"I am writing to you all as officers of the Amherst elementary schools' PGOs (I have cc'ed some parents from a previous thread). I am very concerned about the cuts to our specials program. I am hoping that we can quickly spread the word to our parents so that we can voice our concerns en masse at the upcoming school committee meeting on Tuesday.
The issue which I hope we can address at the school committee meeting is the reduction of the special teachers' hours. The specials teachers were informed on Friday that specials at the schools would be reduced to .8 time. I believe this is done by eliminating special teachers on Wednesdays. Fort River specials teachers do not have regular classes scheduled on Wednesdays, but this time is very valuable to them. Our music teacher teaches chorus that day, our PE teacher has sessions with various students, our art teacher has the time to create beautiful displays of the students' work, they collaborate amongst themselves to create and plan fantastic interdisciplinary units and this is only what I, as a parent, know they do. I am sure there is more.
The next issue with reducing specials time to .8 time is that teachers will travel between schools. My guess, and this is only a guess based on the numbers and limited information, is that they would have one full time teacher, one .8 time teacher, and one .6 time teacher for each special in the three schools. The full time teacher would have to travel to the third school to teach .2 time. (I don't know if I am being clear here.) So as an example, the Fort River music teacher would teach 3 days and a music teacher from Wildwood or Crocker (whoever has seniority) would come teach 1 day. I assume the .8 time teacher would remain at one school. This is a huge problem! Our special teachers are the cornerstone of our school. Nobody knows all of our students better and all of the students know nobody better. The specials teachers see every student from the time they are Kindergarteners to the time they graduate six grade. They have valuable insight that they share with the classroom teachers. To dilute this system by adding another teacher to teach some of the kids some of the years to save .6 of a position in each special area is foolhardy.
The third issue here is that our specials teachers are fantastic and they do fantastic things. Cutting their salaries by .2 or .4 is financially a big deal.
So to save .6 time for each special or a total of 1.8 teacher positions for the whole district, the plan is to greatly damage something that I think works really well and is an invaluable part of each student's education. I think it is too easy for the school committee to view specials as "extras." I do not believe this to be true. I hope you do not either.
What are your thoughts about reaching out to your parents with this information and trying to get a lot of people to go to the school committee meeting? Can we send PGO mass emails to all of our parents today or tomorrow? The meeting is at 7pm in the High School Library. ( http://www.arps.org/node/4372 ) Other suggestions?
Sincerely,
Kristen Lynch"
