Two Highland fourth grade teaching positions filled, third one remains up in the air

Despite their best efforts, the Crookston School Board was not able to fill out its fourth-grade teaching staff at two meetings Wednesday, meaning that parents of Highland School fourth grade students won't know for certain at Welcome Back to School registration day Thursday who exactly will be teaching their kids when school starts in around three weeks.

After an hour-long meeting of the combined Personnel and Finance committees Wednesday afternoon at the high school, the board, at a subsequent meeting, unanimously approved the hiring of first-year teacher Bethany Bratlie, who originally comes from Drayton, N.D. and now lives in Grand Forks, and Kathleen Omerza, from Ely, Minn.

But due to a lack of a motion to approve a contract with Kari Heppner, who lives in Crookston but works as an elementary teacher in the Fisher School District, a resolution to hire her died. Although there was talk of trying to come up with some kind of arrangement to hire Heppner, she told the Times Thursday afternoon that she will be staying in Fisher, where she teaches third grade. Heppner, who lives in Crookston, taught here for 11 years some time ago.

Although she emerged as the top choice of the majority of the panel who interviewed eight candidates for the three open fourth grade teaching positions at Highland, Heppner's chances to be approved by the board took a hit when she requested to be hired at "Step 8," which would boost her starting salary to reflect her experience - a common hiring practice with teachers - but also would have given her eight years toward full 403B benefits in the teacher contract. Typically, teachers in Crookston don't get eight years of credit toward full 403B benefits; they must work 15 years here before getting a 100 percent match of their retirement contributions. It became clear at the committee meeting Wednesday that if the resolution to hire her came to an actual vote, it would be unanimously rejected.

If Heppner or anyone else would be hired with more 403B benefits than they'd typically be eligible for, the teacher's union, the Crookston Education Association, would need to approve a memorandum of understanding that stipulates the deviation from the current contract in place with the CEA is an "exception," and not precedent-setting.

Board members, months away from starting negotiations on a new contract with the CEA, were very hesitant, however, to enter into those negotiations on the heels of giving a newly hired teacher eight years toward full 403B benefits.

Timing, geography

Then there's the fact that the 2012-13 school year is less than three weeks from getting underway. Board members are still feeling the sting of having a trio of fourth-grade teachers resign at mid-summer for jobs in the Grand Forks School District, and there's a hesitancy to turn around and hire a teacher under contract with the Fisher School District so late in the game, and from so close down the highway.

Board member Robin Brekken said he wouldn't vote for Heppner's hire, even if she agreed to drop her 403B request. "I certainly didn't appreciate Grand Forks yanking three of our teachers," he said. "I'm just not going to do that to our neighbors. I don't want this to become a common, accepted practice in northwest Minnesota."

It appeared, though, that at least a majority of the Personnel Committee was prepared to recommend that the full board approve Heppner's hiring, if some sort of agreeable arrangement could be reached with her that didn't involve 403B.

"We all have friends and colleagues in Fisher," committee chair Frank Fee said during the committee meeting. "But if we say yes to this and they get mad, is that really our main concern right now?"

Heppner attended Wednesday's board meeting. Fee said after no motion was made to hire Heppner that her abilities as a teacher are not the issue, but that the 403B situation for certain, and maybe the timing and geography, too, were of concern to board members.

With Heppner staying in Fisher, the interview panel indicated that a fourth teacher candidate was definitely worth hiring, and the candidate, with a masters degree and 20 years of experience, would likely be contacted.

The third teacher needs to be hired because longtime sixth grade teacher Larry Anderson, who will spend his final semester at Highland working as a small group and individual math enrichment instructor and tutor before retiring, was not able to come to an agreement with the administration to return for one more year as a sixth grade teaher. Had that happened, Jamie Kresl, set to succeed Anderson in sixth grade, could return to her original fourth grade teaching assignment.

But Anderson preferred to return to the days at Highland when the sixth grade staff team taught, with him teaching math and science and his partner teacher teaching English and social studies. In recent years, Highland has operated under a "self-contained" teaching format in sixth grade, where the students stay in one room to be taught all of the core subjects by a single teacher.

With new Highland Principal Lela Olson preferring to stick with the self-contained instructional approach, board members felt it was important to support her.