Highly effective teachers in the Brandywine school district will have the opportunity to earn more money in the near future.

Brandywine Supt. John Jarpe presented on Monday to the school board what he calls a rough draft of his performance pay plan for teachers. As mandated by the state, Michigan schools must have such a plan in place for teachers and administrators before the end of the school year, Jarpe said.

The board is expected to vote on whether or not to approve the plan at its next meeting and, if the plan passes, teachers would be eligible to receive performance pay at the end of the school year.

Teachers would be eligible for performance pay only if they are deemed “highly effective” through the district’s teacher evaluations. There are four tiers in the teacher evaluation chart: ineffective, minimally effective, effective and highly effective.

The amount of performance pay a teacher would receive is based on how many points a teacher earns. Teachers can earn points in several ways, including student performance, teacher attendance, communication with parents, committee work, attending summer workshops and staff meeting presentations.

In creating the plan, Jarpe said he took elements from other plans from across the state and consulted with teachers and administrators.

“We’ve tried to come up with as objective a document as we can,” Jarpe said. “The key is tying it to student performance.”

According to the proposed plan, $5,000 in base funds would be available for performance pay for all teachers in the district. Jarpe said these funds would be adjusted each fall based on fall enrollment and budget projections.

“It is a pretty low ball amount,” Jarpe said. “Ideally if this thing works I would like that at a higher amount.”
In order to determine how much a point is worth in performance pay, Jarpe would take the total number of points earned by all teachers and divide that by the available base funds. An eligible teacher would receive performance pay equal to the amount of points earned multiplied by the value of a single point. For instance, if a teacher earns 10 points and a point is worth $10, the teacher would receive $100 in performance pay.

Teachers would receive the payment sometime in June, Jarpe said.

Jarpe will work on a performance pay plan for administrators next.