SOS proposal

I've not seen any of the SOS materials but from what I read in this morning's City Paper--there seems to be good reason to read and discuss their information. Part of our problem is that we don't have enough information, it's hard to find it, it's really hard to interpret.

And yes, it's the rare report and overview that doesn't have some sort of point of view encouraging a specific agenda. But let's not throw out the effort without examining it first.

Today, the group — called Save Our Schools (or SOS) — will present to the council and to the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce a program they say will greatly improve the city’s public schools.

But before doing so, SOS will present a series of statistics, culled primarily from the Tennessee Department of Education, that SOS feels shows Metro Nashville Public Schools is lagging behind most other Tennessee school systems.

I've advocated for paying excellent teachers excellent wages here several times and the SOS proposal apparently includes teacher bonuses for taking on the hard jobs and succeeding. Superintendent Garcia also suggested that teachers receive incentive pay in his state of the schools speech in February.

"We must also reward excellence and pay our employees according to their effort and results. We must enter the dialogue of incentive pay so teachers are encouraged and rewarded for teaching successfully in our more difficult schools. We must move forward on these issues."

So--bring it on SOS. Let's see what you've got.