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Press Release

Important information on Governor Noem's Executive Order on teacher evaluations

On December 9th, Governor Noem signed Ex. Order 2020-33, providing flexibilities for schools during the 2020–21 school year. Here are five things you need to know about this order.
Kindergarten students children surrond teacher reading Photo by Yan Krukov from Pexels
By: South Dakota Education Association
Published: December 11, 2020 Last Updated: December 15, 2020
  1.  It suspends the need Student Learning Objectives as a part of teacher evaluations for the current school year (2020–2021).
  2. Teachers with continuing contract status (in your 4th contract or more with your district) are not required to be evaluated by the district this year.  Similar flexibility has been given for principal evaluations.  
  3. School districts will not report teacher evaluation data to the South Dakota Department of Education in the spring. 
  4. Districts are still required to evaluate teachers who are in their first three years, but SLOs are not required to be part of the evaluation.
  5. This Executive Order is permissible. Final decisions about teacher evaluation are still left up to the local district.

You can read the entire Executive Order here: https://covid.sd.gov/docs/2020-33.pdf. Whether your negotiated agreement addresses your district’s evaluation process, or not, your local association can work with your district to suspend evaluations and/or SLOs for this year.  Please contact your UniServ Director if you have questions or need assistance with this process.

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