Entry #14: Exactly which part of
"what's good for kids" do I want to compromise?
It felt like a sledgehammer coming down on me this past week. Our superintendent
announced at the K-12 principals' meeting that we had to cut $1.1 million
from the budget for next year across the district. We felt blindsided.
The last we had heard was that the district had a deficit of approximately
$600,000. But $1.1M??!! My mind went wandering at that point because I knew
that my worst fear would be realized: staff cuts. I can manage pennies meticulously
with the best of them. But seeing your class sizes go up or your programs
cut is another story.
I'm told that the middle level was hit the least: 1.0 FTE at each of the
three middle schools. On one hand, it doesn't sound like much. But when
your average core team class size is sitting at 29 right now, you quickly
realize that you're going to have to look elsewhere to make the cut. And,
on top of it, I had two days to let Central Office know what my decision
would be because non-tenured teachers had to be notified quickly if they
were going to be "RIFed."
My options? Reduce my counseling staff from three to two and take one of
the three grade levels and split it between the other two counselors? What
kind of a middle school counselor can do justice to 380 kids with the needs
that this age level has? No, not an option.
The cut had to be made from the Unified Arts area. That's a laugh-er as
well because we've been hard-pressed the way it is to have enough electives,
especially for our 8th graders.
There was really only one place I could look at, and that was cutting the
current Industrial Arts position (which this year is being filled by an
interim teacher after my regular teacher was injured in a serious accident
at the beginning of the year). He'll be reassigned, if he returns for the
2000-2001 school year, to another building with an opening. What do I lose
in return? It's simply devastating to just sit here and write about it.
The Industrial Arts position was to have been replaced next year with a
new position for our Career Development course that we were going to add.
We are one of only 16 middle-level schools in Illinois to be have been selected
by the State to receive funding to develop a comprehensive careers curriculum.
We've been involved in a comprehensive staff development program the past
two years in preparation for it. More importantly, careers was to have been
a focal course in our new school of choice theme, to be implemented in the
2001-2002 school year. Unless I can resecure this position the year after
next, our school of choice theme will be greatly impaired. Our school community
has spent the past two years working on the selection and implementation
of our proposed theme.
It gets worse.
In order to have enough Unified Arts sections for my eighth graders for
next year, I will have to compromise our philosophy and vision of how we
want to use our technology instructor and have him go back to a schedule
of teaching a full load of classes. Currently, he works in the classroom
with teachers helping them integrate technology into their curriculum and
assisting them with projects as they arise in the lab setting. Further,
by going to a structured teaching schedule for him, one of our two main
tech labs will be unavailable to teachers and their classes. Of course,
they will also lose his expertise because he won't be available to assist
them.
I am also struggling in my heart with the impact that it will have on our
foreign language program and on students' overall academic success. Since
all of my Unified Arts and physical education classes have to absorb as
many students as possible with the elimination of one full-time teacher,
I must allow enrollments pushing 30-35 in my 8th grade foreign language
classes.
Our first-year Spanish, French, and German programs are covered over a two-year
span between 7th and 8th grade. Students move approximately halfway through
the Level I curriculum as 7th graders, and, if they successfully pass 7th
grade, complete the first year curriculum as 8th graders. When a 7th grader
receives a 'D', my foreign language teachers typically review the student's
progress and areas of difficulty. If it is believed that the student may
great difficulty passing the 8th grade course, the teacher and counselor
contact the student's parents or guardians to discuss the possibility of
choosing another elective.
We certainly don't want to set our students up for failure as 8th graders
and then have basically wasted two years of studying a foreign language,
only to have to start over in Level I as a high school freshman. Now, I'm
struggling with the knowledge that I will need to have these same students,
unless their parents make the request on their own, move to the 8th
grade year in foreign language whether they can handle it or not.
We also had moved to a block schedule for our 8th grade Unified Arts this
year in order to provide equity in course selection for our foreign language/band-strings
students, who previously had no room in their schedules to take another
elective. In addition, our Unified Arts classes had lacked heterogeneity
in ability level and were becoming racially identifiable. The block schedule
has worked this year to rectify this situation.
I've crunched the numbers and looked at returning to a 'traditional' schedule
for 8th grade Unified Arts and eliminate the block. I could better distribute
the kids and provide better balance across the electives that we have left
to offer. But at what expense? To go back to Unified Arts classes as I've
described above? Exactly which part of "what's good for kids"
do I want to compromise? It's unfortunate that a principal at times has
to take a position of what will be least harmful to kids, as opposed
to what's best for kids.
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