Answers To Candidate From The Minot Education Association (Part 4)

10. Professional development is an important growth tool for school staff. As a school board member, how would you select what and how much professional development staff will receive or be required to attend?

In the 2023 session, I introduced HB1187, which gave flexibility to school districts to provide signing bonus and changed the old bonus structure to include the opportunity for teachers to take on new roles with incentive pay.  That bill also passed both chambers unanimously and went into effect in August of 2023.  In the April 2024 meeting, the board voted unanimously to adjust the professional development for staff as recommended.  It is important to keep in mind that half days in particular have an impact on students and families that include transportation and potential supervision of kids during what would normally be considered regular work hours for the parents and families of those students.  I think the most recent proposal agreed to by the board was after many years of adjustments to include the appropriate required content and hours of professional development and I would continue to rely on fact based suggestions for changes, but keep those hours as limited as possible so as to not affect classroom instruction time and create difficult adjustments to dismissal times during the week.

11. One of the recruiting tools that school districts in North Dakota use is a solid teacher retirement incentive in TFFR. How would you ensure that MPS can continue to leverage the TFFR program as a way to recruit quality educators?

I was the prime sponsor of HB1230 in the 2013 legislative session that moved the language in the century code to fully fund TFFR at 100% actuarial funding before any changes to contribution levels were made.  That bill passed both the House and Senate unanimously and was fully supported by all interested parties.   TFFR is currently funded at approximately only 70% while 24.5% of salaries are going into the fund.  I see no changes in the upcoming session to this fund while changes were made for new public employee hires with regards to the PERS fund.  Since TFFR is the fund for all boards in the state, the only leverage seems to be the employer paying more of the requirement on behalf of the employee, however this is a false assumption.  The state has promised this benefit to retired and current enrollees and fear of eliminating the fund should never be a concern even though some have tried to use that as an invalid argument in some legislative sessions.  As a member of the legislature since 2011, my record has demonstrated that the promise of a retirement fund is available to those who qualify.  Mathematically, the TFFR benefit to a teacher upon retirement could have negative benefit in the last MPS negotiations and was a mistake in my opinion, whereby the employer picked up two points in the first year and two more points in the second year on behalf of the employee (11.75 to 7.75).  When taking into  consideration the potential loss of the additional social security benefit based on final salary, the retiree is losing that additional income upon retirement in exchange for a short term net increase in a paycheck.