Reply to DCPS Employee Return to In Person Work Guidance

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To the person who said no specials because of 100 kids... As a science teacher I teach 120 a day. Your solution isn’t feasible at the middle and high school level.

To the poster above:
Art teachers can see up to 180 students in a day. Every day is a new set of classes. So if you teacher 500 students in Art in a given week you are exposed to 500 students, sometimes they come twice weekly. My understanding of Middle and High school is that you see a fraction of that many students weekly. Obviously, still not a safe situation either.

[/quote]

Ok fine. You both get trophies. [/quote]

Stop it! I'm a parent with high schoolers and I don't want to have my kids miss 2+ weeks of math class because their teacher got COVID. At this point, I think it's easier to be 100% online. The hybrid model presents a lot of disruption and half-assed teaching. If it were all online, teachers could be planning and have daily classes. How are our kids going to be in a class with 10 kids? It will completely water down teaching at the MS and HS level, as this teacher pointed out. [/quote]

I genuinely think they should be trying for 100% distance learning for MS & HS and 100% in person for ES. The logistics of hybrid seem basically impossible for MS/HS and proper DL = real learning; for ES, the logistics are pretty easy -- 2x the teachers and 2x the classrooms; maybe specials either remotely or not at all -- and DL is virtually pointless.[/quote]

I’m pp and agree.[/quote]

No way will DL for specials fly with GenEd F2F. It would be considered inequitable by the GenEd teachers and open a can of worms for the administrators.[/quote]

So specials teachers act as regular classroom teachers until the pandemic is over or we can go back to regular school.  At this point music and art can be sacrificed for classroom learning.  Not that I don’t think those are important, it’s just that being in school every day and learning to read and write are more important.[/quote]

That’s fine but that doesn’t solve staffing issues.  There are maybe 4/5? Specials teachers in the school. Adding one per grade level (grades 1-5) doesn’t really do anything.  And to be honest....I’m not sure how good an art/pe/Spanish teacher is going to be at teaching reading. [/quote]

Depends a lot on the school... L-T has aides through K, so that takes care of itself. For 1-5, you need 3/3/3/3/2 extra teachers I think. (Classes are from 20-23 students, so this relies on a few opting into DL, but I’m sure that would happen.) You have PEx2, librarian, Spanish, art/French, footprints x 2, science, music, ELA instructional coach, math interventionist & computer... So we extra teachers right there, leaving you only 2 short. Surely the after-school coordinator and/or one of the 15ish other special services support staff or 5ish office staff or AP could step in. Also, the 6 City Year folks could be used creatively to supplement in classes with aides. Anyway, you’d probably need to move things around a bit — working with teachers — to match people to their kids well, but there are absolutely enough teachers at the school for it to work. I’m sure it’s true at other schools too, I just don’t know details of their staffing. Anyway, I think it’s feasible.[/quote]

Well let’s see. My upper NW school has 4 specials teachers, 2 reading specialists, two math specialists, 3 aides in PreK, 3 aides in K (for 4 classes) and that’s it for non classroom teachers.  We have 5 classes per grade level.  Special education teachers can’t have a class as it would violate LRE. Paraprofessionals cannot be in charge of a class (unless they are napping).  We also have zero extra classrooms. So even if we could split the kids, there would be no where to put them.

It’s against their contract.  So your idea may work in Title One schools, but it won’t work everywhere. [/quote]

L-T isn’t actually Title I anymore. I’m surprised you upper NW school is so poorly staffed, I admit. I thought UNW was the land of gravy train PTAs...? Science teacher and Foodprints are all paid for by the PTA. I think the wealthier schools on the Hill (Brent/Maury) have aides through 1st grade. And I thought they had more specials?[/quote]

Upper NW schools (minus Janney) got out of HSA’s paying school employees. They now cover supplies so the admin can move that money to cover salaries.  I’m surprised other HSA haven’t gotten out of paying employees. It’s a conflict of interest. Schools up here don’t get much of any at-risk funds in the budget. That adds up to a lot of missed dollars. [/quote]

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