The Mingus Union High School District Governing Board voted on Thursday, Dec. 11, to approve a structure for merit-based pay system as a regulation to their Superintendent’s meet and confer process for the yearly budget.
The rubric, which was preliminarily shown at the last board meeting in November and has since gone through some iterations, was not approved, and the board discussed having different options every year.
Because it was voted as a regulation to the superintendent’s authority, Superintendent Melody Herne, Ph.D., has more flexibility to change it based on what the budget for that year ends up being or if she wants to improve the rubric she uses.
“A regulation belongs to me as the superintendent and gives me the ability to change things and then alert the board to what that change would be,” she said.
Regardless of the budget or the size of the raise, one concern for this approval remained for board members.
“This merit money is, without doubt, money that would be distributed as staff raises,” said Stephen Renard, a physics teacher, during public comment.
“By placing additional hurdles, additional requirements on this money, you are actively making it harder for staff to make the same income they would without these changes.”
Staff are guaranteed annual raises. In fiscal year 2024, the average teacher salary was $70,003. Fiscal year 2025 saw that increase to $72,720.
Herne said the proposal would make sure the teachers still get their yearly raises, but would take a portion of the remaining funds to use toward a merit-based system to reward good student results.
“It’s not a ‘you either thistest score or you don’t get any of this portion that we have set aside for you to earn in addition to the raise that we’ve already given you,’” board President Taylor Bell said. “So in that aspect, I don’t want it to be viewed as, we’ve come in, we’ve rushed it and we’ve decided this is how it’s going to roll out, and haven’t heard any of the feedback, because, quite honestly, there are other districts who are doing it much differently, and it is not nearly as I would say, gracious towards teacher raises as we are trying to be.”
Another issue was school funding.
“When we adopted the budget, we didn’t have the true figures, because the legislature had not finished,” Financial Director Lynn Leonard said during the budget update portion of the meeting. “We built the budget, or I built the budget on an [Average Daily Membership] of 1,152.”
ADM is a major statistic for how much aid the state gives the school for funding.
“We didn’t even get to that … when the kids walk through the door,” Leonard said. “We never know exactly how much ADM we’re going to have. So the highest we got to so far this year is 1,141 and it’s doubtful it’s going to go up.”
The main thing most of the board agreed on was the ability to change it in the future, depending on budget and other possible events that could influence how this payment structure would work.
“This is one of those programs that kind of rolls along with the strategic plan, and it won’t be perfect, anymore than most of the others will be, but when it gets into your able hands, you’ll massage it and it will get better,” board member Will David said. “What I want to do is massage and get better, but without penalty. So that’s where I need help, and that’s why I think it is more useful to attach this as a regulation to an existing policy. So the maximum flexibility to do that.”
Herne said she will reach out to the community members, board members, teachers and admin, to conduct more thorough research before implementing a rubric for the merit-based system.
SubjectAI
During the meeting, the board approved an agreement with SubjectAI for MUHSD’s The Academy, which is mostly online learning for students who are falling behind academically.
“Their main mode of instruction is online,” Herne said. “We use a program called Edgenuity. It’s a tried and true program, but now there are some others coming out that are competitive with Edgenuity, and one of them is SubjectAI.”
The California-based company has certified teachers and actors put together instructional videos for students to learn. The company is based near the Netflix headquarters.
“If you’re doing a chemistry lab, the student is actually picking out the different chemicals to mix things what they’ve been asked,” Herne said. “Now, the nice thing about it, where the AI comes in, is that there is a tutorial in it, and that tutorial allows them to chat with a teacher, to ask certain items. It also checks to see, ‘oh, this answer that you plugged in, we know that came off the internet someplace else,’ and so it catches it right away.”
About 30 students are involved in the pilot program which will take place in the spring semester.
