Marylee Shrider: 30 kids in kindergarten? Way too many
| Friday, Sep 05 2008 06:24 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 12:58 PM
It’s gonna be a heck of a year. And not in a good way.
At least not for kindergarten teachers of the Rosedale Union School District, where the kindergarten class-size reduction program is kaput, thanks, in part, to our Legislature’s stubborn inability to balance the budget.
One veteran teacher tells me her kindergarten class, like others in the district, has 30 students, including several 4-year-olds.
With only one part-time aide and few parent helpers, she’s operating in survival mode. Last year there were 65 kids and four kindergarten teachers, but now there are 60 kids and two kindergarten teachers.
She said by the time the kids go home, she’s brain dead.
Of course she is. Most of us grown-ups would be whipped after a morning spent with just a few 5-year-olds, even if the tots were perfectly behaved. Throw a 4-year-old into the mix and we’d be toast before 10 a.m.
But thanks to a dried-up well of reserves, one of the lowest revenue limits in the county and a truly horrid budget crises, Rosedale officials are asking their kindergarten teachers to go where the bravest fear to tread — into a room packed wall-to-wall with wiggly, giggly, fidgety 5-and 4-year-olds.
I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
It makes some parents, like Rosedale mom Sheri Eckard, with a child in the fifth grade and one in kindergarten, more than a little angry.
“Why was Rosedale so quick to give that up?” Eckard said of the class reduction program. “My frustration is, why wasn’t someone working on this a long time ago?”
Eckard said parents and teachers weren’t given enough notice or allowed enough input on the district’s decision to cancel class size reduction in kindergarten classes, but Rosedale District Superintendent Jamie Henderson said staff and parents were asked for their input at not one, but two meetings early this year, both of which were in-depth and widely advertised.
“Based on the governor’s budget we found we were going to do everything we had the year before, but with $2.1 million less,” he said. “We had to make hard choices and we wanted input.”
Henderson defends the district’s call, saying revenue limits — the amount of money schools receive for each student — were locked in decades ago, when the area was much more rural and land was considerably cheaper. Only legislation, he says, can change that now.
Because of those low revenue limits — Rosedale ranks 35th of the county’s 36 elementary school districts — the district must spend 85 percent of its budget to retain the first-rate teachers it’s known for.
It’s money well spent, Henderson said.
“If you want to spend less on teachers to save money for a rainy day, that’s one choice,” he said. “We choose to hire the best teachers we can.”
Eckard makes no argument there, saying “we have very good, very seasoned teachers.”
So far, the Rosedale District is the only large district forced to drop its kindergarten class-size reduction program, though the program is still in force for first, second and third grades. For Rosedale and other districts, like Norris School District, retaining class-size reduction programs is a year-to-year decision.
“There’s a dollar incentive, but it just does not pay for itself,” said Norris Superintendent Wallace McCormick. “If the state does not make some fundamental changes in how it finances education, I don’t know how long we can keep these programs.”
So what can parents do?
We can start by taking McCormick’s advice and encourage our lawmakers to rethink how we finance our children’s education. We can relieve a bit of the kindergarten teacher’s burden by NOT enrolling our 4-year-olds, who, though they may be smart and loving and the most all-around wonderful children ever born, are likely not mature enough to keep up with their 5- and 6-year-old classmates.
Mostly, we can encourage our state lawmakers — go ahead, get snotty — to get off his or her duff and pass a state budget.
After all, isn’t finishing what we start something we learn in kindergarten?
These are Marylee Shrider's opinions, not necessarily The Californian’s. Call her at 395-7474 or write mshrider@bakersfield.com.
