Opinion

LETTER TO THE EDITOR, Starley Craig, Liberal

According to the Leader & Times, USD 480 now has 200 certified teachers and 100 non-certified personnel (teachers) on the staff. Those non-certified teachers include high school students, I assume, since it states USD 480 is planning on helping them with Associate’s degrees after they graduate from high school.

They also have two divisions of non-certified staff. One is composed of people (high school students?) who have no interest in becoming actual teachers, and the other group composed of people who have signed up for a plan to maybe go on with their own educations. They are called “resident Interns, and according to the paper, “are those we’re investing in each other” whatever that means.

It can mean those who want free tuition reimbursements from USD 480. So the Recruitment Committee, in order to keep the maybe-will-be teachers form “taking the money and run” (direct quote) they will have criteria in place. Yay.

Pre-licensed staff (how about non-licensed staff?) needs a manual for the board so they will know how much pay is going to whoever is in the classroom. I can hardly wait. These non-licensed teachers, we teach and also serve as interventionists (what is that, exactly?) Does an interventionist not require specialized training for whatever it is they do? Can a high school student do it?) surely need to know what they are paid.

Way off the subject — What happens in a couple of years from now when the fake grass football fields need to be replaced? We have $5.1 million in fake grass now. It doesn’t last forever. In four years it is in “needs to be replaced” mode..

Why doesn’t anyone want to teach in Liberal? That’s the basic question. Maybe the board could buy a neat program to tell them why. It could probably tell USD 480 what programs (I hate what word) we are already in and what partnerships we already have — apparently we don’t know.

But not to worry: We have a new marketing and promotions guy, who on his first day, already looked at other schools’ job sites, Web sites and social media. He is going to be a huge help.