OLD BRIDGE — For teachers in the district’s 15 schools, qualifying for tenure is about to become a little more difficult. Under a new initiative by the Board of Education and interim Superintendent of Schools Dr. Tim Brennan, “only outstanding staff members get tenure.”
The stricter tenure policy, said Brennan, is central to the school board’s plan to make Old Bridge a top district.
“I applaud the board’s wisdom because I would consider this the single most important thing you could do for the children’s education,” Brennan said.
Board President Eugene Donofrio said he was in favor of the plan because it will bring the Board of Education into the loop of a process it has largely stayed out of in prior years.
“In the past there might have been troubled teachers, which we, as a Board of Education, didn’t know about who received tenure,” he said.
“I feel that it’s going to be an incentive to actually hire the best teachers possible and reward them with tenure.”
Nicole Saladino, president of the local teachers union, the Old Bridge Education Association, would like to believe the district has been doing that all along.
“We only want to work with the best as well,” she said. “We don’t hire them, we don’t give them tenure, but somehow we get blamed for it.”
Currently, a teacher must have a minimum of three years of service in the district in order to be eligible for tenure. Nontenured teachers undergo at least three observations per school year. Tenured teachers undergo a minimum of one per year.
Saladino said teachers also receive three supervisor reports, as well as mid- and endof year evaluations, before tenure can be awarded.
“Four out of 10 new teachers never get tenure,” she said.
Revoking a teacher’s tenure, however, can be an exceedingly difficult process, lasting for up to three years and costing upward of $100,000 in legal fees, said Brennan.
According to the OBEA, of the roughly 800 teachers in the district, only around 100 are non-tenured.
Brennan said the district has introduced additional measures, such as tenure defense rounds, where administrators speak about why a teacher is outstanding, in order to increase the rigor of the system.
“What it amounts to is having a process and having the will to execute that process,” he said.
“No one wants to give mediocre teachers tenure.”