Unfortunately, no one is showing our district the money lately. Due to stupid planning by lawmakers many years ago, our district is again facing a multi-million dollar budget shortfall. For the past several years, they’ve been able to cut millions from the budget without it really being felt by teachers and students. That has all changed this year. Here’s a little summary about what’s had me and many others in my school pretty frustrated.
1. Lots of new students enrolling at our school prior to the school year starting – good, we hired new teachers. Due to transfers and the increased enrollment, we have 9 new classroom teachers – out of 20 total.
2. Class size limits reached in many of our grades, some over a little. Lots of discussion the first few days of school – both in our building and talk from the Ad. Building that we’d have to add at least one more classroom. This talk especially excites me because I’m traveling to another school to cover a couple of classes (budget cuts) but probably won’t need to travel if we add a class or two.
3. Talks continue about adding classes. I travel to second school and find out one of the classes is a behavior nightmare. I sort of want to not go there anymore (I know, I’ll work on it and it’ll be fine). HR pretty much confirms that I won’t have to travel if we add another class.
4. We are told late last week that even though our numbers are very high, we won’t be able to hire another teacher (budget problems) and will have to reconfigure our classrooms to create a bunch of split classes to accommodate the grades that are over the max and the couple that are under. District tells us that our building is closed to any new students. We also find out that we will not be able to convert our building sub to a classroom teacher because it will cost too much money.
5. We hold several meetings to display our frustration at the district’s lack of ability to do what is right for our students, even if they don’t have the money. We try to come of up with alternative plans.
6. A meeting is held with HR and we find out we for sure can’t hire another teacher unless (she explains a scenario but it basically involves hell freezing over). HR confirms that it will cost $35,000 to change our building sub to a classroom teacher, which is out of the question. We finally realize there’s no chance of another teacher being unless John & Kate resolve their issues and move to our neighborhood enrolling all of their children in 2nd grade.
7. We come up with a plan to create 5 split classes, which starts Monday. Lots of kids shifting around, lots of teachers revamping existing structures, lots of uncertainty and stress.
8. I’m still traveling.
9. Pro athletes on Twitter don’t respond to requests for money. Yes, I tweeted a couple of local pro athletes I follow asking if they’d help out our school financially. Hey, they make millions, what’s $35,000?
10. Next week will be better. The kids will adjust, we’ll adjust. We will still teach, they will still learn. It may not be enough to make AYP, but who knows?
Regardless, the financial situation will not be improving anytime soon and we will probably have similar frustrating situations next year.
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My name is Chad Lehman. I'm currently an Elementary Library Media Specialist. I spent eight years teaching third grade prior to moving to the school library. When I'm not at school, I'm probably online, playing or watching sports, or driving my two kids to one of their activities.
