Will Mrs. Smith be in second grade in Wicoff school next year? I can’t tell you,” said Superintendent Victoria Kniewel in response to questions from parents gathered in the Grover Middle School auditorium on April 13.
Kniewel was responding to a question from a parent about where the reductions in the school budget will impact the classroom. About 75 residents were gathered in the auditorium for an informal meeting with the superintendent to ask questions about the budget, which is up for a vote on Tuesday, April 20.
Most questions came from parents who were worried about the effects of cutting an estimated 50 teachers as well as phasing out underutilized courses and co-curricular programs, as proposed in the budget. Kniewel told them that specifics regarding the individual teachers who will be cut, and where other teachers will be moved, are not available because the district is still making those determinations.
She insisted, however, that “we’re making very, very careful reductions,” and that the district is taking what she called a “scalpel” approach to doing so. “We’re not axing,” she explained, saying the reductions and consolidations of classes will be spread throughout the district to avoid outright cutting in one area. “Our reductions have been across every single part of the organization.”
Parents called the information “very vague.” Said one woman: “I’m sure everyone in the schools would like to know who is going to lose their jobs.”
Kniewel maintained that district administrators do not yet know. Factors the board is considering include teachers’ tenure — which is governed by the state — bumping rights, and certifications among other considerations. Kniewel did say, however, that the district is planning to let the affected teachers know by the end of April.
Kniewel was joined by two assistant superintendents — Larry Shanok and David Aderhold — who periodically answered some of the questions. Kniewel explained that “we’ve been very carefully focusing on the students.”
One parent said she was worried that the cuts and consolidations would impact her child’s classroom, where there were already 26 students, which was “already too big,” the woman said. The parent was referring to the fourth grade at Millstone River School, where Kniewel acknowledged there was a lot of growth last year that required one of the teachers to be moved from another school to take on the fourth grade class.
Kniewel told the woman the district was not looking to further burden that class. “We know that we are not planning to increase that,” she said.
The consolidations do spell longer bus routes and combined classes, as well as increases in class sizes, Kniewel said. For example, at the high school the district would avoid combining classes like science labs, which require certain limitations. The district would begin with lecture classes, where they would be “inching up the class sizes,” she said.
While underutilized courses will be eliminated, “if the course is a graduation requirement, we will be combining” the classes, she said.
Parent Jennifer Howard asked Kniewel about the timeline for informing students that programs may not be offered in the coming year, and questioned whether that would cause confusion in the new school year. She asked whether school officials will be more flexible with deadlines they give the students for signing up for classes. She also asked about the factors that went into determining whether a sports program was undersubscribed.
Kniewel said district officials were waiting to receive responses and input from students, who are selecting their courses.
Aderhold, however, said, “the hope is that students will leave the school year with their schedules.” He also said a majority of the sports programs would not be impacted. Rather, the number of stipends available for coaching positions will be reduced, he said.
One parent asked whether the board would allow a student to play for a team at another school if the same program was cut in his or her own school. He used the example of allowing a student from Grover to play for a team at Community Middle school if a program at Grover was canceled.
Aderhold said the same number of programs would run at each school. If a program is offered at Grover, it must be offered at Community. However, teams at each school may be combined. He pointed to the separate seventh and eighth grade teams at both Community and Grover middle schools. “Will there be two teams per school? No, to be perfectly honest with you.”
When it comes to teaching positions, one resident called for revisiting a teacher’s tenure, which she said should not be a deciding factor in determining a teacher’s worth, calling the idea “archaic.”
“Some of the weakest teachers are burnt out professionally; they just happen to be at the higher end of the pay spectrum,” she said.
District officials said they had to use tenure in their considerations because of state regulations.
Later, during the school board’s special meeting for approval of the contract with the WW-P Service Association (see story below), one teacher and two parents urged the board against eliminating a teaching position specifically to teach health. Kniewel said health would still be offered. “However, we can’t afford the luxury of having a specific teacher teaching the health curriculum.”
Residents also asked questions about the newly approved Princeton International Academy Charter School. Shanok told the parents that the most recent estimate from the state — which determines the amount the district will have to pay in per-pupil costs for the estimated 75 students who will attend the school — was that the district must send $862,000 to the school. But the district will not see a savings in the students who do leave the district to attend the charter school because those students will come from varying classrooms and grade levels, leaving no room for reducing particular teachers or classes. The cost “very much outweighs” the savings, he said.
