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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Teachers, I support you and share your anxiety and consternation.

Can someone explain to me how this works in a high school setting (the +1 on class size)? Our school is overcrowded and most core classes are fully subscribed.  Say you have 45 students who want an AP class, and they usually only offer one section of this class. Would an increase of the class size make it less likely they would open a second section?[/quote]

The class size piece here doesn't really have an effect, but the overall budget situation means they often won't have staff to support another section.[/quote]
+1
I did a quick calculation for a high school with 2400 students. [b]An increase of 1 student per class allocation means a decrease of ~ 4 full time equivalent positions[/b], or ~20 class sections. Principals have a lot of flexibility internally about how they create sections. They have to balance student requests, staff certifications, room usage, needs of the course, and longer term stability of course offerings and teacher experience. It’s not helpful if a new elective is popular and 8 sections could be offered, if the following year there will only be 3 sections. Better to stabilize at 4 or 5 sections each year by giving seniors priority.

Right now the problem is how to decrease offerings by 20 sections and end up with 4 fewer teachers. If a department currently has an open position, the principal might decide not to fill it, and then reduce sections across multiple courses and shuffle teacher assignments. For example, 10 sections of English 10 with 25 kids each could become 9 sections at 28 kids each. Or maybe there’s an elective with 3 sections of 28. You drop it to 2 sections, shift 8 kids to a different section and make the other 20 kids pick a different elective and fill up those sections.

It’s not an easy task. Principals are going to need to make a quick decision about which positions to reduce, and then it’s going to take counseling a while to actually accomplish shifting.
[/quote]

Then how come Moran's letter was saying "staff member" singular instead of plural?:

[i]All principals will report the staff member that they have identified to the Office of Human Resources and Development (OHRD) for involuntary transfer by Wednesday, June 5, at 12:00 p.m.,

• On Thursday, June 6, OHRD staffing coordinators will confirm that the staff member you identified for involuntary transfer is accurate based on position and seniority[/i]

[/quote]

It reads that way to me too, but if that's true it seems really unfair that small elementary schools and huge high schools both lose 1 staff member each.  Anyone understand this more?[/quote]

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