Four-year-old Adalein Die checks out the bell in front of Cooper School last week. While the district had 4-year-old kindergarten covered, there was an unexpected surge in 5K registration, prompting the hiring Monday of three new teachers. (Photo by Jennifer Eisenbart)
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
It’s a dilemma the Burlington Area School District can’t quite seem to solve.
This year, the district went – at least according BASD Superintendent Peter Smet – above and beyond in advertising kindergarten signup.
“We put signs out,” Smet said. “We put banners out. We did notices in English and Spanish. We posted at day cares and community centers.
“We did more advertising or promotion than we did in the last year when we had 12 over,” he added. “We had three more times people come in late.”
The extra 36 students – swelling from the original signup count of 151 to 187 – scared parents whose children were suddenly in larger-than-anticipated classroom, and in the end Monday night, prompted the district to hire three more kindergarten teachers to address the added student load.
The School Board, after discussing the situation in closed session, went with option D – one new kindergarten teacher each at Cooper, Waller and Winkler Elementary Schools.
The vote was 5-1, with School Board member Roger Koldeway missing and Phil Ketterhagen voting no. Ketterhagen felt that option C1 – which would have resulted in the hiring of a new teacher at Cooper and Waller only – made the most fiscal sense.
“It’s a balance of all facets,” Ketterhagen said.
The chosen option will take the kindergarten classes down to between 19 and 20 students at Cooper (with a 26-student load in Montessori kindergarten), and between 18-19 students at Waller (with a 19-student Montessori classroom).
Winkler will have 13 students in one section and 14 in another. However, while no students would be forced to switch schools, Smet said parents could request a school change.
Smet said interviews for additional staff started Wednesday.
“Our target is to have them on board as soon as possible,” said Smet, adding that the target is Sept. 22, if not sooner.
Numerous parents showed up at Monday night’s School Board meeting to address the issue, and also to thank the district for listening to their worries.
Phone calls had started last week as parents began to realize the issue. At Winkler Elementary School, the need was especially apparent, with just one section of kindergarten and a similar class size situation in first grade (with one section only) as well.
Winkler wasn’t the only school on the radar, though. With Waller having a large number of economically disadvantaged students, Laura Hoffman pointed out that school needed the help.
“They do have the highest needs in the district,” Hoffman said.
One woman, who said her daughter has a learning deficiency, said, simply, “having 27 students in a classroom not only does a disservice to my daughter, but to the other students in the classroom.”
Laura Whiteside, who has a child in the first grade at Winkler, added, “Which kid doesn’t get his needs met? I don’t want my kid to be that child.”
Parents expressed a clear desire to have students at Winkler Monday night. The school has ranked consistently the highest of the elementary schools on the state report card test.
Those same parents also railed against the perceived issue with the district being unable to gauge the size of kindergarten classes.
“This is a business you guys are running here,” said Dawn Petges, adding that people would have been fired in a “normal” business environment by now. “We shouldn’t even be here.”
Harriett Marx, whose great-granddaughter is in kindergarten, couldn’t believe a possible class size of 29 at the kindergarten level.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” she said.
Smet said the situation didn’t make sense to the school district either, as it had increased its efforts to get students signed up well before the start of the school year.
“If we knew about this in May, we would have had the staffing and the rooms set up,” Smet said Tuesday. At the meeting Monday night, he said that this was the dilemma with late registrations.
“If you can stress to your friends and neighbors and relatives about kindergarten signup, it’s essential,” Smet said. “At least just letting us know that they’re there, so we can staff accordingly.”
While the situation with kindergarten was solved, the parental dilemma with the larger class size at Winkler in first grade remained.
“We’re still working on that,” Smet said. He added that parents would be asked if anyone was interested in moving to Waller School, where there is room in the first-grade classes.
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