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Pasco schools pledge to focus on attendance — of teachers

 
Pasco school superintendent Kurt Browning wants teacher training to disrupt the classroom as little as possible.
Pasco school superintendent Kurt Browning wants teacher training to disrupt the classroom as little as possible.
Published Sept. 22, 2014

LAND O'LAKES — Pasco County schools superintendent Kurt Browning arrived at his office Wednesday to find a sea of cars in the usually half-filled parking lot.

Hundreds of teachers had come to attend training sessions as part of a concentrated two-week professional development push.

Browning supports giving teachers the training. But on the heels of announcing plans to improve the district's excessive student absenteeism rate, the superintendent had something else on his mind.

"I want teachers to be in the classroom," he said. "We need to be sensitive to the numbers and the frequency of pulling instructional staff out of classrooms."

District records show 496 teachers requested substitutes to take their place on Wednesday. Of those, 215 attended district training events.

If one of the key ways to improve student attendance is to make them more interested, Browning said, teachers need to be present to do so. He has called on his team to reduce the mass pullout days — even if the teachers are learning valuable techniques.

School leaders said they'd like that. It's already tough to find enough substitutes to fill the daily need. The district often sees as many as a quarter of sub requests go unmet.

The bigger truth is that substitutes don't provide the same level of instruction as the teachers who create the lessons and invest their time with their students all year long.

"Obviously, it is challenging when you have teachers out," said Seven Springs Middle principal Chris Dunning, who had 17 of 90 instructors out of school Wednesday. "While we have some good substitutes, it is definitely not the same as having the classroom teacher there."

In the long run, though, Dunning said the tradeoff carries benefits.

"When a teacher comes back, they might teach five or six times better," he said. "As long as it is a high-quality training, it can be a benefit."

Oakstead Elementary assistant principal Holly Oakes said the sessions at the district office have provided valuable and usable information.

"It was something we could turn right around," said Oakes, who attended a recent school-day training on collaborative planning with two teachers per grade level from her campus. "It wasn't one of those things where you put the notebook on the shelf."

The issue is, such trainings "just can't be all the time," she added.

Professional development director Chris Christoff acknowledged the need to use teachers' time wisely.

He noted that the district has scaled back from when every teacher had to attend five daylong seminars on Learning Focused Strategies, a controversial $5 million initiative from the past administration. Plans call for further reductions.

"Eventually, professional development has to be as much Web-based as we can possibly make it," Christoff said. "It is not our intent to continue to pull people out."

When issues are critical, though, pullouts might still occur. If that happens, Christoff said, the goal is to ensure that the improvements in instruction offset the teachers' absence.

"I hope the outcome of this will be kids who want to come to school more," he said.

Contact Jeffrey S. Solochek at jsolochek@tampabay.com or (813) 909-4614. Follow @jeffsolochek.