I am a parent in a family of two middle and one high school student. To my dismay, class sizes will be up to 35 students per teacher this fall, at their Juneau schools if the Legislature fails to add funding for public education.
This is similar across the state. Hundreds of school employees, including teachers, para-educators, nurses, janitors, clerks, and administrators are slated to be laid off. This includes 50 positions in Fairbanks, 66 in Juneau, 42 in Anchorage, 35 in Kodiak and 144 in Mat-Su, and this doesn’t take into account other Alaskan communities.
The Juneau Economic Development Council analyzed the impact of losing 66 jobs in Juneau with a projected net loss to the community of $11.5 million given the ripple effect of diminished purchasing power that comes with fewer jobs. Other communities face a similar situation.
The proposed state budget includes a 3.2 percent increase for State Agencies, recognizing that utilities, fuel, supplies and employee costs continue to rise. Also, the State budget includes $66 million for state employee labor contract settlements. Yet there is no increase in the foundation formula for schools; No recognition that the same pressures and rising costs also impact school districts. It is this failure to meet rising costs that are forcing School Districts to cut positions, and eliminate or curtail programs. All of this will impact the classroom, our kids and our communities.
There is a huge loss of human capacity each time schools face a budget-cutting scenario like we’re now facing. This can be prevented if the Governor and Legislature meet rising costs in a responsible, timely manner.
Parents are the most effective advocate a child can have and it’s time we speak up. There is only a week left in the regular legislative session, and the Legislature has not yet settled on school funding. Contact your legislator and let them know it’s time to invest in Alaska schools. For information on who to contact or background information, go to www.greatalaskaschools.org, a non-partisan statewide citizen coalition advocating for great Alaska schools.
Our children deserve quality schools, with reasonable class sizes, a full array of course options (including foreign language, art and music) — all of which is in jeopardy. It’s time the State increased its investment in our schools and our kids. Our kids are the future Alaska.
Sarah Bates
Juneau
Comments (16)
Add commenteveryone loves handouts
but spending is seldom the answer to problems.
Nothing in this letter about requiring teachers to effectively teach or lose their jobs to make room for teachers who can be effective. Just spend, spend, spend...
The nations with the highest achieving students and most successful and productive adults also have higher classroom sizes than the US.
Here's a novel thought-change the school stucture and waste to model after proven successful models like in Korea, Japan and China and stop begging for more cash which will be wasted as usual. All you teach kids is to grab and spend cash as fast as they can but no one has to be accountable for how they spend money other people earned.
And parents can open their wallets and provide for their kids if they want "a full array..." of anything. A few languages and other perks should be offered but if you want a cadillac; open your own wallet.
Successful schools
What "Do the right thing" doesn't mention is that school in Korea, Japan and China don't have to take any crap from students or parents. Jr doesn't throw a tantrum and get away with it. Jr's mother doesn't show up and threat to beat up the teacher or sue the school board because Jr is being "mis- understood" The students in those countries WANT to be in school, they consider it a previlage and are going to be well rested and ready to learn. If our schools had these types of students and parents then it would be a lot easier for our teacher to succeed with larger class sizes.
U.S. schools are actually
U.S. schools are actually quite effective, up there with the best, when you don't take into account schools in poor areas. The school system is not the problem, the economic and social system is.
@PP is ignorant of the truth, as usual.
According to their web site the Juneau School District spent $17,899 per student per school year last year. Of those students, about %80 will not graduate on time and of the %80 who do about half will need remedial english and math prior to continuing with a college level education.
Juneau is not a “poor area”……..
80% won't graduate on time
80% won't graduate on time? That is most definitely BS.
The kids who don't graduate from high school or do very poorly are, by and large, underprivileged kids. Problems are exacerbated even more by the fact that schools in poor areas are also the least desirable to work in, so you end up with less qualified teachers and teachers who more often don't have a degree in what they're teaching.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/109074/chapters/how-poverty-affec...
Is there room for improvement? Yes. Are we having the discussion we really need to be having in regards to improving our school system? Absolutely not.
How will no money help?
Let's say AHHA is right and the schools are failures.
How will we fix it?
No one- and I mean NO ONE is offering any solutions to the problem.
"Be better at your job" doesn't cut it. MOST TEACHERS are doing a good job. MOST PARENTS are doing a good job.
In fact, I'd say that well over 75% of them. (Which, coincidentally, is close to the graduation rate.)
There is not one thing to blame.
Some students don't feel challenged enough.
Some teachers don't make sure children are appropriately prepared for the next step.
Some parents send their children to school unprepared both in manners and in preparedness for academics.
Some students are rude, disrespectful and take away from the learning atmosphere either from a terrible upbringing/home life or from personality issues.
Some teachers don't take the time to address each child's needs.
Some students are completely apathetic (but not rude).
Some administrators fail the system by allowing poor teachers to continue being poor teachers.
Some parents complain but do not offer to the administration what they WANT to see.
And sometimes you have a great situation with both child and teacher.
OF COURSE more money is the only solution until there is another plan.
Anyone would be crazy to think that lowering funding (which is the same as not raising funding in the face of inflation and high costs of heating/transportation) is going to make anything better.
What needs to happen is an outline of HOW to improve and FOLLOW THAT PLAN.
I am a good teacher. I do the best I can, and work hard. It's difficult to be blamed when some of my students - AT THE SECONDARY LEVEL - can't spell, can't write, can't meet CORE, and yet, they won't stay after school, their parents won't come to conferences, they talk back when I sit down to help them, they are so clearly not into being educated that it breaks my heart. I can't be angry...some are hungry. REALLY hungry. Yes, I want to call home and say, "WHAT THE HECK!? FEED YOUR CHILD!" I've tried that. But what can we do? We feed them in the morning. We feed them free lunches. We get donated snacks from parents of children who do provide for education and children. We put up with the hormonal mess of children who arrive from homes with deadbeat parents who keep them up till midnight drinking, or fighting and yelling. It's a terrible thing sometimes.
Sometimes I think the people who are sitting at their computers writing about these things must not be able to understand that sometimes it's not just a number or an 'amount per child' or 'teach them the basics.' It's sometimes very difficult.
30-50 years ago, these kids took auto voc-ed classes, or dropped out and that was acceptable. Now it's not. A LOT of money goes into keeping all kids in school: apathetic ones, angry ones, criminal ones, etc. We also have TONS of money going to special education when 30-50 years ago, those kids were in special schools where they were all in a room without learning goals. Now they are in the reg. classes with all the children and require lots of aides, assistance, IEP meetings, planning meetings, accommodations, etc. That's spendy.
Please understand everything. Go to a school. See the kids. Look at what's going on. THEN make your judgement and please, if you judge - accompany that judgement with an offered SOLUTION.
@PP
I guess the Juneau School District is lying. That graduate on time number came directly from their site, as did the cost per student year. And of course you would also have us believe that the Juneau School District withholds a large portion of that $17,899 from the “poor” kids and as a result, it’s just the poor kids who don’t graduate on time.
As usual, you are completely full of BS.
@AK educator
One sure way to fix them is to allow students to opt out without causing the parents to pay twice for the child’s education. Give me a voucher and I will happily be on my way. Of course, this puts a strain on the public system because now they cannot afford to fail, can they.
Face it: $17899 per student per year is an awful lot of money to pay for a second rate education system no matter how many excuses you give.
@AHHA
You read the numbers backward.
The JSD website says,
"2011 Graduation rate is 71.5% for 4 year on-time graduation."
You said, "Of those students, about %80 will not graduate on time."
http://www.juneauschools.org/announcement/2011/09/29/student-achievement...
And, if your only solution is vouchers, then I can see right now that we'll never see eye to eye. I firmly believe, like the founders of this country, in a strong public education system and only see negatives for the voucher system. But I appreciate that you gave a possible solution.
@AKeducator
Thanks for the correction... I read correctly and then managed to write it backwards... Sadly the part of that document that notes that approximately half of those who did graduate on time require remedial classes prior to starting college level class work tells the real tale.
Add those two together and approximately %75 of each class does not receive a quality education.
Facts like these make it very hard to claim that $17,899 per student per year is justifiable and personally While I would like to believe that a strong public school system is worthwhile, the bottom line is that the public school system has failed the vast majority of the students in Juneau over the last ten years.
@akeducator
The legislature DID increase funds for things like heating oil... to the tune of $30 million dollars, they are simply Not willing to increase the BSA so that teachers can get their "raises" this year. They want to see improvement in education for anyone to get raises for what they do. $18,000 is already a lot of money per student. More than 90 % of school districts around the country, yet they have higher graduation rates and SAT/ACT scores than us. Sheesh, get a grip people. 35 students per class is not what is being proposed. Even with the lack of extra BSA money, it will go up by 1-3 students per classroom. Really not enough for you to be saying the sky is falling.
@akeducator
Like most people, I am not expert in all things. I, like most people have a tendency to hire an expert to address things that I need or want done that I do not have the skills or capacity to complete on my own.
This is the reason that you see so many people who can identify the problems in our school system but are not offering any solutions. We are not expert in this so we “hire experts”. Sadly, in this case our experts (educators) have failed year in and year out.
Calling for others to “offer a solution” is a complete cop out. You as an educator were hired to educate children and were given a lot of money to get the job done. We hired you with the expectation that you would do the job not offer excuses as to why it cannot be done.
Wrong
I don't think it is the educators who are failing, AHHA. The vast majority do an excellent job. It is the SYSTEM that is failing. And guess what? Teachers are not power players in the system.
I do NOT make excuses for myself. I was hired to do a job -- educate children -- and I do a very good job at it. I'm a requested teacher, my students learn, my test scores have consistently gone up throughout my career, my parents receive regular communication, and I am extremely proud of the job that I do. I make NO excuses for myself.
I am FRUSTRATED because people tend to blame teachers (just like you did) for what is wrong in schools when in fact we have LITTLE OR NO choice in how WE would fix it. That's just my point, AH HA.
Here's what I want.
1.) Classes capped at 21 for elementary and under 30 for secondary so we can actually know our students.
2.) Go back to ONE HIGH SCHOOL so we can save money and have an impressive exploratory program with more than one language.
3.) Have a well-thought-out voc-ed option for those students who clearly are not interested in going to college so that they can prepare for a job after high school instead of just dropping out.
4.) Have principals and admin get rid of the lowest performing 10% of teachers... you know, the ones who do the bare minimum, don't care if students are not learning, do not make sure children are succeeding to the best of their ability, can't manage a classroom, etc. (Even tenured teachers can be removed if they are poorly performing; but it takes work from admin to make that happen; other districts regularly clean house. But the JSD does not.)
5.) Ask for more parent and teacher input BEFORE hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent committing to programs like MAPS testing and AVID to make sure it's in the community's best interest.
6.) Make parent conferences MANDATORY for grades K-9 and give our truancy program more teeth so parents can't excuse their children from school for 30% of the time and then we're surprised when they can't read or write?
Guess what? I cannot control any of that except the things that happen in my classroom.
It takes a community to make change. We all know there are changes that could help. Saying "NO MORE MONEY, YOU GREEDY PEOPLE" and then leaving things the same is not going to change anything. I have other ideas for how to fix it as well. Unfortunately, it's like a cashier telling the CEO of Fred Meyer how to improve business. I just don't carry the weight in their eyes. And, clearly, not in yours either.
So I will continue to be excellent in my classroom and let the system itself continue as is... with a little less money each year. I hope your child ends up in my class someday, AH HA; maybe you would see that public education CAN be effective.
@AKeducator
Just to be clear, Your test scores or your students test scores?
1.) Ok. I can agree to that and frankly I think we should, and can do better. Juneau School District (JSD) currently indicates that it has approximalty 5000 students and shows that it has 387 teachers. That should be more than sufficient don’t you think? It is after all 12.9 students per teacher.
2.) I absolutely agree and I always have. If we really needed a new High School then we should have abandoned the old one instead of having two. Yes, this is not your fault certain city fathers pushed hard to get us where we are today……
3.) Ok, But only if you trade it for Yaakoosge Daakahidi Alternative High School. It is a consistent failure.
4.) I will buy this but will your union? Additionally why not put teachers who appear in the bottom fifteen percent on notice that they will be terminated automatically if it happens two years out of three . No recourse, no discussion, no quit rather than be terminated. Terminate them and reflect the reason in their employment file.
5.) Standards are in the community’s best interest. Sorry.
6.) We can start by instituting a closed campus for all district school. And yes. Teeth are important. Get that school cop to go get truant students and hold parents to answer for the student.
Most of these things can be changed by a teacher who will stand up and say No.
@AHHA
Thank you. It's clear that although our nation's public schools are important to parents and children as well as teachers, etc., that you feel "Most of these things can be changed by a teacher who will stand up and say No."
So that means, again, you choose to blame me - a hardworking, successful teacher - because I can't change the system. You even put the snarky question about my test scores. Maybe instead of belittling me you should consider that I work hard and SHARE my students struggles and successes.
Maybe my post was asking you to help me. But instead you type on your computer and belittle me because I belong to a union and because the current political climate chooses to blame teachers over anything else.
I have stood up and said no, AHHA. I have spoken at the School Board. I have met with my superiors to share my ideas. Have you been to a School Board meeting? Have you told them you think they should replace Ya'Koos with a Voc-Ed program? Have you told the School Board that you think campuses should be closed?
Or do you just type your opinions in this forum and not follow your derision with action?
Maybe it's time you stand up and say NO along with me.
schools and teachers...
Government needs to stay the .... out of education. How about this, let people opt out of our public schools and be able to invest that $17k into a private school for their child. A school of their choosing. One that thrives on quality, not on teacher's unions.
I went to a private school for a year of high school. I learned more in that one year than I ever did in a public school. Far more! That's because they had rules, they also tested me before I started in the school and reinforced subjects. Sent me from advanced algebra back to remedial measurements. Do public schools ever do that? No, it's like their throwing the students through as fast as possible.
There are a thousand things that could be done to improve education. But the first thing you need to do to fix it is fire both the government and the unions. Then we can focus on the kids!