More teachers to gain a sixth period, resulting in fewer to oversee students in SRT

By Maxime Berclaz
<[email protected]> 

During SRT, aside from a few scattered students here and there, French teacher Leslie McCarty’s room is empty. This is because McCarty does not have an SRT.

Instead of watching over students and providing help, McCarty answers e-mails, calls parents, grades papers and plans classes. Of course, students do come in for help or to make up tests and quizzes, but the number of students coming in is low due to the fact that McCarty does not have an actual SRT. She teaches six class periods, three every day, and since teachers are contractually obligated to have one 90-minute prep period each day, she must use her SRT as her prep period. So her students get less help than they would otherwise and McCarty gets less work done than she would otherwise.

“I don’t get as much done as I do on Blue Days because I have students here for help, making up quizzes, etc.,” McCarty said.

McCarty is not alone, due to the several teaching positions cut during this school year. With more planned for 2010-11, according to the proposal in October from former Superintendent Barbara Underwood, many teachers here must teach six periods, effectively causing them to lose their SRT and with that, the ability to give extra attention to those students who need it. 

Karen Taff, who recently resigned her position as co-chairperson of the Carmel Clay Education Association’s negotiations team, said, “(These changes are) putting an incredible squeeze on the students. It’s a manpower allocation situation.”

According to Principal John Williams, the cuts are being made for financial reasons. He said, “We as a district have a budget that’s not balanced right now, and that’s why some budget cuts have had to be made to balance the budget.” By law the budget has to be balanced, and if projections indicate that it won’t be, then cuts must be made.

Taff said, “They’re cutting teachers because the current budget manager and outgoing superintendent said they need to.”  

Through all this, one the most pressing questions for students here is what will happen to SRT, should the cuts continue, and the block schedule as a whole. Taff said, “The high school is being backed into a corner to such an extent that the ability to sustain the block schedule is being called into question.” 

On a possible end to SRT, McCarty said, “It’s a definite possibility, in order to accommodate the budget cuts; we will have less teachers next year and more teachers teaching six periods. I think as we see more teachers pick up six periods we could see SRT going away.” 

But Williams said he believes that an outright end to SRT seems unlikely. “I don’t know that we’ll see an end to it because it’s built into our structure, we’d have to drastically change what we’re doing,”  he said.

One noticeable result of the current cuts is the increase in class size, in both SRTs and regular classes. 

Williams said, “Not only has (teachers taking on six periods) increased the size of SRTs, it’s also eliminated some of our special SRTs. It’s caused us to have to look at some of our labs that we offer during SRT, so yeah, it has an impact.” 

The cuts have affected other areas as well. According to statistics provided by Library Media Director Bonnie Grimble, in 2001-2002, there were four librarians for 3,367 students. This year there are two librarians for 4,345 students.

Likewise Maggie Cassidy, teacher for the advanced theater arts special SRT, has an SRT of 37 students; last year she had only 20. Her other classes have increased too. 

“(Increased class sizes) definitely hurts,” she said. “Think about English teachers that have to grade tons and tons of essays for over 150 kids. When do you do any other work beside grade essays?” 

As for the usefulness of SRT, Cassidy said, “Obviously the kids do use it as a study hall, but it’s very helpful in helping to get things prepared and ready to go for class work or field trips.” 

Williams said he would prefer to keep SRT because it works well for the students, and it fits into the system the school has. As for the block schedule, he added, “For us I think it works very well.” Williams said the administration is doing its best to keep schedules the way they are, though whether they can continue to do so is unknown.

Williams said, “This year we were able to work some things around where as far as I think most students would not be able to tell you that they notice a big difference at all in SRT, and we had a huge cut, so if we have a huge cut again this year, we’ll try to make it as non-noticeable as we can again.”  

Regardless of what will happen, Taff warned against sacrificing quality of education for money. She said, “There is something of value here beyond dollars and cents.”