Dunsmore: Board's plan will cost $1.6M per year, affect teachers' jobs
By Joey Pitchford
Published in News on March 27, 2018 5:50 AM
The Wayne County Board of Education's February vote to immediately reduce class sizes in five low-performing elementary schools would cost the district nearly $1.6 million and put several teaching positions in art, music, language and physical education at risk, said Wayne County Public Schools Superintendent Michael Dunsmore.
At the board's meeting Monday, Dunsmore presented the impacts to the board in a slideshow which covered all five schools. He began by reminding the board that the class size reductions they had voted 5-2 to push through were part of the same reductions they had twice unanimously condemned when they were handed down by the General Assembly.
Overall, implementing the class size reductions for the 2018-19 school year would require an additional 23 teachers. It would also cost the school district around $1.6 million each year for four years until the General Assembly's funding for art, music, language and physical education classes -- known as enhancement classes -- kicks in.
Establishing the additional space necessary at those schools to accommodate new classes would cost another approximately $200,000.
This cost would be further exacerbated by the potential loss of $2 million in low wealth funding, which the system nearly lost last year before the General Assembly provided a non-recurring allotment for the county. Losing that much money could result in a 40-percent reduction in positions and services, Dunsmore said.
"We're looking at 170 staff positions there," he said. "This is a huge issue for us, we have to have that money."
After class sizes are fully reduced at the end of four years, as required in House Bill 90, the General Assembly will provide enough money to fund enhancement teachers at the rate of one teacher per 191 students. That rate would also be rolled out one year at a time, however, and there will be no funding in the 2018-19 year to cushion the blow of the board-mandated class size reductions.
Board members soon came to odds over the second part of the February motion -- that the school system prioritize the placement of certified teachers at low-performing schools. The original motion did not explicitly clarify that it was referring to newly-hired teachers, which board member Jennifer Strickland said had caused fear among WCPS personnel that they would be reassigned without their consent.
Smith, who made the original motion, said that he had clarified his position at the February meeting, and that those who had voted for it understood his intent. Strickland said that his clarifications outside of the motion did not matter, and that it needed to be part of a formal motion.
That motion, made by Smith, passed by a 4-2 vote. Board member Richard Pridgen was not present.
At times, the board's frustration turned toward Dunsmore. Board chair Patricia Burden said that Dunsmore's report was "one-sided" and did not present alternative options, including implementing only part of the class-size reduction motion. Dunsmore said he would be happy present those kinds of options, but he had been specifically instructed by the board to implement the full class-size reductions and was therefore obligated to present the potential effects of that motion.
Smith told Dunsmore that, while it was the board's purpose to make decisions, it was on him to figure out how to implement it.
Board member Chris West said that Dunsmore had done exactly as he was instructed to. He made a motion that the board reverse its decision to implement class-size reductions immediately, and return to the four-year implementation allowed by HB90. The motion failed 2-4.
Board member Raymond Smith said that the school board should conduct another joint meeting with the Wayne County Commissioners to seek more local funding. Smith's motion to seek a second meeting with the county commissioners failed by a similar 2-4 vote. Board member Arnold Flowers said that a meeting with the commissioners would be premature, as the board clearly had issues that it could not currently "wrap its head around" on its own and pulling the county commissioners into that environment could only serve to muddy the waters further.