D300 Teachers: 10 Percent Down

District 300 schools will open their doors Aug. 16 with 65 rehired teachers Resources Director John Light told FEN Thursday.  Teachers' union president Kolleen Hanetho told FEN her estimate is that only about half will be teachers cut earlier this year in attempts to balance the district's budget.

Light said some of the "rehires" will actually be newbies because some positions like special ed and bilingual education  require teaching certificates none of the laid off teachers hold.

Faced with uncertain state funding, the Board of Education this Spring cut 29 teachers for poor performance and axed 162 more in advance of a mandatory rehire deadline.  At least seven teachers resigned, too, according to Hanetho making the total teacher loss in advance of the 2010-11 year almost 200.  Add back the teachers Light's hired this summer and the shortfall is almost the same as the one in Finance Director Cheryl Crates' latest budget forecasts: 129 fewer teachers this year than last.

"That's 10 percent of all the teachers in D300 who aren't coming back," said Hanetho

"We're not totally 100 percent complete," said Light but he anticipated any more hires would require an unexpected wave of last-minute student registrations.

Hanetho wasn't happy about that. "The rest of the teachers are going to have to compensate for that.  They're (each) going to have more students to teach."

Light agreed D300 class sizes would be going up.  Since he's still figuring out which teacher goes where he said he didn't have average class sizes yet. Light did provide "roll numbers", however. That's the point at which a class is considered full.  This year the D300 Kindergarten roll number will be 33.  The first and second grade roll number will be 35 and the roll number in third through fifth grades will be 37. Light said middle school roll numbers vary by how each school did on the No Child Left Behind tests with thirty three the collective average.  In the high schools the roll numbers depend on whether a class is a requirement or an elective and Light said they're spread all over the board.