At its meeting Thursday, March 12, the Mingus Union High School District Governing Board discussed some updates to the merit-based pay rubric since the board approved it in December.
“We put together a wonderful merit pay focus group, and out of that we … had some very rich discussions,” Superintendent Melody Herne, Ph.D., said.
The focus group consisted of 13 people, which included Herne, MUHS Principal Dave Beery and Tari Garrison, the executive secretary for the group.
The rubric is based on a scale of 0 to 9, with 7 through 9 points earning the teacher 100% of the possible bonus at the end of the year, 4 to 6 points earning 75%, 2 or 4 points earning 50% and 0 to 1 earning between up to 25%.
The evaluations are threefold: Academic Growth, Achievement & Evaluation and Professional Engagement.
The Academic Growth category is based on student growth, percentile of proficiency or Northwest Evaluation Association benchmark exam scores.
“For both certified and classified, [Achievement & Evaluation]’s based on the evaluation and the ranking you get coming out of your evaluation,” Herne said.
The last category is based on teacher involvement in certain “professional engagement activities.”
To get the full three points possible in the category, activities include attending professional development conferences, sponsoring clubs, involvement in A Troupe of Ridiculous Thespians theater performances, athletic coaching among others. The activities worth two points include onsite professional development, site committee work, field trip chaperoning, and choir and band activities. To get one point, teachers can take Occupational Safety and Health Administration classes or give reports to the board. Activities not worth points include attending site and district meetings, working lunch duty or games, attending sports and school events and bus duty.
“We know that we can’t capture everything, so the focus group did come together and say ‘well, let’s have a process for how we would look at a professional engagement activity that might not be listed,’” Herne said. “We also had some open-ended questions, because again, this is, in Fiscal Year 2027, will be the first time that we’ve done this. So we’ve given ourselves some room to know that there could be multiple iterations.”
Absence Protocols
The overall student absence rate for MUHS has been on the decline since the 2021-22 school year, when it was about 15%. Now, the absence rate is about 9%, Beery said.
Nationally, the chronic absence rate is about 23.9%, according to the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank based in Washington, D.C.
The Arizona rate is split up between grades, with ninth grade hovering about 30%, 12th grade about 38% and the other two grades in between.
Parents can excuse tardies for the first hour, but not more than that unless there’s a doctor’s note or some other predisclosed reason, Beery said. More than one tardy a day is an automatic lunch detention.
Students begin losing credit after 10 absences. The district will send electronic communication every time a student is absent and will mail letters to parents at the five-day, eight-day and 10-day absence marks.
If an absence should be excused by a parent, MUHS asks them to contact the school by the end of the day of the absence.
MUHS’ protocol to deal with missing attendances is to bring the student back for
