EDUCATION
Schools firm on class changes
Parents upset with changes in their child's schedule are finding there's not much they can do.
Newspaper correction:
This story in Monday's editions of The Miami Herald about classroom size had the incorrect date for a parent meeting with schools officials.
The meeting was held Monday night at Miami Palmetto Senior High. There is no meeting Tuesday at the school.
BY KATHLEEN MCGRORY AND CARLI TEPROFF
KMCGRORY@MIAMIHERALD.COM
Thousands of parents swarmed South Florida schools last week, unhappy that their children had been assigned new teachers or lumped in with kids from different grades.
Their recourse?
Not much.
School districts say they had to make the changes to meet the new state-mandated requirements for smaller class sizes.
The rationale didn't satisfy Sharon Apisdorf, whose daughter Jenna was switched into new math and social studies classes at Indian Ridge Middle in Davie.
``It's a horrible thing to do to the kids,'' Apisdorf said. ``Not all kids adjust to change well.''
Parent Melissa McNamee Venceslau said she had several meetings with administrators at Southwood Middle in Palmetto Bay. Her daughter, who has special needs, was placed in classes with more than 20 seventh- and eighth-graders.
Venceslau said the arrangement violates her daughter's individualized education plan, which must be followed under federal law. She intends to file a lawsuit against the Miami-Dade district.
``Everywhere I turn, doors are being slammed in my face,'' Venceslau said. ``I'm not getting any response.''
The frustration was felt by parents across the region -- many of whom had voted for the Constitutional amendment limiting class size in 2002.
``Change is never easy,'' Broward Superintendent Jim Notter said. ``But I would encourage parents to work with their children to make the transition as easy as possible.''
This year is the first that each individual classroom in Florida must comply with the rules. Come November, voters statewide will have the opportunity to loosen the requirements. But until then, schools that don't comply will face hefty fines.
CORE SUBJECTS
The caps apply only to core subject areas like math, science, social studies and language arts, and differ by grade level. For kindergarten through third grade, classes are limited to 18 children per teacher. The cap for fourth through eighth grade is 22 students; high school is 25.
To comply, the Broward School Board had to raise taxes. The district used the money to hire hundreds of new teachers after the school year had already started.
The result: thousands of students saw their classroom assignments change. At South Plantation High, the scheduler had to make more than 750 changes.
`NOT AN EASY THING'
``This was definitely not an easy thing to do,'' Principal David Basil said. He encouraged parents and students to talk to administrators about their concerns.
Notter, the Broward schools superintendent, said there was no other way to go about it. The Legislature put school districts ``between a rock and a hard place,'' he said.
But Notter said schools were doing whatever they could to minimize the impact on the students. He said once a student schedule was changed, it was very unlikely that school administration would readjust it.
In Miami-Dade, the district asked counselors, media specialists, athletic directors and central office administrators to take on classroom duties. In addition, some teachers were moved out of their areas of expertise.
In certain schools, principals were forced to create combination classes, meaning students from different grade levels are sharing a teacher.
Those scenarios have drawn complaints from parents and employees.
Miami-Dade Assistant Superintendent Dan Tosado said the district was evaluating each case individually.
``What we're trying to do now is to be as sensitive as we can to those individual employee and student concerns,'' Tosado said. ``This is the first time we've been in this type of environment. We're having people monitor this on a daily basis and make adjustments.''
Still, Tosado stressed that the district had been able to shrink class sizes without the wholesale elimination of arts, music or bilingual programs.
``What we did here was pick our poison,'' he said. ``The alternatives we pursued and deployed were better than the ones we left on the table.''
BY THE NUMBERS
Friday marked the last day for school districts to count students. They have until Oct. 29 to submit the numbers to the state.
Official numbers aren't likely to be available until late November or early December.
The Miami-Dade district believes more than 96 percent of all classrooms comply with the class size rules, Tosado said.
In Broward, 97.6 percent of all class periods are within the requirements, the district said.
Any school district not in compliance will be penalized millions of dollars in fines.
Miami-Dade parents were invited to discuss the issue at 7 p.m. Monday at Palmetto Senior High, 7460 SW 118th St. in Pinecrest.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/10/17/1878352/schools-firm-on-class-changes.html#ixzz14BnJNdfA
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