Glasgow school board discusses AI agreement, salary increases, recognizes retirees

By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1

The five members of the Glasgow Independent School Board of Education met in the semicircle library of Glasgow High School on Monday for their regularly scheduled monthly meeting to recognize the district’s retirees, approve an agreement with “magic School AI” and adopt the “summative evaluation” of Superintendent Chad Muhlenkamp.

The first order of business on the board’s agenda was to recognize the handful of people who will be retiring after the conclusion of the academic year. Each were introduced by their respective school principals and received a wrapped, wooden cutting board engraved with the district’s logo and mission statement.

The retirees were:
Glasgow Preschool Academy – Jenniffer Fudge and Linda Britt
South Green Elementary – Tambra Cambron and Allison Watkins
Highland Elementary School – Robin Bartley
Glasgow High School – Larry Correll and Steve Kirkpatrick
Transportation – Terrell Alexander

Also on the agenda was the approval of “Magic School AI Agreement,” which aims to help teacher burnout and “help students to grow” and has more than 2 million teachers enrolled.

“It’s one of those things where we look at the budget and different thing and try to invest in our people,” Muhlenkamp said. “This is a tool that appears to give the gift of time back to our teachers.”

According to Regina Murphy, supervisor of Federal Programs and Instructional Support initiatives, the AI tool can help craft lesson plans, write letters home, monitor student progress and write passages and questions — even open-ended questions as Murphy pointed out — based on students’ grade levels.

Not only will this save teachers time but, as Muhlenkamp and Murphy pointed out, also has the ability to provide a “safe space” for students to get familiar with the up-and-coming technology. It can also provide “immediate feedback” to students as they write or answer questions.

“Instead of the student sitting there for 15-20 minutes while the teacher is going through every student and providing feedback [teachers] can put what their criteria is and it’ll give [the students] immediate feedback. That way the kid is not losing time sitting there waiting.”

Once Muhlenkamp and Murphy concluded their comments, board member William Thornbury spoke in avid support of this agreement saying he’d rather have the district be a “leader and not a follower” when it comes to AI.

“From a 30,000-foot view it’d be like 20 years ago asking, ‘Is our school system going to use the Internet?’” Thornbury said. “To me this finally gives the teacher a chance to be with all 25, 28 or 30 children instead of teaching to the mean…I cannot imagine a better value. From a board member point of view I would laud the fact that we are moving assertively in this area. You can wait a year or two and see what others do but that makes you a follower and that’s not the reputation of our school system.”

In total, Muhlenkamp said, the agreement is $14,500 with the pilot program — which he hopes will begin over the summer months so teachers can get acquainted with it before introducing students to it the upcoming academic year — being $2,000. Thornbury said for all Magic School AI offers it is a “great value.”

“I think this is a modest amount of money for what we’re getting,” Thornbury said. “This is not a lot of money in my opinion; this is not even tip money in a $29 million budget. This is the future of education.”

The five board members were also given a copy of the 2024-2025 tentative budget, which includes a 5 percent “across the board” salary increase. Muhlenkamp also informed the board that new teacher salaries have been increased to $45,000 — compared to $41,000 that it is currently — which makes the district’s pay competitive to other districts.

“At the last board meeting you asked us to look at new teachers coming on board,” Muhlenkamp said. “Not only is it a 5 percent increase across the board for all employees but it revamps that first four years and so puts our starting teacher pay to $45,000, which then goes up $500 from there until their tenure year where they get a bigger increase.”

In other financial news the district’s Support Education Excellence in Kentucky (SEEK) funds had been increased by roughly $900,000.

Finally, as mentioned in the board meeting preview, the board entered into closed session for “preliminary discussions relating to the evaluation of the Superintendent.”

As the KRS requires the board will vote to return to open session to “present and adopt the summative evaluation of the superintendent.” All-in-all the evaluation that was adopted by the board was positive.

“We, as a board, have discussed various aspects of the role of the superintendent of this district and Dr. Muhlenkamp’s performance of that role,” board president Amelia Kiser said. “We have chosen to evaluate Dr. Muhlenkamp this year on Standard 6, which is collaborative leadership…we, as a board, feel Dr. Muhlenkamp has performed at an exemplary level on this standard and have the utmost confidence in his ability to continue to lead this district forward on this and other standards.”

With all business discussed and concluded Kiser, empowered by the four other board members, adjourned the Glasgow Board of Education. The next meeting id=s scheduled for June 10.