TAP payout closer but still pending for teachers at Gladewater ISD

Gladewater ISD’s inching closer to a belated payout to teachers through the TAP System, but there’s still no set date for when the allocations of Department of Education funding will be dispersed.
Formerly the Teacher Advancement Program and now known just by its acronym, TAP is funded by a grant written by the National Institute of Excellence for Teaching and tied to a district’s accountability scores.
NIET representatives have been on campus this week for a boots on the ground, annual TAP school review to see how GISD has implemented the program.
According to GISD Superintendent Dr. Sedric Clark, “The TAP system is an instructional program. As a part of it, teachers get payouts based on their evaluations of student achievement,” he said. Fully-funded with grant dollars, payout to teachers has been pending for months: “They should have gotten it in September but haven’t gotten it yet. That situation remains for us. As it’s written in the grant, TAP payout is tied to school accountability scores. Because there’s an injunction against the state to not release school accountability scores, we were held up.”
With outside factors delaying the payout, Clark says he’ll never again put a specific date to the distribution of the funds. That said, there’s now some light showing at the end of the tunnel.
“Hopefully, really, really soon it will happen,” he added. “NEIT wrote the grant, and they’ve been in negotiation with the Department of Education who gave the grant.
They’ve reached a resolution now, and the payout for last year will happen,” but no date’s been announced.
“We’re still in the process of getting it,” Clark noted this week. “We haven’t even given the letters out. Now we’re just waiting on the payout information now.”
As it stands right now, a subsequent payout ‘should’ happen in September 2024, but the timing there also remains to be seen. Notably, TAP is distinct from the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a Texas program.
As far as TIA is concerned, “For the first year, our designations were approved, and we have 16 teachers that will be receiving that this year for last year,” Clark said. “They get that based on their designation. They get an amount for five years added to that check. It depends on the student makeup of your school, how many students are low socioeconomic at your school.”