identify individuals such as fingerprints, face or voice recognition, or iris or retinal scans. Senate bill 1216 prohibits the gathering of such data without parental permission.
 
The board will also consider Policy JFAA, a provision in state law that will allow a student living with a family member in the district who is awaiting the outcome of a guardian or custodial proceeding to be admitted to school under the open enrollment policy.
 
Also, the board will be informed of ASBA's top 10 priorities they set for the legislative session, in which they would like to see the legislature take favorable action upon. ASBA will discuss their goals in greater detail on Oct. 23 at Gila Ridge High School. The agenda opens at 5 p.m. with a pre-session and then holds a 6 p.m. dinner and training session with the" items that are on the ASBA's radar," Didway said.


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William Roller can be reached at wroller@yumasun.com or 539-6858.