Fallout from Baltimore's budget reorganization
In reporting my story for today's paper, I learned that the city school system's budget reorganization has played out in some unpredictable ways.
1) Of the 310 central office employees whose positions were eliminated, all but 14 of them chose to stay in the school system (and six, still not placed, face the prospect of layoffs). I wonder how much the economy played a part in their reluctance to enter a lean job market now, and how many people will leave next year when their pay cuts go into effect.
2) Principals cut 500 school-based positions (initially; some have been restored) and increased money for programs. Over the spring, I heard a lot of concern from program operators who were being told by principals that they didn't have the money to keep them on. The concern at North Avenue was that principals were reluctant to cut positions occupied by their colleagues. But that didn't turn out to be the case. I predict we'll now hear accusations that principals cut the jobs of employees they don't like personally. Union seniority rules prevents this in some cases, but not all.
The class-size estimates are interesting but not surprising, given that we knew that high schools were getting more money and some small elementary schools were getting less. Keep reading to see the figures for elementary, K-8, middle and high schools.
Projected average class sizes, compared with the actual average class sizes last year and the number of students for each teacher allocated under the old budget formula
Elementary schools: 19.1, up from 17.3 last year; old allocation was one teacher per 22 students.
K-8 schools: 19.6, up from 19 last year; old allocation was one teacher per 27 students.
Middle schools: 23.4, up from 22.9 last year; old allocation was one teacher per 30 students.
High schools: 25.4, down from 27.2 last year; old allocation was one teacher per 32 students.
Baltimoresun.com's 
Comments
Sara:
I appreciate your posting this information - different from what some have heard and then repeated here and it's always good to have the facts, although it's also hard to know what the facts are for the following reasons:
1) There are still surplus teachers and schools with vacancies - a strange combination if you ask me. Although if principals were really able to interview and screen candidates (what a novel approach that might be - get teachers who actually fit with the schools model and who have something to offer, hmmmm) maybe that explains why some who have been looking for jobs cannot find them. I would be interested in hearing from HR (and no, I don't think they have a single clue BTW) as to how many real vacancies there are and how many actual teachers there are who are looking.
2) The "class size" information is meaningless since those who are in schools know that some "teachers" are not actually "in" classrooms alone with kids but are doing other duties. Not that these are not needed - master teachers, academic coaches, support staff all play valuable roles in schools, but these things skew the statistics badly. Walk into a high school class in most high schools and the class sizes are not 1:25 as might be assumed by the numbers you give. Also, as we think about a grade level, we realize that at a given moment, not 100% of the teachers are teaching - at least one per grade level might have planning. So class sizes are larger than the numbers suggest.
3) I am a little confused since you put ratios and then also put allocations - schools are no longer going by a staffing model but rather a per-pupil allocation. And I wonder if high schools that had 34 students per class really got 2 teachers since that would have been more than the 33 per teacher numbers - my guess is of course no. And if the numbers you present are correct, it seems like while class size (if I am reading this correctly) might be going up slightly, but that the "allocation" might have gone way down.
More details would be helpful.
Thanks again.
Posted by: Interesting Observations | August 12, 2008 8:28 PM