* Shrink the pool of newly hired teachers by retaining more of them

   A majority of new hires are "laid off" and replaced, fired or quit before they finish their 3 year probationary period. A special teacher tenure law for big cities allows the district to terminate the employment of a probationary teacher by giving them a lay off notice. In the rest of the state, a teacher who gets a layoff notice can generally not be replaced with a new hire before they turn down an offer for continued employment. For many years the district sent layoff notices to all probationary teachers every year, and rehired some and not others, which produced an enormous pool of newly hired teachers every year.
      Since 2011, the district has used ranked teacher evaluation based on student test scores and Value Added Measures, and "lays off" and replaces (or yanks) lower ranking teachers, which  is referred to as a "performance layoff." Rank and Yank is promoted by the federal government as a teacher improvement strategy: Keep the best and fire the rest.

      Even if the Value Added teacher evaluations are reliable in measuring "effectiveness," annual mass "performance layoffs" translate to a large pool of new hires concentrated in high poverty, "racially identifiable schools" which enroll few or no white students. The "churn" of teachers in these schools, the heavy exposure of students to newly hired and inexperienced teachers produced by this "teacher improvement strategy" actually results in lower quality instruction and worse outcomes for students.  
    Teachers of color are heavily assigned to high poverty, "struggling" schools, where they are more at risk of getting "performance laid off" and are more likely to quit because of poor working condition. The district projects increasing the representation of teachers of color in the workforce from 16% to 19% over 10 years, assuming teachers of color represent 40% of new hires, yet in a report to the board in early 2018, the HR department claimed that the district was doing a good job of retaining teachers of color. 88% of teachers of color retained each year compared to 92% of white teachers. That means 12% of all teachers of color are not retained, compared to 8% of whites. That is a big difference. However, these racial disparities in retention are being swept under the rug. None of the board members disputed the claim that that there is problem with retention of teachers of color.  A more in-depth analysis, looking at retention and non retention of tenured and non-tenured teachers broken down by school assignment (e.g. high vs low poverty), by race and gender could show what the problem is and suggest how to solve it.

     Can the district afford to shrink the pool of new teachers? A least one superintendent and some school board members have asserted that the district cannot afford to increase teacher retention and reduce teacher turnover in high poverty schools. Keeping a large part of the teaching force from climbing a steep pay ladder does reduce payroll costs. Their is about a 2 to 1 difference in pay between a teachers in their first year and a teacher employed for 20 years. However, the cost of recruiting and training a new is greater than the cost of allowing a teacher to climb at least several steps on the pay ladder. The net cost of retaining newer teachers and hiring fewer new teachers from year to year is less than the net cost of replacing a probationary teacher. The district could increase new teacher retention for at least a few years or longer without having to find any "new money" to pay the cost of more teachers climbing a steep pay ladder.
    Reducing teacher turnover and exposure of students to less experienced teachers can produce better outcomes for students and less need for special Ed services for students identified as having social, emotional and behavior disorders. The churn of teachers in high poverty schools produces conditions of learning less favorable to the emotional, intellectual and social development of K-12 students. Even if some money could be saved in the long run by maintaining a big pool of probationary teachers, the harm done to students is too high a price to pay.
      Policy changes needed to reduce teacher turnover rates:  

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1) Align district policy with the teacher tenure act that applies to all Minnesota Districts but the big city school districts (population over 100K). No teacher who gets a lay off notice shall be replaced by a new hire unless first offered continuing employment and the offer is turned down. No more firings without due process disguised as layoffs.

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2) The firing of any teacher for poor performance must be based on "fair" performance evaluations. Firing for poor performance should not be allowed if performance evaluation do not meet fairness criteria. Administrative due process should be available to probationary teachers on this issue. Administrative due process is not a right granted under either teacher tenure act to probationary teachers if fired for poor performance.

3) Prohibit the issuance of layoff notices in excess of the projected need to layoff teachers.  For example, if the district project a reduction of 50 teaching positions for fiscal reasons and has gotten notice from 50 teachers that they want to retire the next year, and there are enough teachers who would be excised from their positions who are qualified to replace all the retiring teachers, not one layoff notice should be issued. I suggest asking the union to agree to putting such language into the contract via a memorandum of agreement.