Many elementary students in the Shoreline School District face imminent changes to their classrooms as district officials shuffle them in the coming weeks.
Secondary schools could see changes, too, but those are still being worked out.
District officials propose to reduce some class sizes and make others larger at elementary schools.
They also want to add seven full-time equivalent teachers to help in classrooms and add more split classes, where teachers teach two grades at once.
The scope of the proposed changes is unprecedented in the district, said Elizabeth Beck, co-president of the Shoreline Education Association, or SEA — the teacher’s union.
Usually, a few classes are changed here and there, she said.
“What is new is the incredibly widespread nature of what they’re doing,” she said. “Teachers are incredibly disturbed over this.”
The union has filed a grievance and a demand to bargain over the proposed changes.
Overloaded classes
“Overload” is extra pay or paraprofessional help teachers get when their class size goes over a set limit. It’s meant to help teachers deal with large classes.
For example, if a kindergarten class goes over 24 students, a fourth-grade class goes over 26 students or a sixth-grade class goes over 27 students, teachers qualify for overload.
This month, officials saw there were almost 60 classes in overload at the elementaries.
They propose to lower some class sizes to just below the threshold that qualifies a teacher for overload, meaning those classes would get no overload.
The students taken from those classes would go to a larger class that qualifies for overload. In that larger class, a .2 full-time-equivalent (FTE) certificated staff member would be added.
For example, in the proposal, Brookside’s three third-grade classes would have 23, 23 and 24 students respectively. The class with 24 students would get the .2 certificated FTE help and the others wouldn’t get overload.
In many cases, the difference is bigger. Under the proposal, Parkwood’s three first-grade classes would have 23, 23 and 28 students, with the 28-student class getting the certificated help and the 23-student classes not qualifying for overload.
At Echo Lake, the three sixth-grade classes would have 26, 26 and 30 students respectively, with the 30-student class getting the help.
In the large classes, there’s an extra teacher in the room 20 percent of the time, but for the rest, you have one teacher and an extra-large class, Beck said.
Teachers are anxious about getting the big classes, but also anxious about losing paraprofessional help or pay when their class numbers fall to just below the threshold but are still large, Beck said.
Teachers also object to the uneven class sizes.
“This is not fair for those kids that are gonna be in that class that’s way larger than their classmates,” Beck said.
District reasoning
One reason the district wanted to look at the issue is that there are grants and other resources earmarked to fund teaching staff. That money can’t be used for paraprofessional help, or to pay overload, said Marcia Harris, deputy superintendent. The money, in addition to grants, includes Initiative 728 funds, earmarked in part for lowering class sizes.
Overload pay comes from state-funded basic education money, which is limited, Harris said.
“The numbers used in the past cost the district money,” she said. “We’re not spending money we don’t have to address overload.”
Every district has a different definition for what’s considered overload, she said. Some districts have no overload pay or help while others have higher trigger numbers than Shoreline. In the Mukilteo School District, for example, kindergarten teachers get overload if their class exceeds 30 students.
As for the issue of students in different-sized classes, that varies too, she said.
“Every organization thinks about that differential,” Harris said. “If you put additional resources in classes that are larger…You don’t want all classes to meet the definition of overload.”
The leadership team at the district is more familiar with the system this year, said Harris of why there were changes this year.
More split classes
More split classes at the elementaries would be another result of the proposal.
In a split class, teachers teach fourth- and fifth-graders in the same class, or second- and third-graders, for example, because of uneven enrollment.
There are five split classes in district elementary schools right now. Officials want to create 13 total. Last year there were 11 splits, Harris said.
Parents and teachers tend to dislike split classes and try to avoid them whenever possible, Beck said, because teachers must teach two different curricula to two sets of students.
“It’s an incredible juggling act — a lot of work,” she said.
Moving students at this point, between adding split classes and moving for overload, is very disruptive, and the proposals are creating havoc, Beck said.
Class sizes
Harris said officials turned to the changes partly to improve class size.
How the changes affect class size varies from school to school. Some classes shrink, others grow.
Adding split classes broke up some large classes. For example, the two sixth-grade classes at Lake Forest Park Elementary are now 35 and 36 students — the largest elementary classes in the district. By adding a split class, the numbers fall to two classes of 26 and one split class of 25.
In the same vein, Brookside’s fifth grade classes are now at 29 and 31. By adding a split, the numbers drop to two classes of 26 and one split class of 26.
However, many classes would also get bigger.
Briarcrest’s three second-grade classes are now at 21, 22 and 22. The proposal would create one second-grade class of 27, a class of 23 and a split class of 23 — 15 second graders and eight first-graders.
In many cases, one class gets smaller and another gets bigger at the same school. For example, there are two fourth-grade classes at Lake Forest Park Elementary that hold 26 and 27 students apiece.
In the proposal, one class would have 28 students and the other 25 students. The larger class would get the .2 FTE teacher help, and the smaller class would no longer qualify for overload help.
Next steps
The district’s plan hasn’t been finalized, Harris said. Still, officials want to act quickly.
“We’re trying make the changes and have students settled in permanent classrooms as soon as possible,” she said.
The plan doesn’t require Shoreline School Board approval.
SEA filed a demand to bargain over the changes Tuesday, Sept. 18. Union building representatives were scheduled to meet after The Enterprise deadline to discuss the issue.
At press time, the district hadn’t issued a response to SEA.
Changes to secondary schools are also being discussed. Class sizes, overloads and other issues will be explored in meetings with principals, Harris said.
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