Thornton Creek Wondering How a Crowd Gets You Fewer Classrooms
News from Thornton Creek:
The Seattle school district has only budgeted Thornton Creek to have two 4th grade classes, two 5th grade classes and one mixed 4th/5th class for 2015-16, even though there are three 3rd grade classes and three 4th grade classes moving up.
Grades 4 and 5 are currently 140 students. The plan would be to have 2 fourth grade classes and 2 fifth grade classes of 29 kids each, and 1 slightly smaller mixed age class for 4th/5th grade.
A group of concerned parents has created an online petition requesting a sixth class at 4th/5th grade.
The Seattle school district has only budgeted Thornton Creek to have two 4th grade classes, two 5th grade classes and one mixed 4th/5th class for 2015-16, even though there are three 3rd grade classes and three 4th grade classes moving up.
Grades 4 and 5 are currently 140 students. The plan would be to have 2 fourth grade classes and 2 fifth grade classes of 29 kids each, and 1 slightly smaller mixed age class for 4th/5th grade.
A group of concerned parents has created an online petition requesting a sixth class at 4th/5th grade.
Maintaining a sixth class would enable Thornton Creek to remain a viable
option for the district to assign additional students, especially when
nearby neighborhood schools are bursting at the seams. The planned
allocation of five classes at 4th and 5th for 2015-16 would remove that
option, since the school would be considered full in that configuration.
It is common to have additional students added to Thornton Creek over
the summer months. If this trend continues, the district will have to
add another teacher before September 2015 to meet the collective
bargaining agreement. We believe it would be optimal to allocate funds
for a sixth teacher immediately versus waiting until September, to allow
time to pro-actively hire from a larger candidate pool and train a new
teacher.
Indeed, it appears that TC has a waitlist at nearly all grade levels.
Comments
On the issue of waitlist, can't they just not admit any additional 4th or 5th graders?
Not seeing
This is in part because of the changes to the funding formula for teachers. The formula for the 2015 school year, now uses a more aggressive student teacher ratio, combined this with a more generous rounding factor to help avoid too many split classrooms. I believe this resulted in almost 60 fewer teachers assigned across the district.
I also think there has been a concerted effort to restrict staff at buildings where there is a tipping point for teaching stations. Several schools that were expecting another portable and another teacher next are getting neither. TC would need one more portable to handle one more teacher.
I can see holding back on teachers because all things relative, you can hire a teacher pretty quickly. However, portable placement is not fast.
I also wonder if this extra teacher would also cross that magic 8 teacher counter which would generate another PCP teacher.
- ne parent
TC is an option school and, to my understanding, has capped enrollment vs what neighborhood schools can (still high compared to most of the country). But they have a waitlist and don't enroll kids unless others withdraw as far as I understand. It's not a matter of them not having a wait list, but having classes of 23-24 (possibly misleadingly low because of the kids in Sm4?) vs the 28+ kid classes that seem to be planned elsewhere. They don't have to admit neighborhood kids, so if there's room to go up to and trigger a 6th class, I don't understand why they wouldn't just move kids in off the wait list now.
NE Parent
That said, I think public school funding is crazy in Washington and Seattle. We've got to figure out a way to get kids in smaller classes or at a minimum with an additional resource in the rooms.
NE Parent
confused
John Rogers is now allocated at 384 students, 24 students more than last year's allocation of 360, but with no additional teachers or classrooms.
The number of total gen ed classrooms staying at 15, instead of bumping up to 16 (Hmmm....maybe there is something to the magic 8/PCP thing?). The school was originally slated for two more portables, but I heard the will not be delivered.
The most puzzling thing is that they are projecting a huge drop in kindergarten enrollment next year. This is strange, because kindergarten enrollment has been rising steadily at John Rogers since the NSAP, and I don't think there have been any adjustments made to boundaries, or programs downsized.
It doesn't sound like SPS is planning to add classrooms to Thornton Creek. Does anyone know if Hazel Wolf K-8 is taking an additional kindergarten class and moving their wait list? That is about the only reason I can think of for a projected decrease of over 20 kindergartners at John Rogers.
- North-end Mom
schoolboard@seattleschools.org
- Beenthere
-sleeper
I am a parent at TC. We had some attrition due to families moving out of district or APP program. We all assumed that we would accept new 4/5 class kids and get the 6th teacher this coming year as we have existing space to have the 6th classroom. Also, the district is very short sighted in our case as we will have a new building in 2016 and they are expecting TC to increase enrollment when the larger school opens. So why not hire now so if there are kids in the neighborhood that get in at a different grade level, their siblings can also join? If we don't get the 6th classroom, this option is not available and the neighborhood schools will HAVE to accommodate them.
Our current enrollment does put us over the 28 kids per class and leaves no breathing room for additional kids. This is not just a TC problem, it impacts neighborhood schools too as we won't be able to take on any children that do want to attend here if there was capacity thereby increasing your neighborhood schools with even more larger class sizes.
- Parents need to unite!
jp
Entropyisme