Unfunded Mandates.

The State Legislature loves giving educators more and more to do.  Every time they meet we sigh a collective sigh and contemplate what new thing they are going to dump on us.  90% of the time without relieving us of something we are already doing so that we have the time for the new stuff.

More often than not, these mandates come without any funding to pay for them, we’re supposed to squeeze it out of our 51^st-in-the-nation per pupil funding.

This year there are a couple things that I actually support, except for their being unfunded.

The first one will require school districts to hold yearly seminars for parents on bullying, substance abuse, mental health and internet safety.  If it weren’t for the fact that funding for these seminars will be coming out of my classroom, I’d be all for it.

They are also voting on a bill to put caps on K-3 classrooms.  It would mandate that kindergarten classes could be no bigger than 20 students, 1^st & 2^nd grade at 22 and 3^rd grade classes would stop at 24.  Wonderful idea, one I have been argued is the #1 issue in education for years.  The problem is that the bill includes no extra money.  Zip.  Zero. Nada. Ziltch. Niente.

This means class sizes in the upper grades are going to have to get bigger.  Having 34 kids in an Algebra class will be a thing of the past.  42, which I’ve had before, will be the new norm.  An article on KSL.com reports Logan High School already having 50+ students in their English classes.

You up on the hill:  The rubber band  is already stretched to the max, the camel’s back is cracking and the balloon is pushing it’s outer limits.  Something’s gonna blow, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

But hey, we got $500 million to move the Utah State Prison so some developers (aka: friends & legislators) can make a bundle building houses at the Point of the Mountain.

Hello? Utah here.

As an 8th Grade Math teacher, I had to take a national survey today.  I got to this question and first laughed, then cried.

Could they at least acknowledge that we exist?  That having only 26 in a class is an anomaly in at least one of the 50 states?

The top one has the question and choices exactly like the real survey I took, the bottom one is the way I would imagine it if it was written just for Utah teachers.

Just click on it if it’s too small to read.

19 my Aunt Fanny.

… They really need to rephrase the term “Average Class Size”, or find a more informative way of calculating it.

… I just got done adjusting my seating charts for the second semester, which starts Tuesday.  Of my four 8th grade classes, two have 40 students, and two have 39 students.  My 9th grade class has a scant 36 students in it.

… Then I’m in reading the Salt Lake Tribune, where they reported that the average class size for secondary schools last year was “19 students a class.”  That’s one more student than half my smallest class.  A more accurate, and less deceptive, way of stating that number would be “19 students per certified staff member.”

… Here’s the problem with that number, they figure it by taking the number of students registered and dividing it by the number of staff members on teacher contracts, including the ones with no class loads.  Counselors are on teacher contracts.  Librarians are on teacher contracts, so are the School Technology Specialists.  They don’t differentiate between classroom teachers and these other positions. When you also consider the smaller class sizes of Special Ed, Youth in Custody and other at-risk specific classes, you get an incredibly distorted impression of the the class size most of our students are in.

… I’d like to see the stats from actual class rolls for your mainstream classes.  That would give you an accurate idea of what the majority of the students see in all their classes, and I’d guarantee it’s a lot more than 19.  Or at least word it so that the general public doesn’t picture classrooms with less than 20 students in them, and wonder why all these teachers are complaining about “stack ‘em deep and teach ‘em cheap.”