Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist is proposing a reorganization that may result in dozens of job changes at the district.
"These are not positions like teachers and counselors and assistant principals and so forth, but there are some positions that are not school-based but they are serving every day in a school or they’re supporting every day schools directly," Gist said.
The plan would mean four fewer district positions, but 12 more school support positions and 20 additional positions embedded in schools. Examples of support and embedded positions now include instructional mentors, psychologists and some campus police.
Gist said while she can’t discuss specific positions, the idea is addressing situations like district offices having four specialists with distinct areas of expertise.
"If you’re a school principal and you needed something done, you had to figure out which of those four people to go to, and you might go to a different one for a different reason," Gist said. "What we’re looking at is how do we have four people who are assigned, say, a set of schools and then they’re able to serve that school regardless of what the topic is?"
Other changes will entail updating job functions to better help schools those positions serve. Gist said TPS is going this route rather than just adding positions for new tasks.
"It is the right thing to do to be financially prudent but also to stay really focused on what we know matters most, which is how do we best serve those who are serving our kids directly every day?" Gist said.
Altogether, the plan recommends deleting 179 positions and creating 207. The TPS board must approve the proposal.
