Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
REBECCA CATALANELLONow, with no funding in sight to mentor teachers, the school district has to end the pilot program just months after realigning its staff.
TRINITY - Allison Cohen was ready to give up on teaching last fall.
She would look around at her more experienced colleagues at Trinity Elementary and wonder what they were doing that was working better than her methods.
That all changed after the winter break.
Pasco County's $7.1-million implementation of a legislative pilot program known as "career ladder" meant that some of the more experienced teachers in Cohen's school would be freed up to mentor fellow teachers, modeling good practices and providing hands-on assistance.
"It literally changed my whole outlook - and, you could say, my life," said Cohen, who teaches 22 students in grades K-1.
Now, just months after all Pasco County schools rearranged their staffing plans to accommodate the pilot program, the state-mandated career ladder is ending. The state legislative session closed on Friday without funding the program next school year and probably, lawmakers say, without ever funding it at all.
"People took time away from their classrooms and now it's for nothing," School Board member Marge Whaley lamented Tuesday. "Time is not free."
Under the program, teachers could enhance their salary and advance their careers without necessarily moving far from the classroom. It required school districts to create four levels of teaching positions - lead, mentor, associate and professional - compensating teachers between $1,500 and $9,500 more per year, according to their designation.
Though the Legislature approved the program a year ago at the behest of House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, no plans were made at that time to pay the estimated $480-million cost of implementing it in all 67 Florida school districts by 2004-05, as the law mandated.
Now legislators delayed that deadline until 2005-06 but funding still is not guaranteed.
"I feel it's a sad thing if it's not going to continue," said Cathy Cellura, a mentor teacher at Trinity who worked with Cohen. "You're helping the teachers, but you're also helping the students."
But not everyone is sad to see the program go.
Lynne Webb, president of United School Employees of Pasco teachers union, said that only about 70 percent of union members approved plans to continue bargaining for the program in their 2004-05 contracts. Usually, union members approve measures by 80 to 90 percent, she said.
"This created incredible divisiveness and ill will," Webb said Tuesday. "Whatever merit the program may have had probably won't be realized."
Though USEP pushed Pasco County to be on the front-end of the career ladder wave by becoming a pilot, Webb said the union's support dissolved when the legislative funding dissolved.
"When USEP and the district agreed to pilot the program, it wasn't because we had this incredible affinity for the career ladder philosophy," Webb told School Board members. "USEP truly did view this as an opportunity to bring new revenue into our district."
If the program was going to become mandatory for all districts in less than a year, the district's thinking went, Pasco might as well have the freedom to design it on the ground floor, with state dollars assisting.
Like many educators across the state, Pasco Superintendent John Long has long been skeptical that the program would be funded.
"I really think it creates a credibility gap for Tallahassee," Long said. "I didn't ever understand how they were going to fund it."
Even Rep. Heather Fiorentino, R-New Port Richey, said Tuesday that she felt the five pilot districts should have been guaranteed three years of funding, regardless of the statewide mandate.
"I just think it's unfair for the state to ask teachers to start something and then just drop it," said Fiorentino, who is running to replace Long when he retires.
Both Fiorentino and Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said they doubted the law would be implemented in 2005-06, as last week's legislative action might suggest. "The rumor I'm hearing is that it will be repealed," Fiorentino said.
At Trinity Elementary, where the school is expecting to add nine to 15 new teachers next school year, Principal Kathryn Rushe said the staff would do what it could to try to maintain what's working about the program - even without the monetary incentives.
"Cathy didn't get into this for the money," Rushe said of Cellura, the lead teacher. "It was a chance for her to share her craft."