Morning Read: Deeper school cuts, bigger class sizes
Stephen Bartlett at the Plattsburgh Press-Republican is reporting that Beekmantown’s central school will begin classes next month with dozens fewer positions than last year.
Beekmantown Central School will start this school year with nearly 30 fewer positions.
The downsizing is a result of cost-savings measures under the 2011-12 spending plan, and further reductions that were required after voters ultimately defeated that spending plan and the district adopted a contingency budget.
This report follows Bartlett’s story a couple of days ago about deep education cuts in public schools across the district, and the impact on class size.
“This is going to have an impact on our classrooms,” said AuSable Valley Central School Superintendent Paul Savage.
AVCS, faced with a $2.4 million budget deficit due to a cut in state aid and rising costs in energy, health care, special education and retirement contributions, laid off 19 faculty and staff members.
The budget still included a nearly 7-percent increase in the tax levy and an estimated $1 more on the tax rate per $1,000 of assessed property value.
“We are going to see our class sizes increase, pretty much across the board,” said McDonald. “It certainly could have an impact. We are seeing more special-needs kids coming in, and that impacts the amount of time the teacher devotes to all students.”
What do you think? Are these the kinds of cuts and austerity measures that tough times call for? Or are we cutting corners on education?
Huge cuts in state aid coupled with unfunded mandates (new teacher evaluations based on tests) are devastating public education. Having a commissioner who champions charter schools and the first Democratic Tea Party Governor in the country is ruining our schools.
From Bill Owens website concerning his vote for Obamacare:
The concerns I heard from constituents demonstrated both the need for health care reform to lower costs and to help our entrepreneurs create jobs.
I voted for the legislation because I believe it was an important step toward addressing and correcting the concerns Upstate New York has regarding real health care reform. After studying all the facts, I was presented with a simple choice: Do nothing and further burden our families, our economy, and our entrepreneurs to the tune of $50 billion per year, or take the first steps to reform our system in a way that will pay for itself and help America pull itself out of the recession.
In short, I believe this bill will move America and our communities forward.
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Now all we have to do is sit back and wait for the costs to go down, jobs to be created, and America to move forward.
Thanks, Bill Owens
It’s kind of like the rich are saying to the middle class and poor, “Die, baby, die!”
Meanwhile, over in France, the rich are saying, “We need to be taxes more.”
Unlike JDM, I’m going to address the topic raised rather than go on some irrelevant ideological rant.
IF such austerity is indeed necessary, NYS should lower the burden of mandates. It is disgusting and unconscionable for the state to say “We’re going to require you to do more and more but not only are we going to slash our assistance, but we are going to handcuff you in how you can raise money for your part of the burden.” They are increasing what they expect districts to achieve while crippling their ability to actually do it.
If the mandates are important, then fund them. If you can’t or don’t want to fund them, then get rid of them or make them optional.
Just about the only thing the Gingrich people got right was the heavy and unfair burden of un- and under-funded mandates.
It’s terrible that children’s education is being used as a buffer when budget cuts come into play. My children both go to a College Hartlepool and love it. They have small classes and get a lot of attention from their tutors. I just hope that budget cuts don’t affect their education as it would be a bitter disappointment.
Health care costs are a big part of the problem. What I pointed out was that the “big government” solution of taking over 1/7 of this country’s GDP was suppose to lower costs and help the economy. It did neither.
How many times can we be duped into “big government” 1/7th GDP solutions before we go the way of Rome?
That our education system is falling apart is a symptom of a much bigger problem.
Obama and Bill Owens teamed up to wave a magic wand and solve everything so that Obama can take off and go golfing.
The fix ain’t working, guys.
Hopefully we’ll get some more comments that are independent thought rather people simply parrotting “their side”‘s script.
It is the catch 22 we are in.
All government job cuts now are bad. We are teetering on a depression the last thing we need is for the government to cut jobs. When government does an analysis of its spending cuts it needs to look at optimizing the number of jobs and lowering overall cuts.
Cut the health insurance in half make the employees pay half the cost for example and not cut any jobs or better yet use that savings to hire more teachers. Cut pay by 25% across the board and use the savings to hire more teachers or at least keep all the people we have now. The key is to give people confidence that we will do whatever it takes to keep them working. Teachers in my mind are the last thing you would cut.
So in this environment why would anyone buy a new home in the North Country? All of these decisions are based on people’s confidence about their future job security.
I wonder just how large the effect of class size is on the quality of education. I suspect that much has been made of class size issue by unions seeking to protect jobs. I agree with Brian that unfunded mandates must be curtailed. I graduated from a high school that had large class sizes by today’s standards and I believe we were better educated than todays kids. I graduated in 1958 and was well prepared for college. Today the colleges complain that the entering students are unprepared.
“Cut pay by 25% across the board and use the savings to hire more teachers or at least keep all the people we have now.”
You might have difficulty attracting teachers. Also, there is the issue of contracts.
Of course health insurance expenses are part of the problem with education costs overall. But it certainly isn’t a new phenomenon nor one created because of legislation written a year ago. Anyone who objectively tracts the rise of school budgets costs will tell you that. Like for instance every school business manager and/or superintendent of every school district in the country who provides health insurance to their employees. It’s been a problem for years and years.
Bartlett’s article states that elementary class sizes were expected to increase to the “18 to 24” range. Admittedly, I cames from a small centralized school that had a enrollment of 350, K-12. A class size of close to 30 was common. I don’t remember any problems with teaching effectiveness or discipline.
If the best possible teacher:student ratio is 1:1, what class size is too large? I suspect it may depend on the teacher.
I agree. We need to take away the health insurance from everyone, especially elected officials, including the president and all CEOs.
Health insurance should be illegal. If you can’t afford to pay the doctor, the hospital or the drug companies, then please die.
Only without health insurance can we have a truly market based health care system and keep the cost of education and all other businesses operating as cheaply as possible.
You can always go to the emergency room and get treatment. Haven’t you heard that it’s free?
First we need to be careful that we don’t group all school districts as a “Beekmantown”. Many school districts planned for difficult times and will survive with less pain. Some of the cuts Beekmantown made seems to make sense. Difficult times like these force agencies to do a better job with less.
Second, in the paper the other day it was reported a State Trooper entering cadet school will make $50,000. When he or she leaves school they jump to $56,000. A teacher has to pay for five years of schooling. My guess is most teachers start at less than $40,000. If you lower the pay by 25% do you think many people would enter the profession? If so what kind of quality could we expect? No doubt mandates are a problem and must be reduced. At my last check our school district is faced with 63 UNFUNDED mandates!
I think you could reduce the pay by 25% without any exodus. But why are we even thinking about attracting new teachers to the profession when there are no teaching jobs at all, when teaching jobs are being cut? How many schools are having a hard time finding teachers? We do not have a teacher shortage we have a teacher glut. But what we are currently doing is reducing the pay of many teachers to 0, how does that attract new teachers, why is it better to radically reduce teaching jobs rather than keeping all teaching jobs with a lower salary or benefit structure? The money is done, there is not going to be any new money for the next several years, maybe the next five or ten years. So this is it, this is the new reality, this is not temporary.
Mervel: I never mentioned “attracting new teachers”. It sounds like you would suggest closing all SUNY schools who prepare our youths for teaching careers. My point is our youths will prepare themselves for the careers where they can make money and have benefits. Teachers will retire and need to be replaced.
If the above logic prevails, we will need more overpaid state troopers to arrest all the kids who don’t get an education and turn to crime for a job. But this might be the plan because the criminal justice system is the largest make work program there is in this country.
Make everything illegal, destroy education and we can have full employment through the criminal justice system. Is this a plan or what?
Pete is right. Investment in education pays off in lower criminal justice costs later. It is true that it’s not so much the size of the class, but the quality of the teacher. How do you get better teachers? Pay them.
Hillary, I think we should pay teachers more and hire more of them; the only way to do that is to raise local taxes or reduce other expenses in the school system or a combination.
It is just that right now we/I no longer have the luxury of getting what we want, there is not enough money locally to do these things it is just a fact and it is not going to change for at least 5 years. It is simply not realistic to opine about paying teachers more etc, we have what we have.
The worst solution is to terminate some teaching positions. I just think a better solution would be to reduce costs rather than eliminate positions. The only way to reduce costs without ending positions is to reduce pay and benefits for staff or to severely limit non-classroom teaching staff. Classroom teachers should always be the very very last to be laid off. I would get rid of all busing, all sports programs and then start on special ed; before I got rid of a single classroom teacher.