Did they say what K-3 class size will be next year?

Every year, all over California, this sad state of affairs happens. Districts are required by law to get their budgets done and approved by the county and state by June, but the State apparently has no ability to govern itself and the state budgets are always late. Since the law requires those pink slips (not really pink) to go out by March 15th its a painful, stressful process for all employees, as I can personally attest. Districts, as a result, have no idea what their budgets will really be and they can't really identify actual cuts until the State makes its move. California needs to get its act together. WCCUSD is making every effort to preserve class size reduction, but whether they can or not depends on the state budget and possibly the June election extending the current tax levels but right now we don't even know if we will be allowed to vote on that option or not.

I believe class size K-3 will actually be 31 next year unless the June measures pass. There will likely be many more combination classes as well.

Charles Ramsey told me class sizes would stay the same, and other people I know asked Tony Thurmond and he also said they would stay the same. I haven't gotten a clear answer from anyone about what 26 positions would be cut, but that is less than one teacher per school so even if it impacts class size a bit there is no way that number of eliminated positions could mean class sizes of 31 next year K-3.

Adult ed. should be eliminated. It is mainly GED prep and ESL; those are offered at the community colleges. The proposed $1.5 million could be used for GATE, which has no funding despite being part of NCLB. This district does nothing for high potential, high achieving students. To them it is all about "equity” or regression to the mean (No Child Gets Too Far Ahead, soon to be Race to the Middle). If I hear Charles Ramsey crow once more about "his" Ivy League Connection, I'll puke. Those who graduate able to do Ivy league-caliber work are innately intelligent, have parents who are involved, and hopefully been blessed with a few teachers who ignited and kept alive the intellectual fires. This administration and board deserve little credit for that. The WCCUSD Board is in the business of building school buildings, not Ivy League-eligible scholars.

Marty,
With all due respect, Adult Ed is far more than what you have indicated here. Yes it does offer bilingual programs. It also offers a very wide range of courses including the ability for folks to obtain their GED. That is very important to many people. It offers training so people can obtain jobs, not only within the district, but other places. It offers support for disabled adults. The enrollment actually is quite huge. As for the building program - those funds were obtained separately and cannot be used for any other purpose. The district committed itself several years ago to replace aging structures that were not up to code as to safety and earthquake safety. Its a separate issue. Its a shame when budgetary restrictions pit program against program, school against school. I agree re the gifted program - it has suffered horribly. WCCUSD used to have a really good program. Unfortunately, when the then Superintendent, Walter J. Marks, mixed funds illegally and over-spent causing the district to face bankruptcy, the gifted program was one of the victims. Parents sued the state and the state kept the district open but at a huge cost. the state loan terms are better than before, but California is still demanding repayment of that loan even though other districts have since fallen and needed bailing out and were not required to repay those costs. So a substantial portion of the WCCUSD budget goes to repay that loan - funds that should go to the classroom.

Betty,my understanding was the board voted to only save smaller classes in title 1 schools which would nit include Hercules. Do you have other information? If I am correct the concerns mentioned by the above posters are valid.

Kim, no, they did not qualify it as Title 1 only. Charles Ramsey specifically told me it applies throughout the district. Perhaps that was being discussed at earlier budget meetings, when they were still considering eliminating 85 k-6 positions, which was reduced to 26 positions by the time they voted. Ann Reinhagen, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, emailed me that the 26 cuts "will be applied across the district based on projected enrollment at each school" and there are currently, I believe, 36 elementary schools, so perhaps there could be some small increase in class size. But there's still a chance the 26 will be lowered, too. That is the maximum number of positions they can eliminate based on the action they took before the March 15 deadline.

Thank you Betty, good information. People don't understand the Times article and parents were trying to figure why we are losing 4 teachers at our local school when only 26 are going districtwde.

Kim, it’s all fairly confusing. Often rather than talking about specific class sizes at meetings, they talk about keeping “class-size reduction” which doesn’t mean reducing anything, and it no longer represents the levels – 20 students per class in kindergarten through third grade – that it once did. And even the class sizes we have now aren’t as hard and fast as they once were because they aren’t protected by the contract between teachers and the district. (The current contract lists the k-3 max as 31.) As far as I can tell, the middle and high school class sizes are an even bigger mess. During a meeting, there’s usually no way to ask questions of the people with the answers and it’s often not that easy to get answers from the school district’s administrators afterward. Additionally, it’s very early to be making these decisions and I think the district is probably basically doing the parts it has to do – the vote on reduction of services and issuing layoff notices to anyone they could possibly want to lay off – by the state deadlines. It has no reason to work out the specific details of how it will impact each school until the final numbers are known. There are a lot of young and new-to-the-district teachers who get laid off year after year and don’t know until possibly days before school starts if they have a job with our district or not.

It is a shame because one of the classrooms Dr Harter highlighted at the board meeting is a first grade teacher at my son's school an she is fabulous...and will be getting a pink slip.

With Shannon closing, that probably accounts for some of the elementary lay offs.

A teacher is still needed for every 20-33 kids (depending on the grade level).

These cuts will likely mean the end of Middle College High School in the next few years. MCHS is the top performing school in WCCUSD and over 45% of graduates earn their AA by graduation. Roughly 40% of the graduating class will be the 1st generation in their family to attend college. Some students have started a blog to raise awareness: http://savemchs.blogspot.com/
-Alison (the intern)