Palm Beach County School District hurries to hire teachers, obey class-size ... - Palm Beach Post
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The Palm Beach County School District is spending millions more to staff 132 new positions, including moving up to 34 teachers to fill some of those posts, in a race to meet state-mandated class-size limits by next month.
The changes come on top of about $19 million spent to meet the limits.
The district must count how many students are in each class on Oct. 14 and report those numbers to the state Department of Education by Oct. 28, said state spokeswoman Cheryl Etters. A state law passed in 2002 and amended last year limits core classes such as English and math to 18 students in kindergarten through third grade, 22 students in fourth through eighth grade and 25 students in high school.
If all of the district's roughly 100,000 core classes are not in compliance, it could face millions of dollars in fines.
The district filled about 200 new elementary school teacher positions and paid about 1,200 middle and high school teachers a $23.50 per day supplement to teach an extra period as part of a $19 million plan to meet the limits. Chief Financial Officer Mike Burke said the district has committed as much as an additional $7.5 million from reserves to pay for another 132 positions because some schools had more students than expected. Burke said 101 are teaching positions and the rest support personnel, such as in-classroom aides required for new special-needs classes.
A few middle- and high-school vocational teachers are still being placed, said Pat Kaupe, director of recruitment and retention, adding that they will likely fill vacant physical education and music positions.
Most of the new positions are in elementary schools and will require hiring new teachers. Kaupe said she has been reaching out for the past few weeks to substitute teachers and other prospective teachers.
"We'll be busy this week and the next getting folks in here," Kaupe said, adding that she plans to get all the new teachers hired and working before the Oct. 14 deadline. "We'll work it as fast as we can to get teachers into their classrooms."
Some of the teacher shuffling has upset parents whose students had grown attached to their teachers.
Linda Tanner, vice president of the Palm Beach Public School Parent Teacher Association, and other Palm Beach Public parents, said they were upset that fifth-grade teacher James Elliott was moved to a position at another school to meet class-size rules.
"It's not good," Tanner said. "My son was comfortable with Mr. Elliott. The other kids are affected as well."
At Wellington High School, Principal Mario Crocetti said he filled two vacant teaching positions and added two positions in math and English. He has 37 teachers teaching six periods with one planning period, and seven teachers who agreed to teach all seven periods of the day.
At Conniston Middle School in West Palm Beach, Principal Mary Stratos said she was worried that with more resources and teachers dedicated to core classes, there are not enough non-core classes being offered. Some physical education classes at her school have 40 to 45 students in them, she said, and teachers have to break the students into exercise squads to keep order.
Crocetti said the size of some non-core classes, especially foreign languages and advanced placement classes, also have gone up slightly at his school, but none has more than 30 students.
The Classroom Teachers Association union is concerned about the increase in the size of physical education classes, union President Tony Hernandez said . He said the union plans to meet with the district Friday.
The state probably wouldn't start analyzing the data from all of its school districts until November, Etters said, and would not determine which districts have not complied with class-size limits until after Jan. 1.
28 Sep, 2011--
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