Budget cuts pressure principals;class sizes rise
Students are not the only ones wrangling with mathematics this year. Yesterday, The New York Times reported how principals have cut costs to meet their 5% slimmer school budgets, after the budget cuts announced last spring.
According to the Times, principals across the city made most cuts by eliminating teaching positions and reducing spending on equipment, supplies, and books. For one Brooklyn principal at PS 273, the loss of four teachers bumped class size from 21 students to 29.
Today’s Daily News reports on overcrowding in other city classrooms — including 40 students jammed into one room at PS 102 in the Bronx. Leonie Haimson, of Class Size Matters, has published a Q&A with details about class size limits, according to the UFT contract: 25 in kindergarten, up to 28 in grades 1-3, and 32 in grades 4-6. Beyond those numbers, teachers can “grieve” (complain) to the Department of Education.
The Times also reports that, while the city says spending on the arts was not be especially affected by the cuts, the Center for Arts Education charges that they’ve received complaints about schools “disproportionately trimming arts supply budgets and eliminating part-time arts educators.”
In May, we asked what you would cut from your school’s budget, but now we want to know what’s actually been lost. What’s being short-changed at your school? Have class sizes risen?
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My son had 32 children in his class in 2nd grade, 32 children in his class in 3rd and about 33 this year. I know his teacher complained last year, but nothing came of it. The principal just packs them in. If teacher’s do “grieve” what is supposed to happen? As regarding art, each class gets two to six classes (once a week) of a visiting art teacher. It is a complete waste of money and I wouldn’t mind if it was cut completely. All school plays have been cancelled for years, but that is due to extra test prep. No class trips in years either. I think the only area that hasn’t been cut in my son’s school is ELL and remedial classes, the result of Klein’s paying principals for improving grades of the bottom. Anything that would enrich the lives of a student who can already pass those state tests has been cut and is fair game for the principal.
Comment by parent — September 16, 2009 @ 5:56 pm
At our highly regarded District 2 elementary school, the principal is talking about raising class sizes to 29 in 3rd & 4th grades from what has always been a strict maximum of 28 in past years.
Comment by a parent — September 17, 2009 @ 9:49 am
Unfortunately, my child’s District 2 elementary school had to grapple with class sizes of over 30 (as young as the 2nd grade) for years. This wasn’t the principal’s fault. It was a zoned elementary school. She had to take whoever lived in the zone and when she ran out of classrooms, she had to pack in more kids per class. Also, I don’t mind that schools serving many at-risk children receive priority funding to reduce class sizes, but when I read in the NYT article about a school that had to raise class sizes from 21 to 29, I thought “this is the best example they can get of budget cuts? Really?” First grade (2003-04 school year) was the last time my child was in a class of less than 30 and she’s in middle school now, where class enrollment averages about 35-36 in the 6th and 7th grades. I’m sure there are similar examples across the city of this kind of persistant overcrowding that the DOE tolerated even when funding was plentiful.
Comment by another frustrated parent — September 17, 2009 @ 10:29 am
Students at the JHS at M.S. 219 in the Bronx are being short changed because it is a community school and the classes have 34 plus children. This is sad when it has been proven that smaller classes allow greater student growth.
Comment by Concerned citizen — September 27, 2009 @ 10:36 pm