School Budget Cuts Still Not Deep Enough

With $40 million needing to be cut from the school district budget, the school board has approved cuts of $31 million this week. Part of the cuts include Data and Literacy coaches that work with students that are having trouble keeping on grade level or need extra attention to complete the material to move forward with the needed achievement. Also going are the ITT’s or Instructional Technology Trainers. This takes the district from 43 in the 2007-08 school year to 17 in 08-09 to zero in 09-10.

While we continue to here that the cuts are supposed to not impact the students directly. I don’t see how the above cuts fall into that line. Certain School Board members have been quoted as saying that these cuts are not to be excuses for not continuing to achieve higher or better scores next year, but with all the structure that has already been placed on the teachers in their teaching day, I don’t know where they are going to find the time to add what is being taken away. Reading blocks, writing blocks, mandated 150 minutes of PE a day, lunch, testing, the list of things the teachers have to do is long and barely fits into the 7.5 hour day. Teachers are going to be overwhelmed, scores are going to plummet, they are going to stop using the new technology because they are not getting the continued training, or they don’t have time to call the service desk to get a piece of broken equipment fixed.

Here are some ideas for things to cut:

• The extra busing to the Gifted school
• All Field Trips
• Extracurricular activities in middle schools
• The $12 million for the AS400 upgrade
• Sports that are not breaking even
• Extra sports assistant coaches
• Administrative positions like the school district police force
• Energy savings like I suggest in the post: Holidays, Technology and Energy

The energy savings alone add up to $676,000.

Filed under: Education, Educational News, Family, K-12 Education, No Child Left Behind , Budget, Sarasota, Schools

Teacher Complains About Technology

I was reading my RSS Feeds when I came across this post from 43 Folders.

I also like to not re-invent the wheel as I have other things to do.

Source: Teacher’s Productivity Hampered by technology. No love. | 43 Folders

This to me shows a lack of understanding your students, the world around you and the need to grow with the newest developments in society. Why don’t we just go back to no calculators, typewriters, and the belief that the world is flat. I’m not sure if this teacher even knows what his students do in their spare time or what technology they use on a daily basis. It’s the digital age, you need to grow with the target audience. You need to learn how to grab their interest, which is best done with the technology that the kids are using and are best suited too. Not what you as a teacher are comfortable with.

Filed under: Education, Educational Technology, K-12 Ed Tech, No Child Left Behind

Class Size?

Ed Darrell writes about Class sizes swell, teacher incentives shrink in his blog Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

In Florida we have mandated class sizes, but unfortunately the districts use loopholes in the way you average or count classes to say they meet the class size when they really don’t.

Technorati tags: Class Size, Education, FCAT

Filed under: Education, Educational News, K-12 Education, No Child Left Behind , Class Size, K12