At last Wednesday’s Fountain Hills Unified School District Governing Board meeting, Interim Superintendent Dr. Patrick Sweeney and Fountain Hills Education Association President TJ Buckley updated …
You must be a member to read this story.
Join our family of readers for as little as $5 per month and support local, unbiased journalism.
Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here
Otherwise, follow the link below to join.
To Our Valued Readers –
Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.
For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.
Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.
Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.
At last Wednesday’s Fountain Hills Unified School District Governing Board meeting, Interim Superintendent Dr. Patrick Sweeney and Fountain Hills Education Association President TJ Buckley updated the Board on recent developments at the high school.
Sweeney congratulated all the high school students and staff for being ranked the 52nd best high school in Arizona in U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 Best High School rankings. Sweeney also congratulated Jamie Sunshine of the high school for being named the Fountain Hills Chamber of Commerce Teacher of the Year.
The Board also approved new regulations for policies GCQA and BEDH. The new regulations will be published and accessible through the FHUSD website. Click on the “Policy” section of “Governing Board,” and after loading a page for the Arizona School Board Association, scroll down to Fountain Hills. All FHUSD policies are listed in alphabetical order, and logging in is not necessary to access the information.
Buckley provided both an update on the FHEA and later an overview of the Professional Development Committee. According to Buckley, the FHEA has seen a 36% increase in membership since meet and confer meetings, which Buckley said was a good sign for retention.
Buckley clarified some of the misinformation regarding teacher pay increases that he had seen on social media as well. Buckley reiterated that every teacher received at least a 2.5% raise in pay, but the average pay increase across all staff was 7%.
The Professional Development Committee and mentor teachers both came out of the most recent meet and confer meetings. Each school site will have four teachers on a stipend as mentors to first- and second-year teachers next year.
The mentors will work with first- and second-year teachers at least eight hours per quarter.
According to Buckley, new teachers felt thrown to the wolves this past year, and many had difficulties with new school technology systems on their first day. The Professional Development Committee is working to organize and help ease new teachers into next year and the committee is working to make the onboarding process more teacher friendly.
