qualityeducation203.org

At the January 9^th District 203  workshop meeting, Kathy Duncan, D203 Chief Academic Officer; Carrie Ray, Foreign Language Instructional Coordinator for NNHS; and a consultant, Dr. Carl Falsgraf, founder of The Center for Applied Second Language Studies, made a far reaching presentation to the board proposing to extend D203’s foreign language immersion program from the current 3 elementary schools to all 14 beginning in 2013. Additionally, the District would look to offer an appropriate foreign language program for these students in middle school. If approved, D203 would be the only district in the nation offering foreign language immersion at every elementary school.

School districts in Illinois are poised to implement a number of far ranging reforms that will fundamentally alter the public education system here. From the implementation of the Common Core Standards dealing with curriculum and a new testing protocol to Illinois' Performance Evaluation Reform Act and SB7, statutes that transform teacher and principal evaluations, tenure and dismissal, the changes are far-reaching. Added to this is the forthcoming re-authorization of NCLB that also has the potential to impact school operations. The following synopsis of the PERA is the first in a series discussing the various reform initiatives. 

Over the years there has been a considerable amount of confusion and criticism regarding teacher salaries and raises. Certain critics of public education, typified by the Champion.org website who, until recently, incorrectly claimed large salary increases (as a result of their faulty analyses) caused many to feel that teachers had received overly generous increases.

The following is an in-depth examination of recent District 203 teachers annual salary increases and of the method that is used to interpret them. We thank Dave Zager, Asst. Superintendent of Finance for District 203, for providing the data for this document.

District 203 schools offer far more than just academic instruction. The district has a talented pool of employees who offer a wide range of extracurricular activities that provide a variety of benefits to students.