Continued growth means CBCS to get new principal

Elementary school principal
coming next year

Gunnison Watershed School District superintendent Doug Tredway rolled out a major reconfiguration of the district’s administration at a school board meeting on Monday, January 28, starting with a recommendation to put an elementary school principal in the Crested Butte Community School.

In addition to a new principal, Tredway proposed taking the change in administration a step further by splitting the Crested Butte Community School into a kindergarten through fifth grade Crested Butte Elementary School and a separate sixth through twelfth grade Crested Butte Middle School and Crested Butte High School.
“We started that school with 302 students, one principal and one assistant principal. That was in 1997. We are currently sitting at a school in Crested Butte that has 648 students and has the same administrative configuration,” Tredway told the board. “Next year, based on numbers from the preschool—we’re not even estimating how many people will move into the Crested Butte school—just the preschool students moving in and the seniors moving out, we’re expecting 665 students.”
More students at the school mean more per-pupil revenue (PPR), which is expected to increase next year by nearly $100 per student, to just over $6,554.
District business manager Stephanie Juneau said the increase in PPR, along with a reconfiguration of the school’s athletic director duties, would cover the new principal’s $75,000 salary and benefits package.
Tredway told the board his recommendation to divide CBCS into two schools was based not only on the increasing number of students, but also on the increasing complexity of the student body.
“Based on current numbers in the preschools in Crested Butte, we’re expecting 58 students next year, with an unusually high number of special needs students,” Tredway said, explaining that the school will have a higher proportion of special needs students than the state average. “Some of them have significant needs.”
He said some of those students would require the district to hire more educational aides, which is being accounted for in the district’s budget, but it would also increase the work load for the school’s administrators. Since the gradual implementation of Senate Bill 191 began last year, administrators are required to evaluate teachers on an annual basis.
“That’s a change from the ways we’ve done things in the past,” Tredway says. “Teachers who were non-probationary would get evaluated every third year. It really has doubled the amount of work and the number of evaluations the principals are doing.
“If you look up the ratio, we have one principal evaluating 24.5 teachers. Even more glaring is having one assistant principal evaluating 22 teachers,” Tredway said. “Now the principal’s load is a little bigger than it could be, but the assistant principal’s is way out of line. We expect our assistants to evaluate around ten teachers.
CBCS principal Stephanie Niemi, who started out at the newly opened school as a social studies teacher 17 years ago, said she is “thrilled and also quite relieved,” by Tredway’s proposal. And while she isn’t expecting her workload to shrink noticeably, she’s looking forward to focusing her attention in areas where she can do the most good.
“We have more programs, more square footage and lots of state and federal demands,” Niemi said. “Two administrators just cannot do it.” If you want quality programs you have to have quality people in place. I meet with people all the time who are considering moving here and one of the reasons is to have a great, high-quality education for their kids. But if you want to maintain quality programs, you have to have enough quality people in place.”
Niemi said the idea of bringing in another administrator has been batted around for the last several years. She praised Tredway, who took over as superintendent just last year, for recognizing the need for more administrative help at the school.
She also said the growth at CBCS means the reconfiguration couldn’t have come at a better time. With so many students moving up through the grades, the middle school is starting to see some crowding issues and Niemi is excited to have the time to focus on relieving some of that pressure.
Niemi is “seeing big class sizes and we have to work on that to preserve quality.
“I think the pressure of a K-12 position will be relieved and all the responsibility that comes with that,” she said. “But it will be quickly filled by the middle school and high school needs.”
Niemi says the CBCS staff will be able to accommodate the growth next year, but adds that the school is reaching its physical limits.
“We’ll make it work here next year for sure. The bond was a great project and the public should know that the spaces are really being used and we’re pushing the envelope,” Niemi said. “But we’ll have to start looking at that again soon.”
In his recommendations to the school board for a reconfiguration of the district’s administration, Tredway also proposed a change in title for the director of the Lake School in Gunnison.
Because the director fulfills the same duties and oversees the same number of teachers as would be expected of an assistant principal, Tredway asked the board to move that position to an assistant principal’s salary schedule. The additional $15,000 for the promotion would be appropriated during the district’s budgeting process, Tredway said.
The board voted unanimously to approve both recommendations, with Crested Butte representative Marilyn Krill making the motion to create a principal position at CBCS. The changes will take effect in the 2014-15 school year.