Meeting was an opportunity to discuss topics on birth certificates and hiring substitute teachers

Austin public school educators met with their state legislators Thursday, outlining concerns that ranged from how student names are recorded on birth certificates, to changing requirements for hiring short-call substitute teachers.

For an hour, teachers, school board members and administrators suggested changes to laws to which District 27A Rep. Jeanne Poppe, DFL-Austin and District 27 State Sen. Dan Sparks, DFL-Austin.

The annual get-together was conciliatory and appreciated on both sides.

“It is just an opportunity to talk and discuss things, in terms of making life better for the students and community here in Austin,” said Superintendent of Schools David Krenz.

Director of Research, Assessment and Evaluation Corey Haugen asked for change on the Minnesota birth certificates, that do not have separate boxes for first, middle and last names.

“That was fine when someone like me, at 43, was born; today, that’s not the way we are anymore,” he said.

Students often enroll with “two first names, two last names,” or a combination, he said. With a high level of diversity in the district, it can be hard to determine just what a student’s last name is. Minnesota’s certificates, he said, are one of the most difficult to process. State reports and academic reporting require the information, but that information, he said, “is often hard to discern.”

“It has a relatively simple fix,” he said, after showing a sample of an Iowa birth certificate, that specifies names easily. “But it haunts a lot of schools here.”

Some other items that gained discussion:

•Sumner Elementary School Principal Sheila Berger said new students identified as English Language Learners face an undue amount of testing in the spring of the year. They must first take the lengthy and exhausting ACCESS test, which evaluates an ELL student’s progress over a year. Shortly thereafter, all ELL students are required to take MCA testing — the required Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments — which all students must take.

“It seems cumbersome and unnecessary to test them twice,” said Berger. “It’s an overwhelming amount of testing. First you give them the ACCESS test and then you turn around and test with an on-level reading test — when we already know they cannot read on-level.”

“We wouldn’t want that for our own children, much less for a child who is in school in a brand new country,” said Executive Director of Educational Services John Alberts.

•Sheri Willrodt, director of special services, discussed the cost associated with the transport of some special needs children open enrolled into other school districts. Children with special needs have an Individualized Education Program (IEP) that outlines a student’s needs and services. If the IEP does not put special qualifications on a student’s transportation to school and the student is open-enrolled from another district, the student’s family must take the responsibility for getting the child to, at the very least, the district border of the school district. Then, the host district will provide transportation from the border to school.

However, if the IEP says the student needs to be transported “door-to-door,” it is the host school district who must pay the cost of the transportation.

“So if we have a student from Rochester who wants to attend school here, we have to send a bus to Rochester to pick him up,” Willrodt said. The cost, she said, was a concern expressed by many districts.

•Haugen also brought up an “ethical quandary” faced by administrators in regard to graduation rates. When a student moves from the district but does not tell the district personnel that he is leaving, staff and faculty work to find out where the student has gone. Often that is not possible, and so, for state reporting, Austin marks the student’s location as “unknown.” Haugen noted that in doing so, the district’s graduation rate is affected.

But other school districts, he said, mark such a student as having moved to another state, although they have no idea if that is true or not. But by doing so, their graduation rates are not affected. Consequently, Austin’s honesty of reporting earns the district a lower graduation rate, while another district that inaccurately reports information is awarded with a higher rate.

“We believe in reporting what we know, not making things up,” agreed Krenz.

•Human Resources Director Mark Raymond asked about licensing requirements of short-call substitute teachers. State law requires all substitutes hold a four-year bachelor’s degree. Raymond argued  the requirement — especially in view of substitute shortages — is unnecessary in an age when teachers, even when ill, remain a presence in the classroom, even when not physically present. Class web sites and online communication keep students working regardless of the teacher being absent. The substitute is still needed, but not necessarily for actively teaching a lesson.

Raymond said he is short, on average, a total of three to seven substitutes daily. Other teachers use their prep hours to help out, while administrators will also take classes to fill in.