District must abide by rules for staffing
Sometimes, someone has to be the bad guy.
That was certainly the case earlier this month when the Austin school district was confronted by student and parent protests over a decision to move a first-year science teacher from Bryker Woods Elementary School to resolve crowding at nearby Highland Park Elementary School. But instead of doing the right thing for the district’s strained finances, district administrators caved and will spend money that it can ill-afford to hire another teacher for Highland Park.
The video and pictures published by this newspaper and others were compelling: fresh-faced fifth-graders armed with posters, begging officials to “save” their teacher, while their parents described the tears and childhood heartbreak.
Indeed, it is disruptive to have to shuffle teachers in late September. But, it is clear that this issue was not just about the teachers’ skills or even about student disruption. This is about class size. What parent wouldn’t want his or her child to be in a class with 20 or fewer students compared to 30?
But this is the time of year where districts have to make some difficult decisions. State law caps class size for kindergarten to fourth grade at 22 students. Too many elementary students in the younger grades means another teacher needs to move or be hired. This year, that meant that 19 teachers had to move.
Although Austin schools Superintendent Paul Cruz told us that the protests were not the sole reason for the reversal, the decision to retain the Bryker Woods teacher did not go unnoticed by other parents in the district. On Thursday, parents and students at Maplewood Elementary pulled out their poster boards and grass-roots marketing skills to try to persuade the district to return a teacher, John Wetherold. He was moved last week to Blackshear Elementary school to similarly “level” Blackshear’s unexpectedly large third-grade class. The district announced Monday that Wetherold will stay at Maplewood.
The problem for the district is the intersection of two of its most challenging issues for staffing elementary school classrooms. The first is the state-mandated, class-size cap that limits classes in kindergarten to fourth grade to 22 students. The second is the district’s commitment to keeping sixth grade at six central city elementary schools: Barton Hills, Bryker Woods, Lee, Maplewood, Mathews and Pease.
Since enrollments vary wildly for these schools’ sixth-grade classes — and since students have the option to continue to middle school or stay in their schools — these campuses often are candidates to move teachers to help with crowding elsewhere. The Bryker Woods teacher was initially slated to teach sixth grade at the school but was moved to fifth when it was clear that there was not enough student interest for two classes.
We understand there can be educational advantages to keeping sixth- graders grouped with the younger grades — and having classes with 30 student flies in the face of the elementary school model — but routinely allowing classes of 14 students is not fiscally responsible, either.
The district’s handling of the Bryker Woods case has opened the door to a campus-by-campus battle that it cannot win. Cruz has spoken with great passion during his short tenure about cam- pus-level solutions. “When it comes to the welfare of students, I’m going to side with the students every time,” he says. But as superintendent, not everything can be handled on a case-by-case basis, because saying “yes” to one group of parents often means saying “no” to another.
Unfortunately, the perception created by the Bryker Woods and Maplewood reversals is that if parents yell loud enough, this administration will back down.
Rather than make policy school by school, a better course would be to start a new dialogue about the district’s sixth-grade programs that are housed in elementary schools rather than middle school. Is there more that the district can do as part of its new marketing efforts to better publicize the sixthgrade option to boost enrollment so that the choice is not between a class of 14 or a class of 29?
Moving teachers this time of year is not unique to the Austin district. Round Rock and San Marcos schools also use the “leveling” practice to address classsize concerns. There simply is no way to accurately predict how many kids will show up on campus in any given year, especially in communities with high mobility and an array of educational choices.
The district needs to stick to its guns on classroom assignments to ensure equity and fairness for all of its students. If there needs to be a broader conversation about how leveling is done or recruitment for sixth grade, so be it; just don’t do it a way that forces officials to play favorites.
Austin will have to start being more pragmatic about its available resources. If it cannot find a way to fill seats, it will have to make more unpleasant choices about its programs.