Last updated on 2014.09.04
With Maroney Commons closing tomorrow, various folks are trying to figure out what to do with Howard's state-of-the-art hotel, restaurant, and conference center. Madison Area Arts Council chief Chris Francis has suggested a fine arts center run by the state Department of Tourism. Farmer and District 8 Senate candidate Charlie Johnson thinks the Department of Education could use Maroney Commons for a more effective counterplan to Governor Daugaard's really bad Referred Law 16 (a.k.a House Bill 1234):
Maroney Commons opened a year ago as a small town campus center to provide a location where training and meetings could take place. With a restaurant, hotel, fitness center, bar, and meeting rooms, the venue was equipped both to meet the social needs of the local residents and meeting needs of organizations. In the spirit of the original mission of the MC, the campus should serve as a year-round Academy for Educational Training.
When House Bill 1234 is overturned by the voters this fall, part of the funding intended for HB 1234 should be used by the Department of Education or the Board of Regents to lease the MC from the Miner County Development Corporation as a campus site to provide continuing training for our school instructors in South Dakota. Annually, on a rotating basis, instructors from all subject areas would come to Howard to share a weeklong agenda focusing on research, workshops, networking, and training labs. Students in educational training from all state campuses, private and public, could also "interface" with existing instructors. In consideration of budget needs of local school districts, state funding should be provided to cover the cost of substitute teachers and mileage for instructors to attend.
Rather than forcing an ill-conceived and divisive merit pay plan, let's place emphasis on training, peers sharing with peers to further the entire education team in South Dakota as being top notch. MC can serve as that location site where sharing and learning can take place with the goal of providing our best to learn from the best, that being their peers [Charlie Johnson, e-mail, September 1, 2012].
The idea of hosting workshops focused on collaboration instead of competition honors the community-oriented (dare I say communitarian?) values on which the Rural Learning Center conceived and built Maroney Commons. And praise goes to anyone who proposes a positive solution that will do more practical good to help teachers help our kids than the ineffective and ideological Referred Law 16... although saying a plan works better than Referred Law 16 is like saying it's better than a kick in the pants.
Now let's try figuring out how much Charlie's plan would cost.
The Maroney Commons Windward Inn has 24 rooms. For a weeklong workshop, we'd probably need a couple rooms for the Department of Education staff running the show. Suppose some teachers double up in rooms, some teachers commute, so we can bring in 40 teachers each week. That's 2000 teachers a year. With about 9000 teachers in the state, we need four and a half years to run every teacher through the wringer... which coincides nicely with the five years every teacher has to renew his or her teaching certificate.
Now suppose the average mileage for each teacher to get to Howard is 160 miles roundtrip, and we reimburse at 37 cents per mile. Let's say we can feed and house each teacher for $70 a night, for five nights. Paying for each teacher's substitute averages $375 ($100 a day for five days is $500, but a quarter of the time—i.e., summer!—we have no sub costs). I'll even spot DoE two new full-time hires to coordinate the workshops in Howard, at $70,000 each, and $3000 for materials and guest speakers for each session. We could run this whole show for just under $2 million a year.
Recall that Governor Daugaard has promised to spend $15 million a year on Referred Law 16. Just $10 million would provide useful collaborative training for every teacher in the state over a five-year period. Plus it would prop up Miner County's economic development prospects.
It would be nice to see the private-sector resuscitate Maroney Commons. But if that isn't happening, why not take public-sector money Governor Daugaard already plans to waste and put it toward some concrete good for teachers and Miner County?
While the motivation and effort for the initiative in Howard was very commendable I always wondered why the rural initiative couldn't be accomplished in existing infrastructure on college campuses, especially at the nearby Land Grant Institution which shares a common purpose? Having said that, now someone needs to figure out what do with it.
Remember technology? We can do all of those things right now without spending money for travel or substitute teachers. We need to think about efficiency in government.
Video conferencing is very green: we don't need to waste time and resources driving across the state. We don't need to wait 5 years to do it. We could have something ready in a couple of months.
Super Sweet reminds me of the GoTeachSD program, which comes from a partnership between the Rural Learning Center and—surprise!—not the SDSU rural sociology department, but the USD School of Education. There's another program that, writ large as a model for SD teacher training and ongoing support, could do much more to improve K-12 education than Referred Law 16.
Maybe we need more than one Maroney Commons. Maybe we need three or four, established in small rural communities around the state that are willing to host magnet schools run along the lines of good old General Beadle High School, the rural kids' school that Madison had pre-1960s on the college campus. We send a whole corps of education majors to live, study, teach in these small communities for a full school year. In Howard, they would live in Maroney Commons and teach at the public school, in collaboration with a local corps of master teachers.
A physical conference center may not be necessary for ongoing professional development activities for teachers. As Michael says, we can do all sorts of training online. Heck, I took an entirely online course last year by wiki. I much preferred being able to log in once or twice a month, whenever it fit my schedule, and do the whole course from my couch instead of having to pack my bags, leave my family, and spend a week eating someone else's food and sleeping in a strange bed while someone else teaches my French classes. And online meetings are a lot greener.
On the other hand, one gets a very different professional experience from working face-to-face with fellow teachers in a short, intense timeframe. After four years of numerous online courses at DSU, I have yet to see an online course engage me as much as an in-person course.
At the risk of going off-thread I attended a conference at the U of Wis during the Janklow era on teacher performance pay at their Fluno Center which had the same purpose as Maroney.
The presenter was Dr. Allan Odden whose specialty was performance pay. He told Gov. Janklow that most forms of performance pay would not work in SD because teacher's base pay was too low.
My first year in MN I ran into Gov Pawlenty's (R-MN) performance pay system. We have been using it for 6 years. All teacher's can earn an extra $3205 under our system and they like it. One key is that either they all get it, or all don't, which spurs cooperation.
I agree with on-line learning, it does work but reduces the need for brick and mortar and the construction jobs (think economic stimulus) that goes with it.
Would Dr. Odden offer the same opinion today given SD's current teacher base pay?
Everybody or nobody—interesting push for cooperation! How much trouble do you (and other Minnesota schools) have with free riders?
The training schedule doesn't have to be a full week. Monday noon to Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon to Friday noon would be sufficient if in fact more suitable. MC could still be available evenings, weekends, off weeks, to serve the needs of the local community and/or other groups. I'm president of NPSAS which is an organization that promotes sustainable ag through education, advocacy, and research. Every Janaury, we host a 3 day conference which brings in numerous participants, close to 400. Many of the presenters are fellow farmers. There is no better learning tool than eye ball to eye ball contact with your fellow peers.
We don't see free riders. Everyone is pulling for site and district goals ( test scores). Plus there are other components: attendance at professional learning communities' meetings, peer observation and personal goals.
As far as lodging goes, Howard has another motel, plus Madison isn't really that far away if a commute was needed. Believe me, I do it every day.
Personal opinion: I think the Maroney center was built on big ideas, I didn't really go for the ideas in such a small community that doesn't really support what they already had for a motel and restaurant before this was built. Ok, I'm ready to have my head chopped off by others in my community but, like I said, this is a personal opinion which I have also heard others say.