527 Claremont
West Chicago, IL 60021
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WegoWeb, Inc. 527 Claremont West Chicago, IL 60021 |
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| Contact: | Robert Lemon | ||
| Telephone: | (630) 231-3152 | ||
| lemon@wegoweb.net | |||
Are District 33 CUTS Fair to Classroom Teachers
On Thursday, 27 Jan 2005, District 33's administration and much of the school board will attend a meeting at 7:00 PM at the Middle School library to discuss the budget for the 2005-2006 School year. There has been talk about cutting in the GATES (gifted) program. Parents of gifted children will be there to defend it. There will be talk of reducing the number of facilitators and/or aids in the Special Ed program. Parents of Special Ed students will be there. Some will talk of cutting in music or PE... but that has been pretty much rejected by the board. There will be talk of cutting teachers and increasing class size. Will parents of general education students be there to say, "My child is special to me. Why will other kids get Cadillac care while my kid will be in a class of 35 kids, like back in the horse and buggy era?" There will be some who will talk about generating additional revenue. Will taxpayers who are spending as much on education as they can afford, or taxpayers who are spending more than they wish be there? Who will speak for them? The meeting will have alternative viewpoints, alternative solutions, and more than enough pain to pass around. The solution is not in making any one or two of these groups happy but in sharing the pain. I do NOT trust the current school board to do that.
The
board might talk about cutting 17 classroom positions or a total of 19
teachers. The district has 155 regular classroom teachers. 119
elementary classroom teachers and 36 at the middle school. (All numbers
are for 2004-2005 school year from official school documents.) This is
an 11% cut. It represents a savings of $740,000 for 2005-2006. However,
they represent 64.7% of the cuts proposed in a $37 million budget.
Although the classroom teachers are 24% of the budget they are being asked to
absorb 65% of the cuts.
I keep being told by people to quit it with the numbers... that they will make people's heads explode. Well, check this graphical representation. It shows 160 classroom teachers being reduced by the red 17. This saves (administrative estimate) the $740K. The other 630 workers, special teachers, reading teachers, facilitators, aids, secretaries, custodians, and administrators, are cut by only around a hundred thousand dollars. The other $300K is deficit reduction is accomplished by assuming greater revenue from state sources... an assumption that has not served us well for the last couple years.
Like in so many populations, 2/3 of our kids are normal. They are not gifted nor special ed. They are not budding fiddle players nor future NFL quarterbacks. They sleep about 8 hours per night, watch some TV, play some video games, IM friends, talk on the phone, love Jesus and hate pollution. They spend 7 hours per day with a classroom teacher who smiles when they enter the room, helps them learn to read, teaches them their addition tables, and is there when they want to know about dinosaurs. Generally, they are a positive and important part of the child's life and growth... but if deficit reduction keeps going along as it has, there will be fewer of them. IEPs and staffings for Spec Ed students won't decrease. Each school will still have a GATES teacher. The only thing to be significantly cut will be the one thing that is so important to so many kids... their classroom teacher.
Incidentally, the six brown stickmen are bilingual classroom teachers. Basically they are on the chopping block with their general education colleagues. There is no discrimination in this deficit reduction package that I can find. Secondly, the $300,000 in assumed state increases are not truly cuts. I should see all those stick men lifting only 5 of those coins. Although the state funds help reduce the deficit, they are different from cuts and have a green edge.
As always, I do NOT speak for the board. However, most of the numbers here are from documents from the school district and many can be found on the school related section of this web page. Many have been posted for months or years. Others are still on the school report card that can be found at the official school website, http://www.wegoed33.k12.il.us . I performed no magic on them. I just added and divided a little.