If she's headed to a specific school, Kristin, that information was not made available on Wednesday.

Our school board loves to hide everything from the tax payers. That is the Baldwin/Whitehall way and had been since this school board has been in place. My sister is on Peters School Board and they don't hide behind closed doors and keep everything hushed up. The PSSA scores are also out and i'm surprised that nothing was said.

I hope the students get to vote on who represents them at School Board Meetings, should of been the students voting instead of the School Board choosing family members.

I agree. These BACKDOOR politics need to stop. As people who fund their salaries we have a right to know what is written in MOU's. Sounds like another shady deal that the taxpayers will be responsible for paying for. We can correct this though on election day by voting out the current school board members.

Dr. Lutz says 2015. Call me Bob.

Why isn't this plan in place for the 2012-2013 school year. Don't these students that are there now and graduating at the end of the year deserve a better education that what BSD is doing now.
Go up to the High School and try going to sit in one of the classes being taught at the high school, you'll never get past the guards desk.

I'm glad you don't feel like the school board is hiding anything but they are, i have to laugh at going to visit classrooms while teaching. I know of a few parents that have tried this and they were never allowed past the schools security desk even though it is a right of a parent to do so.

Tom have to agree with you there since it been approved. Guess they don't want us to know what the Dean of Sports are getting paid.

well they can take the salary of the nurse that retired that they aren't going to replace to pay Deasy. That way this year we will have 4 nurses in 5 schools (what the school board wanted anyways) and then these nurses still have to cover all the private schools in the district on top of it. Great job they did.

I agree. Teachers should get cost of living raises like everyone else does on their merits and the bad teachers should be fired. We need to get rid of tenure too. Teachers should not be allowed to strike, you want to walk a picket line then the schools should go out and hire new people to teach. Teachers are over paid to begin with and don't work a full year. They should cut all teachers pay to a certain amount per hour that they are teaching and when not in the classroom then they don't get paid.

Actually the teacher's unions are not organized like the steelworkers. They are actually professional organizations. These associations were established to ensure that teachers received fair treatment and were not victims to the whims of school board members (who didn't like a teacher's religion) or administrators with relatives to hire. These associations assured that classrooms were safe for all (including students). They still provide for practices that allow an environment where both teachers and students are able to strive for success (like limiting class size according to child development). Yes, the associations do negotiate contracts that include a salary scale and health benefits, however, teachers do realize the state of the economy and are not trying to bleed the district dry. Believe it or not, quite a few of us live here! It is my tax money, also,
Just to clarify for Mr. Barchfeld-there are no "Union bosses" in our BW schools who push for votes for either party. I have never been approached by any union member or officer in my 20 year career (in 3 DIFFERENT SCHOOL DISTRICTS) and told to vote for Democrats!
Many of the problems that are recurrent themes in this blog are actually governed by school law-tenure being one. School administrators used to have the first 2 years of a teacher's career to remove an incompetent teacher. I believe it is now 3 years. Within that time, administrators can easily remove that teacher- which I have NEVER seen occur!

No lets pay a teacher $25 an hour and the pay them the 8 hours a day that comes out to 200 a day and times it by 200 days, because they don't work even that many days a year and that comes out to 40,000 a year. Then give them cost of living raises like everyone else gets. We have so many horrible teachers in Baldwin now that aren't worth the money they are being paid and we need to get rid of tenure.

Michael I am still laughing at this as you call the teachers babysitters. Teachers aren't paid to be babysitters they are their to teach our students and don't do a good job of it as our school ranking keeps on dropping. The school already got the results from the PSSA scores and how far did we drop this year.

Guess they lower standards of our police, fire, EMS, auto workers, giant eagle(some) workers, steel workers ect... what lowers some of these is sending them of the jobs over seas... Walk up to a Baldwin Cop, Whitehall cop or a Baldwin Twp. cop and say they work under lower standards.

It is also tenure that lowers the standards of the education that our children are receiving. Once a teacher has tenure it is very hard to fire them unless a school is cutting classes and departments like the Technology Dept. I know in construction when they work on outages they put NO STRIKE clauses into the contracts between the Unions and Employer. Same should be done with Teachers Contracts, NO STRIKING at all or your job is done with. Tenure needs to go because once a teacher has tenure then were stuck with teachers becoming lax and not doing their jobs and it is our students that suffer, the school district suffers and people pull their students and put them in charter schools or just move out of the area. Teachers should be accessed every year and if they aren't doing their job then hire someone that wants to teach our students.

Here are the 2011-2012 Rankings of School in Unions and Right to Work States. Unions do not bring down Rankings nor does "Actually, the states that have unions show higher test results than the so called "right to work" states."

1. Vermont Union
2 Connecticut Union
3. Massachusetts Union
4. New Jersey Union
5. Maine Union
6. Minnesota Union
7. Virginia Right to Work
8. Wisconsin Union
9. Montana Union
10. New York Union
11. Pennsylvania Union
12. Nebraska Right to Work
13. Kansas Right to Work
14. Iowa Right to Work
15. New Hampshire Union
16. Rhode Island Union
17. Wyoming Right to Work
18. South Dakota Right to Work
19. Maryland Union
20. North Dakota Right to Work

(Continue)

21. Missouri Union
22. North Carolina Right to Work
23. Colorado Union
24. Texas Right to Work
25. Delaware Union
26. Indiana Right to Work
27. Michigan Union
28. Idaho Right to Work
29. South Carolina Right to Work
30. Washington Union
31. Ohio Union
32. Illinois Union
33. Utah Right to Work
34. West Virginia Union
35. Kentucky Union
36. Florida Right to Work
37. Arkansas Right to Work
38. Oregon Union
39. Oklahoma Right to Work
40. Georgia Right to Work
41. Tennessee Right to Work
42. Hawaii Union
43. Alabama Right to Work
44. Alaska Union
45. Louisiana Right to Work
46. California Union
47. Nevada Right to Work
48. New Mexico Union
49. Mississippi Right to Work
50. Arizona Right to Work

cc, what does that long list have to do with test scores? And what is your source for that list, you didn't plagerize it, did you? Pot, kettle, eh cc?

Most companies stopped pensions and now have 401K and they match up to a percentage. We need to do the same as the private sector done with pensions. Would save the school district money that can be used towards our students education.

teachers don't pay that much towards their pension. It is the citizens of Pennsylvania that are paying over 97% of their outrageous pensions. They should also get their pensions at a retirement age 65. This would be a big saving on the Tax Payer.

Tom so true. You understand how Unions work and how they hid things from their members.

teachers pay 5.5 to 6.5 percent of their pensions in Pennsylvania. Teachers pay $5 for a single person, $10 per family toward medical insurance per year.

I like to know how many people never sat down with their children and didn't do homework with them. Other that the foreigners that can't read or understand English I bet there isn't that many. My child said last year out of the 8 teachers that they had only 3 actually taught and the rest were lousy. Tenor needs to go and teachers need to be held accountable.

I also want to congratulate Peters, Bethel Park, Mt Lebo, Upper St Clair, West Allegheny on their exceptional school district for their PSSA scores for the 2011-2012 school year. These schools really know how to teach their students and our School Board and Administration need to go over to these schools and talk to them about what they are doing right.

By the way South Carolina is a Right To Work state and the base pay for a teacher in 2011 was $47,421. Maybe they should make Pennsylvania a Right To Work State, then maybe Baldwin School District would fire the horrible teachers that they have and bring in Decent Teachers. I know my nephew was so glad to get away from Baldwin School District and is teaching in one of the Better Schools where he is more Appreciated and has a chance of Going further in his Career since he does hold a PHD in Elementary Education and is still in College furthering his Education, not because he has to, but because he wants too.

Your right - parents are not the only important mentors in the lives of our children... teachers are equally if not more important at times. However the reason for your being is our children. My child - bad apple or not deserves all our representation and protection that we can give... this is the only contract for parenthood like it or not. Some days I don't like it...but true teaching is taking the good with the bad. I was taught as a child to teach the ignorant by good example. Even bad fruit can be useful and fertilize soil..

When I think of the union and it's brotherhood.. I see a circle of strength that provides protection and is highly intelligent. Every time I see a teacher I see their brotherhood standing by your side....take your bad apples to them.

The union is powerful with much intelligence. I'm sure their leadership along with school administration can still protect work environment rights you while improving and establishing new academic ideas for implementation of the 21st Century. The much needed Improvements of higher academic standards and the delivery of these standards in the classroom while addressing your bad apples! Recycle the bad apples ( at RISK youth ) instead of wanting to just throw them away. Bad apple lessons have to continually be re taught in today's society... especially in
OUR HOMES! If one wants to hand pick their apples... maybe private tutoring would be a better career choice.

Billie how many Bad Apples do Baldwin have in the school district? Unions have nothing to do with teaching. Twice a year every Student should be given a survey on how the teacher is teaching, what improvements can be made, are you learning in class. Sure your going to get a few that will write down no to everything but most children will tell the truth and then the school board and administration can take this information and try to improve on teaching methods. I know two of the top 10 schools in Allegheny County use this as a tool and teachers complained that it wasn't going to work but in essence it did work. Our students are bright, we just need teachers that can teach.

If you go into http://www.familywatchdog.us Family Watchdog or http://www.pameganslaw.state.pa.us/SearchResults.aspx State Police and put in the zip codes of 15226, 15227, 15236 or 15234 you can find all the Sex Offenders in our School District. Most people don't know if a sex offender is living next to them as they have never looked.

Maybe they should teach Hygiene in Health Class as they did years ago. Now they teach about Sex and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, CPR, Drug and Healthy Living (Food and Exercising). Some of the ESL students came from countries that didn't have water like what we do in the United States and baths were rare. These students need to be taught Hygiene and Heath Class should be teaching this. Have you ever stood in line behind a family of ESL, and you have to leave the line because they don't know about Hygiene. Parents are our children first teachers and it it the parents that should teach their children manners from a early age and how to respect others Students, Adults and Teachers. Back in the day if you disrespected a teacher you were sent to the office and had to stay after school for detention and they called the parents. Maybe Baldwin Whitehall School District needs to do the same now. We also have teacher at Baldwin with no respect for students and I told all of my children that is the teacher disrespects you then get up and walk down to the office and report the teacher. Our Students deserve as much respect as they should be giving the teachers.

A point of clarification. I realize that this is just semantics to some people, but the B-W Patch is not a blog. We host some blogs in our "Local Voices" section, but we're a news source.

Not all news websites are blogs.

Not a big deal, but I wanted to point it out.

No problem, ML. It's semantics I know, but I wanted to clarify that. Not all news websites are blogs. In fact, some would argue that blogs aren't really news since most blogs are rooted in personal opinion. Our stories (maybe 95 percent of them) are not.