As the economy continues to contract, municipal agencies continue to tighten their belts, and school districts are no exception.
In North Syracuse alone, more than 100 positions have been cut, some of them instructional. The result of that? In some cases, higher class sizes.
In order to address the board of education’s concerns about kindergarten class sizes in particular, Daniel Bowles, the district’s director of elementary education, presented a plan at Monday’s board of education meeting.
Bowles’ plan deals with kindergarten classrooms at four of the district’s elementary schools: Lakeshore Road, Cicero, Allen Road and Smith Road. At all of those schools, the number of students per class ranges from 22 to 26. Ideally, the district would like to keep the number of students per class below 22 to ensure that each student receives adequate attention from the teacher.
In analyzing the issue, Bowles spoke with both parents and the principals at all of the schools and came up with two options.
The first option involves adding 2.0 FTE teachers to support lower class sizes for kindergarten at the four schools. In a memo to Superintendent Dr. Kim Dyce Faucette, Bowles noted that this option is less than ideal; it would require moving students from morning to afternoon kindergarten (North Syracuse does not have an all-day program), could impact child care for some families, will cause some children to change teachers and will cause transportation issues. In all, 61 students will move to different classes. Of those, 45 will move from morning kindergarten to afternoon kindergarten.
In addition to the impact on the students, adding 2.0 FTE teachers will also have an effect from a human resources perspective.
“A minimum of six classroom teacher changes will need to take place to implement this recommendation,” Bowles wrote in the memo. “Additional PE staff may be needed, which could result in shifting PE staff and changing PE schedules. Buildings which are not adding kindergarten staff will be impacted due to contractual bumping issues from the recall list.”
The addition would also have ramifications for each school in the district, creating vacancies that would need to be filled.
Finally, the addition of 2.0 FTE full-time teachers at full salary with full benefits would cost the district a total of $152,913.93, not to mention the increased transportation costs.
Bowles is instead recommending that the district pursue his other recommendation, which is to hire two additional teaching assistants. One would be shared between two morning classes at Lakeshore Road, then travel to Cicero Elementary and cover two afternoon classes. The second would assist in Allen Road’s afternoon class, also providing support to the ESL teacher; Allen Road’s afternoon class of 26 children includes eight ESL students. Smith Road currently has a teaching assistant, but it also has a high population of special needs students, so it is unable to share a teaching assistant.
Bowles noted that, under the second option, class sizes would remain the same, but “the additional teaching assistants will be an asset instructionally in assessing students’ overall growth.”
As this was only an informational presentation for the board, no action was taken at Monday’s meeting.
