The newly created Chief Area Officer positions at CPS will each earn about $151,000 per year, according to documents from the school district. For the nine previous Area Instructional Officers who will slide into the new roles, that’s no change in salary, but some CPS administrators will get raises of as much as 43 percent.
The new positions replace the existing Area Instructional Officer structure. The new officers will be responsible for geographic clusters of elementary schools or high schools, meeting regularly with principals to share performance data, CPS has said. One officer will be responsible for overseeing all special education programs.
The new positions were approved in a unanimous vote at Wednesday night’s Board of Education meeting and without any public discussion. Though two reporters asked for the list of officers at the end of that meeting, Board Secretary Estela Beltran said she could not immediately hand over that information because the board reports had not been finalized with internal tracking numbers.
Beltran provided the reports this morning, more than 36 hours after the end of the meeting. Beltran did not immediately return a call this morning seeking comment.
The biggest raises for new area officers are those administrators who held very different positions previously.
A senior instruction and assessment manager, Akeshia Craven, is getting a 43 percent raise after previously making $105,000.
Curriculum director Shawn Smith, who made $115,000, is getting a 31 percent raise.
Melissa Megliola, the officer of Autonomous Management and Performance Schools, is getting a 20 percent raise over her previous $125,500 salary, though her title is not changing.
In total, the salaries of the 21 area officers, plus the AMPS officer, will be $3.3 million per year.
Jackson Potter, the co-chair of the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, says the pay is too high for positions that in the past have done too little to help teachers and schools.
“This type of institutional mechanism of CAOs or AIOs, whatever you want to call them, is really insufficient in assisting in creating better models for schooling,” Potter says.
Discuss
VITTORIO JACKSON, 08-30-2009
Professional development in Chicago Public Schools is ineffective. That is no cheap Daley.
Mr. Huberman, I believe you and your MBA Team and CAO's should study with all earnest the report United States Is Substantially Behind Other Nations in Providing Teacher Professional Development That Improves Student Learning; Report Identifies Practices that Work
http://www.srnleads.org/resources/publications/nsdc.html
“Most states and districts are still not providing the kind of professional learning that research suggests improves teaching practice and student outcomes,” says Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommon Professor of Teaching and Teacher Education at Stanford University, who wrote the report along with a team of researchers from Stanford’s School Redesign Network. “The research tells us that teachers need to learn the way other professionals do—continually, collaboratively, and on the job. The good news is that we can learn from what some states and most high-performing nations are doing.”
VITTORIO JACKSON, 08-30-2009
Mr Huberman, be real and honest with your teachers! It seems on face value you just changed the acronym from AIO to CAO. For the elementary schools, are you giving your CAO power to INCREASE the time of the instructional day? Are you giving your CAO's the power to provide resources like money for substitutes or additional prep teacher so that there is more collaboration time built into the day across and between grades. Effective Leadership is one crucial component necessary for whole school improvement. Mr. Huberman, can you and your CAO's creating a culture of shared leadership and collaboration? Mr. Huberman did you know that improvement is possible by developing the capacity of current staff and realigning existing resources. Mr. Huberman did you know that student learning improves when teachers implement evidence-based, high leverage instructional practices. This is not kill and drill test preparation. We don't need "innovation" that does not include the for mentioned points.
Mr. Huberman please come correct and don't bull *hit your teachers, because we can see through the BS. We had plenty of that with Vallas and Duncan. We can smell it a mile away.
So Mr. Huberman, do your CAO's have to juice to make a positive difference or do a beat down on your teachers to get the tests up?
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