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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Second, when choosing a public school, if you can be very flexible about location, be sure to ask a lot of questions about resources. There are some schools where the PA's raise a lot of money to provide assistant teachers (some schools have one full day in each classroom), extra art, language, music, etc. These schools operate more like a private school. Having the full time assistant teacher makes a big difference as they can break down to smaller groups, and the assistant teacher can help with a lot of menial tasks so the teacher can focus more on teaching.[/quote]

Sorry, just to clarify on this point: we have a pretty well funded PTA and a lot of other classes in the school did have assistant teachers, they just didn't quite have the budget to put one in every class and we drew the short straw. (perhaps because this teacher had a good track record with test scores etc and they thought she could handle it)

Frankly I'd have preferred they eliminate dance classes - also paid for by the PTA - and used that money to give every class an assistant teacher, but it's not up to me :-)[/quote]

Totally agree - Assistant teachers are more important than dance. Dance is great but it is more of a nice to have than a need to have. Sounds like you are almost done at the school (unless you also have a younger child) but perhaps you should join the PA and influence the decision!

I'm not sure of the breakdown of which schools have different levels of assistant teachers. Anything is good but some have more than others. This is something I would do homework on if I were choosing a school. There are also different levels of assistant teachers but in my experience most are in grad school for education or something similar, so usually truly can add value - worst case they at least can help the teachers with basic tasks which is better than nothing.[/quote]

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