Burlington parents and students lobbed complaints about teacher cuts and lack of transparency at the school board Tuesday night during a packed meeting .
Budget cuts will hit Burlington High School the hardest. It will lose approximately 7.5 teacher positions next year, and its library might be open only 2.5 days a week.
Students said they are already stuck with abundant “dead time” in their schedules because classes they want to take are full. Parents said that their children are sitting in study halls in the auditorium with 45 kids.
“This is unacceptable,” said Clare Wool, a Burlington parent with three children in the city schools, including a son in the high school.
“That horrifies me,” said Jeff Wick, a parent of three younger children, after hearing speakers talk about closed-out classes and dead time at the high school.
“Next year will be much worse for scheduling,” high school sophomore Mary Markley* told the school board. Her guidance counselor has already told her she needs to take fewer classes next year because some of the ones she wants “will not exist,” Markley said. Other students said they have been shut out of classes such as AP biology next year and that they are worried their transcripts won’t be competitive for college admissions.
A special study hall program for struggling students could also go, as could some sections of remedial math.
It was perhaps the largest dose of public criticism for Burlington schools superintendent Yaw Obeng since he started the job in August. Some parents said they would move out of town or put their children in private schools if complaints are not addressed; others said the superintendent and board have kept the public in the dark about the cuts.
Obeng at times looked down glumly during the barrage, and at other moments displayed confidence and a more upbeat expression. He thanked the crowd for coming out and praised Burlingtonians’ passion for education. He also said the scrutiny would help bring about better results.
But he did not back down from the cuts, or from the possibility of shuffling school principals around the district next year, which has also raised controversy. He walked the board, and the crowd, through a long PowerPoint presentation outlining the rationale for the cuts, which are still being finalized. More details are expected in early May.
After a run of big tax increases and big deficits, district officials are digging out of financial problems and are tightening spending.
In order to avoid state penalties designed to curb education spending, Burlington passed an austere budget for next year. Now it’s time to “right-size” the faculty and staff with enrollment trends, Obeng said.
Enrollment at Burlington High School has declined from 1,203 in 2008 to fewer than 1,038 today. But looking at “butts in seats, every single day,” Obeng said, the number is even lower. If you take out students who attend tech center programs and various alternative programs, daily enrollment at BHS is about 944 students, according to Obeng. The high school has some of the smallest classes of the district’s nine schools.
Total district enrollment is declining slowly, although there’s a bump upward at the middle school level.
Some reductions have already been made. The district has 417 teachers this school year compared to 422 last year, and 182 para-educators this year compared to 192 last year, according to the district.
Other planned cuts include making the librarians half-time at the Integrated Arts Academy at H.O. Wheeler and the Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes. Foreign language instruction could be trimmed.
During his presentation to the school board, Obeng invited four city school principals to join him and talk about how they worked as a team to minimize the impact of the cuts.
He did not invite Burlington High School principal Amy Mellencamp to be part of the presentation, though she was present and the high school was the focus of many comments. Nor did Mellencamp speak during the public forum portion.
During a brief interview with Seven Days, Mellencamp said dead time at the high school has been an issue due to teacher cuts that have already taken place. Asked if she expected to be reassigned under a principal shuffle, Mellencamp said she had not been specifically told of any new assignment.
Mellencamp said she’s planning to retire in June 2017, and ideally would like to finish out her career at the high school, where she has been principal for 17 years. But if asked to switch schools, Mellencamp said, she would do what’s needed to be a team player for the district.
Before the meeting started, parent Chip Hart said anxiety is high among parents about cuts and budgeting. “People are feeling really left out of the process,” he said.
*Mary Markley’s grade at Burlington High School was incorrect in an earlier version of this post.
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Well, since we’re spending more per student than any other state in the country and Burlington high school has declining enrollment, I’m having a hard time understanding how anyone could argue against cutting positions. It’s almost like the teachers union has a magic 8 ball to hypnotize taxpayers and city officials any time an administrator broaches cutting teaching staff. The indisputable fact is that we are spending too much and have too many teachers and admin personnel. Those wanting to continually raise higher funding for an ever spiraling budget are simply traveling beyond the realm of common sense and effective management of our excellent school system. Perhaps they may find a happier solution somewhere over the rainbow in the land of Oz?
I agree with Penelope. It is time for a reality check across Vermont. What is happening in Burlington is a trend that has been happening in this state for the last 10 years. Anyone who is surprised by the news of cuts or feels left out of the conversation has simply not been paying attention. What we need is a new educational model with higher student-teacher ratios that produce great outcomes. We need thoughtful discussions between the schools, teachers, education experts and the community where everyone understands that things need to radically change. Change is not just for the other guy; everyone needs to change. If you think we have problems now, just wait until the rest of the babyboomers retire and they are on fixed incomes.
Speaking of common sense, who out there thinks putting 21 five-year-olds in one classroom with one teacher for a year is reasonable? Because that’s how kindergarten classes looked at IAA this year. And last year.
Higher student-teacher ratios indeed….
“Speaking of common sense, who out there thinks putting 21 five-year-olds in one classroom with one teacher for a year is reasonable? Because that’s how kindergarten classes looked at IAA this year. And last year.”
What?
It was a lot more than that when I was in kindergarten.
with all the money and time wasted on fining NOT ONLY AN OUT-OF-STATER- BUT AN OUT- OF- THE -COUNTRY CANDIDATE to lead……….this is what happens with that backwards way of thinking.
“It was a lot more than that when I was in kindergarten.”
That explains a majority of your posts. A 21-1 ratio is not a good model. Teacher salaries are not why your taxes are so high. Take a look at how your mayor is wasting your money and compare that to employing an extra few teachers a year.
Yet another dumb post. College. Grad school. Highly paid professional. I don’t write dumb, false, uninformed things like, “none of the news media reported Bernie’s wins in Akaska, Hawaii, and Washington,” or “Mayor Weinberger is a greedy bastard.”
And you’re wrong again, as usual. Teacher salaries are 80-90% of the school budget, so, yes, teacher positions are exactly why property taxes are so high.
You do not, and cannot, give an example of Mayor Weinberger wasting money. In fact, he is doing an excellent job of fixing the financial trainwreck that two decades of mismanagement and economic stagnation by Clavelle and Kiss left behind. Burlington desperately needs housing and businesses and Weinberger is doing his best to give us those things, despite Nimbyist, communist kumbayah nonsense from you.
The big driver in costs is the unfunded federal special education mandates (caused by the Special Education law that Jim Jeffords helped sponsor back in the 1970’s). Took some time for lawyers to get hold of this law but when they realized they could sue school districts on behalf of some frustrated parents who felt their child was not getting the accommodations they thought necessary, it opened budgetary can of worms for school districts across America. Combine this with large immigrant refugee population in Burlington and need for special services such as social workers and intensive ESL programs and you start to unravel the cause of Burlington’s budget problems. When numbers come out suggesting $23,000 per student average spending in Burlington, this is not entirely accurate. I have no idea of the exact breakdown and would like to see the numbers but it is probably closer to something like $40,000 per special education student and ESL student, and maybe $10,000 per typically developing and gifted students. Look at the number of para-educators alone (mostly for special education students). It comes down to policy choices politicians made in Washington, DC and in Montpelier without sufficiently thinking through the long-term consequences and without providing for proper funding. Leaving the average working class taxpayer to pay through the nose. Montpelier’s consolidation of control via Brigham decision and Act 60 has not helped either (and their ever-expanding definition of what qualifies as “education” under the Education Fund). Of course everyone deserves an education so not sure what right answer is but what’s happening now is clearly not working.
Sure buddy. You just tried to blow the lid on the entire Tad Devine/Bernie Sanders “scandal.” Good job there.
Miro Weinberger is cut from the same political clothe as Hillary Clinton, which explains why you support him. I’ll back Philo on this one. He keeps cutting deals with developers who keep donating to his campaign. Some of his livable wage, military jets, and bailing out developer decisions have not impressed me. Nor has his plan to create meaningful jobs in and around Burlington.
You want to talk about wasting money, look at Chris’s post. School budgets and tax dollars are not a one for one relationship as schools get money from a variety of sources so hiring a few extra teachers is not going to increase your taxes by the factor of their salaries.
“Some of his livable wage, military jets, and bailing out developer decisions have not impressed me. Nor has his plan to create meaningful jobs in and around Burlington.”
Good for you. Move to a city that still has the junk bond ratings that Burlington had before Weinberger started cleaning up the mess.
BTW, you seem confused. if you’re citing Chris’s post as somehow supporting the idea that we should spend more money on Burlington schools, it’s not in there. If anything, he seems to be saying that we’re spending too much on special ed, which might be true.
No where did I say schools should get more money. Chris’s post shows how money is being wasted in areas other than teacher salaries. Most of the fire department’s, police department’s, etc. budgets are spent on the workforce but nobody is calling to lay off police and firemen. The schools can clean up their budgets for sure but teacher salaries are not necessarily where money is being wasted.