Losing Great Teachers

By Bill Hurley

Tracy Bibelnieks

After just five months of teaching at Prentice High School, Tracy Bibelnieks became so frustrated with the district’s authoritarian management style and lack of respect that she turned in her resignation. “It’s unconscionable what the teachers have to go through,” she said.

Sixty miles away in Eagle River, Steve Glandt gets alternately angry and subdued while explaining how he is being financially forced out of a profession he loves. He has lasted nine years as a teacher – all of them at Northland Pines High School – but he and his wife, Michelle, recently had twins, and he questions whether it would be responsible for him to continue teaching.

Steve Glandt

“The state has put me in a position where I have to realistically look at other options in order to provide for my family,” he said.

Bibelnieks and Glandt are examples of how low pay, poor working environments and a lack of professional respect are gradually threatening the quality of Wisconsin’s schools by driving out some of their best teachers. While many teachers are receiving layoff notices this spring, others like Bibelnieks and Glandt are quietly – and reluctantly – looking for other careers. In both cases, the result is an erosion of the state’s great teaching staff.

“Are we going to do this for less pay every year, and not do anything about it?” Glandt asked. “Eventually, you have to say enough is enough.”

Bibelnieks and Glandt have options. Their backgrounds – the same backgrounds that make them exceptional teachers – put them in a good position for finding other work. Bibelnieks has a Ph.D. in mathematical sciences and has extensive teaching experience at the high school and college level. Glandt has a law degree from Marquette University.

Into the frying pan
Bibelnieks came to the Prentice School District last fall with an impressive resume that includes teaching at University of South Carolina, Clemson University, and the College of William and Mary.

From 1992 to 1996, she was an assistant professor and associate director for educational development at the University of Minnesota School of Mathematics. There, among other things, she taught college-level math to gifted and talented students from Twin Cities schools. In 1996-97, she worked as a mathematics and marketing consultant for IBM Management Technologies.

In 1997, she and her husband, who works for IBM, moved their young family to Prentice, where she has family ties. Then last fall, after the high school math teacher left for another community, Bibelnieks saw an opportunity to put her expertise in math and education to practical use in the classroom. She was hired as the new high school math teacher.

She came in full of energy, commitment and dedication. “It was incredibly challenging but incredibly rewarding to do this,” she said.

She taught general math, algebra, pre-calculus and calculus. When she arrived at the school she was surprised at the lack of resources such as supplemental texts or graphing calculators, but was not dissuaded. “I knew how to get my hands on the resources I needed,” she said.

She felt comfortable teaching high school students, and the students responded well to her teaching style. Her classes were going well – except for general math. Right off the bat, she noticed her general math students seemed largely unresponsive and lacking in discipline.

“I was ripping my hair out in this class,” she said.

At the end of the first week, she received an e-mail sent by the special education instructor to all teachers listing this year’s special education students. At that point – for the first time – she discovered that 67% of the students in her general math class were special education students. She then discovered the remaining students were in the alternative education program for at-risk students.

Nobody had prepared her for this – she wasn’t told in advance she would have a class of special education students and she was never given training or direction on how to teach a class of special education students.

Bibelnieks was shocked, but was determined to do everything she could to help these students succeed. She knew from her teaching experience and her extensive research at Clemson University and the University of Minnesota that a classroom dominated by special needs students requires “going outside of the lines of traditional classroom management.”

“So I began questioning the homogeneity of the classroom,” she said. Principal Richard Meneau’s response was less than constructive, Bibelnieks said.

“His attitude was ... we haven’t had problems in the past, just do your job,” she said. “I was looked at as someone who was challenging the system.”

As the year went on, Bibelnieks tried to work through the system to find better approaches. She implemented an individualized approach to teaching the general math students and communicated daily with the special education and alternative education instructors. When students became disruptive, appropriate discipline measures were taken, along with other measures that were discussed and agreed upon with the special and alternative education teachers. This included, when appropriate, using alternate settings for completing math assignments.

“This system was working well,” she said, citing a dramatic improvement in some students.

But her conflict with the principal escalated, as he repeatedly challenged her for sending students to the special education classroom and for her approach to teaching.

“I would try to talk to him, but there was no open dialogue,” she said. “When I tried to work through the superintendent, he told me to just go and make my peace with Dick.

“It’s frustrating because I was trying everything I could to help these kids,” she said. “And I kept getting slapped on the wrist.”

The irony, she said, was that the district never provided her with in-service for how it felt she should run this classroom, but criticized her for everything she tried to do to deal constructively with a bad situation.

Bibelnieks couldn’t help but think that she was being targeted because of her background.

“I was definitely a threat because of my experience, education and level of expertise,” she said. “I tried to adjust and make things work, and I was slapped on the wrist and squashed under his foot repeatedly.”

Meneau told OnWEAC that he felt he treated Bibelnieks with professional respect. “I wanted her, like any teacher, to be successful,” he said.

He said he could not discuss specifics of her situation because it was a personnel matter, but said, “I had concerns that I needed to address that were legal concerns.”

Bibelnieks said the last straw was in late January after she sent a disruptive student to the special education classroom. Two days later, she received another three-page letter from Meneau which she felt accused her of only wanting to teach gifted and talented students and not correctly handling discipline situations.

Feeling as though she was being given no credit for her hard work, no recognition for her experience and expertise, and no freedom to manage her classroom effectively, she submitted her resignation.

Although she may have been a target this year, the problem is not just her, she said. The principal and superintendent treat all teachers with a lack of professional respect, and it’s hurting the students, she said.

“Teachers are afraid to say anything because they will lose their jobs,” she said. “Parents want to take student issues to the school board, but they’re afraid their children will suffer repercussions in the school.”

Now, Bibelnieks is working through the community to try to return control of the school district to the parents and citizens.

“After I resigned, it kind of sparked a fire in the community.” So far, three community meetings have been held and work toward positive change is well under way.

“We are working to bring the community of Prentice together in a common goal – learning. We will empower the citizens, teachers, parents and students of the district to ensure that our schools are a reflection of their interests and needs, and not just those of the principals, superintendent and school board.

“It is our obligation as a learning community to ensure success of all learners by creating teaching and learning environments where teachers and students thrive rather than merely survive.”

Bibelnieks is now back raising her young children full time. But she is concerned about her former colleagues and their students.

“Would I go back to teaching in the public schools? Sure. But not in that environment,” she said.

Family comes first
Professional respect – and self-respect – are also the issues for Eagle River teacher Steve Glandt. But he faces more of a bread-and-butter dilemma: Can he continue to be a teacher and still provide for his family?

As he sees it right now, the answer is no. The births of his second and third children in January – twins – are forcing him to reconsider careers.

Glandt entered the teaching profession in 1993 – the same year that school district revenue controls and the Qualified Economic Offer became law. All he has ever known as a teacher at Northland Pines High School is annual budget cuts and pay raises that don’t keep up with inflation.

He is frustrated by a lack of progress professionally, and by an unwillingness by politicians – and an inability of his teaching colleagues – to change things.

Glandt’s wife, Michelle, who is on maternity leave, plans to return to her job as a Northland Pines Spanish teacher for the last few weeks of the school year, while he takes advantage of the Family and Medical Leave law and uses sick days to stay home with the kids. Michelle is planning to take a leave of absence next year to be with her children, so the family will be down to one paycheck.
One reason Michelle is planning to stay at home next year is that she would be earning only $400 a month after day care.

But if they live off Steve Glandt’s teaching salary alone, they will just be scraping by. In fact, Glandt said that if he made just $2,000 less per year, his children would qualify for the free lunch program at school.

“It’s not that I want to live extravagantly, but I don’t think I should be near the poverty level,” he said.

Glandt blames revenue controls and the QEO law for his plight. As president of the Northland Pines Education Association, Glandt knows that unless the Legislature and governor take dramatic steps to change the laws, the pay situation for teachers is not going to improve soon.

With the restrictions of those two laws, and rising insurance costs, Northland Pines teachers are looking at possible pay cuts next year. Negotiations for a 2001-03 contract have stalled, and the district is considering imposing a QEO contract on the teachers, he said.

“Heck, I can hardly do it now. How can I do it with a wage cut next year?” he asked.

Glandt is thinking of using his law degree to find a better-paying job, but that’s not what he really wants. After earning his education degree at St. Norbert’s College and then his law degree at Marquette University, he discovered his heart is in teaching.

“I thought I could be an adequate attorney, but I could be a much better teacher,” he said. “This is what I feel is my niche, my forte. It’s what I like and what I’m good at.

“But I could provide much better for my kids in another profession.”

Resource page on school district revenue controls
Resource page on the Qualified Economic Offer law

Posted April 12, 2002