Board members raise questions
School leaders say staff developer "essential"



GUILDERLAND — Administrators passionately defended the need to provide staff with ongoing training as some school board members last week questioned the appointment of a new staff developer.

Ultimately, after an executive session, Nancy Brumer was appointed to the post for a year. A teacher at Altamont Elementary School since 2001, she replaces another elementary teacher, Kathy Oboyski-Butler, who left for another district. Brumer will earn $67,000 this year.
The subject was broached by board member Hy Dubowsky who said the departure of the former staff developer left "a blank spot" and a chance for re-examination.
"The only time in government you can get rid of someone is when there’s no one in the position," Dubowsky said.
While the school board president, Richard Weisz, pointed out that the district budget, approved by voters in May, included the post, board member Peter Golden, referring to Superintendent Gregory Aidala, said, "As Greg has said many times, the budget is just a spending plan."
Golden went on to question if staff development at Guilderland is "configured properly."
Two years ago, Golden started questioning the district’s means of providing health-insurance for employees, leading to eventual changes and significant savings. At last Tuesday’s meeting, he said money wasn’t saved on medical care until after "a roller-coaster ride."
He proposed an "overall" look at staff development programs.
"I just wonder if we’re multiplying layers here," said board member Barbara Fraterrigo. "I know we need somebody but I don’t want two people," she said, referring to an appointment the board also was making for the newly-created post of career and technology supervisor.
She went on, referring to the assistant superintendent for instruction, Nancy Andress, "I know in the old days, poor Nancy did everything."
Superintendent Aidala interrupted Fraterrigo to say the job of staff developer was not an administrative position. "This is a teacher who works with other teachers," he said. "It helps to insure success...It’s been one of the hallmarks of the district," he said of the professional development opportunities offered to teachers.
Aidala also said, "I think it would be a very serious drop...to not go forward with this position." And, he said, overextending the new technology supervisor would be "a recipe for failure."
"This would set us back a great deal," agreed Andress. Part of what attracts good teachers to the district, she said, is its reputation for professional development.
"It’s not poor Nancy," she responded to Fraterrigo. "The job I do has changed a lot in seven years," she said, referring to the added requirements for massive amounts of testing and analysis of data. "I don’t have as much time to coordinate and set up workshops," she said, which is work she still relishes.
Andress called the job of the staff developer "essential."
Other board members spoke in support of the post. The board’s newest member, Gloria Towle-Hilt, who just retired after a decades-long career of teaching at Guilderland, said the staff developer was "a very important position" and that the staff valued continual training.
Board member Colleen O’Connell, who won her bid for re-election teamed with Towle-Hilt, said it was practical to keep teacher turnover low and she called the training "an investment in those we hire."
She also said it had been vetted during the citizens’ budget review process. "This is not shared decision-making here," said O’Connell. "There was no hue and cry for this post to be removed."
Board member Cathy Barber said she didn’t see overlap between the technology supervisor’s job and the staff developer’s job. She called the staff developer "much more of a generalist."

Administrators’ philosophy

Everyone in the Guilderland School District is expected to be a learner — not just the students but the teachers and administrators as well, Aidala told The Enterprise this week.

For example, during the monthly meetings of the administrative council, Aidala said, time was set aside this year to discuss Whatever It Takes, with committee members presenting a chapter of the book at each meeting.
"As administrators, we’re focusing on what we can do to help students perform on a higher level, especially students with difficulties," said the superintendent.

Aidala, who is retiring from the district next fall after seven years at its helm, said one of the things that attracted him to Guilderland in the first place was its emphasis on professional development.
"When we talk about a community of learners, we mean it," he said.

Andress said the commitment has been there since the 1970s, beginning with summertime workshops for new teachers.
"When we work with children coming into kindergarten, they have visited the school several times and are excited about returning on opening day," said Aidala. "I would apply a similar description to new teachers. We do extensive work with them...This week, we are having reading and writing workshops."
"So many of these young teachers say, ‘We heard you have professional development that will support my learning or extend my learning,’" said Andress. "It’s important to us that it be coherent and sustained over time."
Comparing it to ongoing training in the medical profession, she said "You wouldn’t want to go to a doctor who hadn’t read journals and been to conferences."

The training comes with a price tag. Aidala estimated that it costs $800,000 annually. That includes the salaries for the staff developer and the data coordinator and part of Andress’s salary, he said. It also includes compensating teachers for their work and paying substitute teachers to cover their classes while they attend workshops. It covers, too, payment for conferences outside the district and for bringing experts in.
"Out of an $82 million budget, that’s less than 1 percent," said Aidala.
"We don’t do drive-by staff development," said Andress, describing the approach in some districts that offer a singe day of unrelated workshops.
"It has to be ongoing; it has to be sustained over time," she said of effective training.

The state requires 175 hours of training over five years for new teachers, which Guilderland teachers usually complete within two years, said Andress.
Asked if Guilderland teachers are required to do more training, Andress said, "If they do not attend, that would affect their evaluation."

Andress was inspired to develop Guilderland’s current model when she and other administrators visited the Durham School District outside of Toronto.
"I wanted to have two staff developers, one for elementary and one for secondary...I would love to see that," she said. "There is such power in skilled teachers working with other teachers."

Andress settled for one staff developer. The first was Jackie LaRosa, followed by Oboyski-Butler, and now Brumer. All three were highly-regarded elementary-school teachers hired from within the district.
"The role is to work directly with teachers, not in an evaluative sense," said Andress. "They can work on techniques like building community in a classroom or on anti-bullying techniques."

At the secondary level, Andress said, the staff developer might teach how to work as a team, for example, helping a cabinet learn to build consensus.

Besides working with teachers, the staff developer has also worked with groups at Guilderland as diverse as secretaries and bus drivers, said Andress.

Aidala described a workshop Kathy Oboyski-Butler put on for the Guilderland Teachers’ Association mentoring program last fall on parent conferences and open houses.

In one interactive part of the three-hour workshop, Aidala was paired with a new teacher, doing role playing as a parent in a conference.
"New teachers got to interact with veteran teachers and learned a lot," he said.
"It’s an investment in our teachers," Aidala concluded of professional development. "We feel very strongly...it makes them better teachers in a holistic way."