Funding schools ‘by the numbers’ – or how to make 140 students disappear
In August, with the first day of school quickly approaching, as I worked on our school’s master schedule I began to wonder about whether my district office needed a refresher in basic math facts. It all started with the number 109. This number, according to the district, was the number of sixth graders that were going to show up on the first day of school.
The problem was that our data system had a different number in mind: 249.
249 – 109 = 140
This simple calculation showed a gap of 140 children between the projection of the district and what the data system listed as currently enrolled students who had attended fifth grade at our district’s schools in the previous year – and would be coming to us on the first day!
When this “discrepancy,” shall we say, was brought to the attention of human resources and student services, we were assured that 109 was still the correct number because at least another 90 students would drop out of the system to enroll in the newest charters that were recruiting in the neighborhood.
This is where my fears about their basic computation abilities began to grow:
109 + 90 = 199
249 – 199 = 50
We still had a gap. A gap of even 50 human bodies (not to mention the even larger 140) is a daunting prospect for a school. Especially when those 50 are bright-eyed sixth graders starting their first day of middle school.
On the first day of school, every school in the state expects a few students not to show up and a few to come who were not yet enrolled, but not 50 of them and certainly not 140. To put it in perspective, 50 students equals two classrooms worth of students. Presumably, that also means two teachers to teach said students.
And there lay the problem: Projecting more students would mean projecting the need to hire more teachers. Our district, like countless others across the state, did not want to hire more teachers unless they could prove that they would have the student bodies, often termed “seats,” to justify it. The number of students in seats is what generates ADA, average daily attendance rate, which determines how much money, per student, will be given to a school/district by the state. If our district had “over-hired” teachers prior to the first day of school, it would be much harder to then get rid of them. Thus, I was told, it would be much better to wait until the first day of school and see who actually showed up and then hire more teachers as needed.
Such a ludicrous plan – one in which the experience and learning of children seems to have taken the way-back seat – could only be conceived when money is so tight that it seems acceptable to find savings in whatever way possible. In an educational climate uncertain, still, on and after the first day of school, of how funds for schools may be cut even further, districts are going to great lengths to penny pinch at the expense of our students.
Which brings me to our final number: 233.
In our school’s case, 233 sixth grade students showed up on the first day of school, when we had the teaching staff to handle 109. And even then, just to be sure the number didn’t drop, our district waited until four days into the school year to agree that we needed four more teachers for the number of students enrolled. Because we had to post the positions after the start of school (and see if other schools had perhaps too many teachers), our sixth grade students were taught by four substitute teachers and three already hired teachers for the first two weeks of school.
This meant that for many students, their experience of the first two weeks of middle school did not include the teachers who would teach them for the remainder of the year, nor did it include an introduction to the learning they would be embarking on for the rest of the year. When much research has supported extending student learning time and time in school, an artificial decrease of one to two weeks of learning time because adults had a disagreement over arithmetic seems wrong.
This particular example, though drastic, is just one of many. Many districts are still waiting to decide if they will take “furlough” days, further decreasing the amount of instructional time students receive. Many districts have cut all funds for field trips and other enrichments that help students make real-world connections to their learning. Many districts prefer to pay already hired teachers additional pay for extra students in their classes above maximum seat counts rather than hire additional teachers, such that 35 to 40 students can be a common class size in middle and high schools.
These are the kinds of “by the numbers” choices that districts across the state are making due to their fears of losing further funding for public education.
Budget pressures, bad choices
I don’t place the blame for this solely on my district. If they were not feeling the pressure of such extensive and continually threatened budget cuts, we would likely not have reached this point. Indeed, if they were not feeling the additional pressure of decreasing enrollment from newly opened charter schools, we would also likely not have reached this point. The fact that at least one local charter was recruiting after the first day of school on the sidewalks outside at least one district school shows that these fears have a basis. In this case, the district was clearly stuck with a lot of bad options. However, the fears of falling enrollment and funding do not explain away the kinds of decision-making that ensued.
There were alternative solutions. The district and the charters could have communicated better about enrollment numbers. The human resources department (which hires teachers) and the student services department (which projects enrollment numbers) could have communicated better about enrollment projections (their numbers differed too). Finally, the district could have worked to verify enrollment by contacting families before the start of school to determine if they would be returning to the district.
If employed, these strategies would likely have reduced the margin of error. Instead, the district was off by 124 students; 56 percent more students showed up on the first day than projected.
While such conservative hiring and projections might be acceptable in a real-time manufacturing business, where you might wait to order more parts until it is clear that demand for the product warrants it, in a school system such conservative thinking leads to scenarios that no student, parent, or teacher would support.
Students are not parts or just a number; they are living, breathing young people with their whole future – and ours – ahead of them. They depend on adults to make decisions that are in their best interest.
Professionals in districts and state government have a duty to make our schools function in ways aligned to what we know is best for learning. This means prioritizing factors that directly affect learning: employing qualified teachers for every class before the start of school, increasing student time on task, and ensuring continuity in student scheduling and teacher assignments. This means taking the guesswork out of everything from charter enrollment to the state budget through communication and insistence on putting the needs of students first and foremost.
I am not suggesting this is easy, especially when faced at a district level with the insanity of options engendered by a volatile state budget and the pressures of declining enrollment. However, we shortchange our children and their futures when we let fear and poor communication prevent us from doing what is needed to provide for the best free and public education for every child. No student, no parent, and no teacher would support such “by the numbers” thinking; neither should districts nor the state of California.
Anna Martin is a hybrid teacher at a middle school in the South Bay. She began her career through Teach For America and has continued to work as a mentor and teacher leader at her placement school. She is now entering her eighth year in the profession. She is a member of the Center for Teaching Quality’s Bay Area New Millennium Initiative. In the summer of 2010, she was a Fulbright recipient and had the opportunity to travel to Morocco to develop social studies curriculum. During the last school year, she completed her work towards National Board certification and is awaiting news of the result.
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Perhaps there’s a way you could get parents to do the work with very little effective change on how the schools are actually run. Let parents make a choice of preferred teacher (my district doesn’t do this so I’m guessing yours doesn’t). So let’s say you would like to know 4 weeks before the school year started how many students would show up. For the previous 2 weeks let parents submit a teacher preference and honor that preference equally for every preference that was submitted. I’m betting that almost all parents will find a way to submit a preference, which would mean no actual difference in assigning students to teachers. But parents would participate to make sure they were not left out. I would at least think this is worth a try. And since we all know that all teachers are really good enough no real harm can be done by the experiment.
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That might work at a school where all the parents were educated and equipped to focus that much on the details of their kids’ education, and all spoke English.
My kids’ urban elementary alma mater — which was and is very diverse socioeconomically and ethnically and has a high number of limited-English-speaking parents — used to encourage and work to accommodate parents’ teacher requests, and we definitely ended up with the children of the aware, involved, educated, middle-class parents clustered in the classrooms of the trophy teachers — veterans who had earned longstanding reputations.
The principal worked to even things out in various ways, but it was very clear that there was a large group of parents who were entirely unaware of all of this, for various reasons, and simply didn’t/wouldn’t participate.
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@Caroline, was any real harm done?
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I don’t think that could be determined even if it were clearly true that the trophy teachers were truly providing a better education, @Paul, because there are too many other factors at play, some of which correlate with the likelihood of making a teacher request.
But my point was just that this experience in reality shows that given a diverse cross-section of families, if they are all given equal opportunity to request a teacher, many won’t do it for whatever reason — simply wouldn’t make that call.
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Another approach can be taken to level the information playing field. Parents wouldn’t have to select a specific teacher. They could select the teacher most selected by parents who made a specific choice (or 2nd or 3rd choice etc.). So at least it could be pared down to just making a choice or not making a choice. @Caroline, how was the advertising done? How did the parents make preferences known? Was the effort districtwide? Perhaps a statewide plan with consistent timings would reduce the awareness problem.
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This is a horrifying story, that a district would have that much uncertainty in their numbers.
Surely there’s a way to solve this. Especially in this instance, where it wasn’t an influx of unknown and unexpected children.
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This same situations happens over and over again at many schools. Instead of hiring substitute teachers to come in and take some of the load my wife’s district just stuffed as many 8th graders in the classroom as possible for the first two weeks. She had close to 50 students in the classroom. Talk about how this is unfair to the student, how about the stress that it created for the teacher?
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@Paul, no, not districtwide; and I don’t think it was ever officially announced that parents could request teachers — it was just widely known. But my point is just that only the involved, aware parents were doing this. The least empowered, least aware, least involved, most challenged parents simply are very unlikely to respond to communications from schools in general.
This is a side issue from the bizarre discrepancy in student enrollment figures and the stubborn insistence on not coping with it in Anna’s district. I only mentioned it because I know how hard it is to get parents to respond. A raffle or small prize would probably be more effective, for what it’s worth.
It’s hard not to view this situation as caused by some very problematic folks in the central office.
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So my assumption is that this type of thing can happen because people don’t believe the numbers (or perhaps even think they can fudge the numbers … that’s always a possibility and I have no idea what is really going on). But if one could come up with a more convincing way to say what the numbers really are that could address any potential cause.
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Something as simple and silly as an open house with free food and fun activities might be a way to get families to come out and sign up. Might be cheaper than the uncertainty and disruption.
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There is a very simple explanation to this seemingly irrational behavior — and, wouldn’t you know it, it has to do with the teachers’ union. Do you remember the good ol’ Mar 15 preliminary layoff notices & the final notices in May — the ones that the teachers get so upset about because they have to spend the whole summer worrying whether they’ll have a job in the fall? Who do you suppose wanted those early warning dates? You got it — the union. It’s easy to understand why. Who wants to arrive at the beginning of the school year, ready to teach, only to be told that there aren’t enough students to justify your position and you’re being let go? Even in the private sector, you usually get two weeks’ notice. The union thought two weeks was insufficient and supported the earlier dates we now have in law. So, the teachers who get so distressed at receiving pink slips in March can thank their union for this courtesy. But I digress…
As Ms. Martin explains, school districts are funded on the basis of average daily attendance (ADA). The district decides how many teachers to hire based on a contractually specified teacher:student ratio and a projection of enrollment. Suppose the staffing ratio is 1:30 and the district projects enrollment of 120 students; it hires four teachers. The school year begins and only 90 students show up. Oooops… they only need three teachers, the revenue generated by these students will only support three teachers, but they have four teachers on the payroll. Can they lay off this teacher? No, because the dates for issuing layoff notices have long passed. All they can do is cut other parts of the budget to offset the additional costs of the extra teacher. Not a very happy prospect, is it?
So what do school district administrators do? They project fall enrollment very conservatively and issue layoff notices to more teachers than will probably be laid off. When actual enrollment comes in higher than projected, the district makes do with substitutes until they can hire back some of the permanent teachers who had received final layoff notices (if they haven’t found other jobs). And, because teachers DO get hired back at the last moment, the layoff notices come to be regarded as nothing more than “fire drills” whose sole purpose is to make teachers’ lives miserable — which, of course, is the administration’s intention, isn’t it?
I’m not saying the problem is all the union’s fault. It isn’t. On the other hand, I AM saying that it’s not entirely the district administration’s fault. In an environment where costs are contractually determined, revenues are strictly tied to ADA, and districts have no other sources of revenue or “wiggle room,” the behavior of districts’ administrations is not only understandable — it’s inevitable.
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Though union contracts with school districts (mutually negotiated, not *imposed* by the unions) also set maximum class size limits — so those 50 students crammed into a room with one teacher are a violation too.
The date for sending pink slips was also mutually negotiated, by the way — and really, does it seem so outrageous to protect employees/members against being suddenly dumped into joblessness with no notice?
Predatory charter schools are a major contributor to this problem, as Anna indicates. Flex Academy had recruiters outside SF Unified’s 555 Franklin headquarters the last few days of summer when parents were coming to deal with assignment issues. I’m on their list and also K-12’s (virtual charter/homeschool scheme), and both have peppered me with calls and e-mails begging my 12th-grader to enroll. (Of course, they’re both undoubtedly telling the press that they have “long waiting lists.”)
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Layoffs were further complicated this year by the legislature’s requirement that teachers not be laid off despite the dangerous budget situation.
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I never said that the class size maximums were imposed by the unions. I said they were contractually specified. There are two parties to a contract; the parties negotiate the terms and conditions; finally, something of value must pass between the two. (”Offer, acceptance, and consideration.”)
The part that the union needs to own up to is the layoff notice dates, which are specified in statute — NOT negotiated. In fact, I think it would be better if they WERE negotiated. It would then be clear to everyone that these dates were agreed to by BOTH parties. The two parties could also agree on dates that better balance the needs to (1) provide employees realistic advance notice, (2) minimize the distress caused by “false alarms,” and (3) minimize the harm to kids who are stuck in classrooms with temporary teachers — in a manner appropriate to the district’s budgetary circumstances.
For example, the parties might agree to (1) a layoff notice period that is less than the current mandatory five months and (2) a procedure in which some notices are conditional, i.e., you will be rehired if the state grants an increase of $X per ADA and actual enrollment is at least Y. I can imagine that this, or something similar, could result in a layoff procedure that is a bit more informative while allowing districts to make more realistic (albeit still conservative) estimates of fall enrollment.
The district wants flexibility in budgeting; the union wants certainty for its members. The two need to compromise. A mandatory March 15 layoff notice date is not the only way — nor is it necessarily the best way — to do so.
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@CarolineSF –
I never said nor, I think, did I imply, that employees should be “suddenly dumped into joblessness.” My issue is what constitutes “sudden”? Or, put another way, how much advance notice must be provided to make the news of one’s layoff not be sudden? Keep in mind that the earlier the date, the less certain the district is about whether or not a teacher will be laid off. And, with less certainty and severe budgetary consequences (which also affect teachers, by the way) for error, the district acts conservatively, sending out more layoff notices than if the lead time had been less.
My point is you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have a really early layoff notice date while simultaneously minimizing the number of teachers who get “false alarms.” There’s a trade-off. When teachers complain about being on tenterhooks all summer when everyone knows that only a small fraction of those receiving notices will actually be laid off, it’s unfair and disingenuous for the union to encourage finger-pointing at the district.
Finally, the point of my lengthy post was to explain why districts “can’t make accurate estimates of enrollment.” If you have a way to ameliorate this problem, please let us know.
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Yes, I know we were off topic, @edfundwonk. My original post was really to point out that there ISN’T an easy way to get all parents to check in and reconfirm (though a raffle or a prize might be the most effective, and I’m really not joking).
But probably there isn’t a way to get a clear figure. It sounds like some bureaucratic brainlessness for the district to be bandying about figures with as great a discrepancy as @anna describes with the left hand apparently uncaring as to what the right hand is doing, though.
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The fundamental problem with the layoff dates is that school districts are having to make commitments by March 15,2010 (say) and then don’t know how much funding they’ll have per student until months after the school year starts, say November 2010. This isn’t exactly business as usual, and frankly it’s intolerable.
The March 15 date makes perfect sense in a world where the State is committing funding to schools in a June 1 timeframe and schools are finalizing budgets with actual, solid numbers on June 30.
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