Senate Bill No. 652
(By Senators Wells and Plymale)
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[Introduced March 20, 2009; referred to the Committee Education;
and then to the Committee on Finance.]
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A BILL to amend and reenact §18A-3-2b of the Code of West Virginia,
1931, as amended, relating to teacher induction; teacher
mentor stipend; enforcement of teacher mentor provisions;
teacher mentor selection; limited authority to select teacher
from a different school; and summer academy for beginning
teachers.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That §18A-3-2b of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended,
be amended and reenacted to read as follows:
ARTICLE 3. TRAINING, CERTIFICATION, LICENSING, PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT.
§18A-3-2b. Beginning teacher internships.
(a) Every person to whom a professional teaching certificate
is awarded after January 1, 1992, shall successfully complete a beginning teacher internship program under the provisions of this
section, except such persons who were awarded a professional
teaching certificate on the basis of at least five years teaching
experience in another state.
The amendments to this section passed
during the 2009 regular session of the Legislature become effective
for the school year beginning July 1, 2009.
The beginning teacher internship program is a school based
program intended to provide appropriate staff development
activities and supervision to beginning teachers to assure their
competency for licensure to teach in the public schools of this
state. The beginning teacher internship program shall consist of
the following components:
(1) A professional support team comprised of
the following:
(A) The school principal, who shall be the chair of the
professional support team;
(B) A member of the county professional staff development
council; and
(C) An experienced classroom teacher at the school,
subject to
subsection (e) of this section, who teaches the same or similar
subject and grade level as the beginning teacher,
who is selected
in accordance with subsection (d) of this section and who shall
serve as a mentor for the beginning teacher;
(2) An orientation program to be conducted prior to the
beginning of the instructional term, but within the employment term, supervised by the mentor teacher;
(3) The scheduling of joint planning periods for the mentor
and beginning teacher throughout the school year;
(4) Mentor observation of the classroom teaching skills of the
beginning teacher for at least one hour per week during the first
half of the school year and which may be reduced at the discretion
of the mentor to one hour every two weeks during the second half of
the school year;
(5) Weekly meetings between the mentor and the beginning
teacher at which the mentor and the beginning teacher discuss the
performance of the beginning teacher and any needed improvements,
which meetings may be reduced at the discretion of the mentor to
biweekly meetings during the second half of the school year;
(6) Monthly meetings of the professional support team to
discuss the performance of the beginning teacher which meetings may
include all mentor members of all professional support teams at the
school if helpful in the judgment of the participants;
(7) In-service professional development programs provided
through the professional development project of the center for
professional development for beginning teachers and for mentors
both of which will be held in the first half of the school year;
(8) The provision of necessary release time from regular
duties for the mentor teacher, as agreed to by the principal and
the mentor teacher, and a stipend of at least
six hundred dollars $1,500 for the mentor teacher for duties as a mentor teacher; and
(9) A final evaluation of the performance of the beginning
teacher completed by the principal on a form developed by the state
board.
of education
(b) The final evaluation form shall be submitted by the
principal to the county
school superintendent and shall include one
of the following recommendations:
(1) Full professional status: A recommendation of full
professional status indicates that the beginning teacher has
successfully completed the internship program and in the judgment
of the principal has demonstrated competence as a professional
educator;
(2) Continuing internship status: A recommendation of
continuing internship status indicates that in the judgment of the
principal the beginning teacher requires further supervision and
further employment in the district should be conditioned upon
successful completion of an additional year under a beginning
teacher internship program; or
(3) Discontinue employment: A recommendation to discontinue
employment indicates that in the judgment of the principal the
beginning teacher has completed two years of employment under
supervision in a beginning teacher internship program, but has not
demonstrated competence as a professional educator and will not
benefit from further supervised employment in the district.
(c) The Legislature finds that there is inconsistent
compliance with the requirements of this section. Therefore, in
order to enforce the provisions of this section:
(1) Each county shall apply to the State Superintendent for
the funds to pay the stipend to each teacher mentor, and
distribution of those funds to each county is conditional pursuant
to this subsection;
(2) The State Superintendent shall develop an electronic form
that allows each member of the professional support team and the
beginning teacher to document compliance with this section. This
electronic form shall be an online form accessible through the
Internet, and is intended to be a simple and efficient form to
complete;
(3) The State Superintendent shall review at least a
representative sample of the forms from each county and make a
determination as to the degree of compliance with the teacher
mentor requirements. The review shall include a check of the
responses of the beginning teacher and each member of the
professional support team supporting that beginning teacher to
ensure the responses are consistent. If there are any inconsistent
responses found among a beginning teacher and any members of the
professional support team supporting that beginning teacher, the
State Superintendent shall investigate;
(4) If the State Superintendent makes a determination that there was substantial noncompliance with the requirements of this
section to the degree that beginning teachers employed by a county
board derived almost no benefit from the teacher mentor program
for any two of the last five years, the superintendent shall not
distribute any of the stipend funds to that county the year after
the second determination of substantial noncompliance was made.
(5) If the State Superintendent finds either substantial
noncompliance or a lessor degree of noncompliance for any single
year, he or she shall take less harsh action as he or she considers
appropriate.
(d) In selecting a teacher mentor, the following criteria
shall be given equal weight:
(1) Seniority;
(2) Whether the teacher has expertise in the same subject
matter as the beginning teacher;
(3) Whether the teacher has previous experience instructing or
supervising adults;
(4) Whether the teacher has demonstrated excellence when
working outside the classroom in the school or community;
(5) Whether the teacher holds National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards certification; and
(6) Whether the teacher holds the Master Mentor Teacher
Advanced Credential or the Mentor Teacher Advance Credential
created by state board rule.
(e) Although subsection (a) of this section requires a mentor
teacher to be assigned to the same school as the beginning teacher
he or she is mentoring, if no qualified teachers are employed at
the school to mentor a beginning teacher, notwithstanding
subsection (a) of this section, an experienced classroom teacher
may be selected from another school within the county or outside
the county to mentor the beginning teacher. To the extent
possible, innovative solutions shall be used to overcome the
geographic problems associated with selecting a teacher from a
different school. These innovative solutions may include
communication through telephone and e-mails, observing classroom
instruction through live or recorded video and other innovative
methods of overcoming the geographic problems.
(f) The Center for Professional Development shall make
available to each beginning teacher a three week summer academy
after his or her first year of teaching beginning with the summer
after the school year beginning July 1, 2009. The academy shall at
least include instruction on classroom management, including
managing disruptive students. Although enrollment in the academy
is voluntary for the beginning teachers, those beginning teachers
who complete the academy after their first year of teaching shall
receive three hours of credit toward the six semester hours of
approved credit required as a condition of certificate renewal
pursuant to section three of this article. The Center for Professional Development may charge a fee for enrolling in the
academy, but may not charge any amount more than necessary to cover
the cost of the academy.
NOTE: The purpose of this bill is to increase the stipend
paid to mentor teachers; create a mechanism to enforce the teacher
mentor requirements; set forth the criteria for the selection of
teacher mentors; allow teacher mentors to be selected from a
different school if a qualified teacher is not available in the
same school the beginning teacher is assigned to; and to create a
summer academy for beginning teachers after their first year of
teaching.
Strike-throughs indicate language that would be stricken from
the present law, and underscoring indicates new language that would
be added.