By PAUL FOY, Associated Press

Updated 10:18 am, Thursday, February 28, 2013

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A school board member’s complaint about inexperienced teachers at schools in Salt Lake City’s working-class neighborhoods is raising a debate about perceived inequalities in public education.

Board member Michael Clara filed the federal civil-rights complaint this week against his own school district, where administrators responded with a statement scolding him for ignoring protocols. Clara said he tried to bring up a discussion but was shut down at board meetings.

Clara said the district’s own data shows west-side schools have long been a dumping ground for inexperienced or ineffective teachers.

“I’m looking at educational outcomes for students, and there’s no dispute it’s in an academic ditch for my community,” said Clara, a Utah Transit Authority planner who lives in Glendale, a Salt Lake City neighborhood surrounded by major highways. “Over the years it has changed very little — most of our Hispanic students are dropping out of school.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office will investigate the complaint, agency spokesman Jim Bradshaw told The Associated Press. The federal government can force changes in public schools or suspend funding if it decides a complaint is valid. Bradshaw offered no timeframe for the investigation.

Salt Lake City is bisected by Interstate 15, which marks two cities — one wealthy, the other mostly modest or poor. Clara lives on the west side, where he says schools have long been shortchanged.

At Meadowlark Elementary in Rose Park, another west-side neighborhood, district data show as many as 67 percent of teachers have been classified as ineffective, he said.

Administrators and a union official for teachers said Clara was looking at incomplete or selective measures of student achievement and assigning full blame to teachers for a variety of factors that start with the rich diversity of Salt Lake City’s 25,000 students, who speak 100 languages or dialects, with 60 percent from families in poverty.

“You have to be careful with blanket statements that don’t hold water,” said Sharon Gallagher-Fishbaugh, president of the Utah Education Association.

Gallagher-Fishbaugh was an elementary school teacher on Salt Lake’s east side for 32 years. She said she mentored many excellent teachers on the west side.

Superintendent McKell Withers said it wasn’t clear whether Salt Lake’s west side has more inexperienced teachers than most districts.

Turnover is a problem across the district because new teachers start out with a 1-year contract meant to test their abilities. Some quit, others aren’t invited back, he said.

“We’re ahead of most of the districts in the state and maybe most of the urban districts across the country trying to recruit and retain high effective teachers,” Withers said Thursday.

Clara acknowledged he didn’t have a full picture of student achievement or teacher effectiveness but complained the district was withholding information. Withers said much of the data is just being developed under a new process of accountability.

Clara joined the board in January and has been pressing his concerns on a board that says he’s trying to rush things too fast.

“We talk about teacher effectiveness every year — how you improve that,” Withers said. “It will be on a future agenda. It was never denied a place on an agenda.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Complaint-charges-inequality-at-Salt-Lake-schools-4316921.php#ixzz2MEZiA0Pp