There was a request for a motion at a special Crookston School Board meeting on Tuesday to spend some money to stave off reduced classroom instructional time for Title aides at Highland and Washington school, but no motion was made, meaning the reductions currently factored into the 2010-11 budget will remain.
For now, anyway. The agenda item was just up for discussion and was not a resolution to be voted on, and it's clear that many seated around the table are torn on the reductions, the result of Title funding reductions at the state level.
At Washington School, Title aides, if the budget remains as is, will put in about two-thirds less classroom instructional time during the coming school year, from 10 hours a day to 3.4. "That's about 20 minutes per classroom her day of aide time for reading help," Principal Denice Oliver said. "I would love to have any hours restored that I could get. In a perfect world I'd have my 10 hours back."
At Highland, the Title aide instructional time reduction is from 20 hours a day to five. Previous discussion involved increasing each aide's time in the classroom by 75 minutes a day, since they have an unpaid break that long each morning. But Tuesday, Business Manager Laura Lyczewski's numbers showed that paying each aide for the 75 additional minutes would cost $3,156, or $15,781 total. At each school, the rate to increase an aide's classroom time by 60 minutes would be $2,525.
The board wasn't ready to make a motion to spend the money.
"Can we finance this?" Deb Kiel asked.
"We're going to start adding back again before we've even started the school year," Bob Altringer added.
The meeting was attended by many of the aides impacted by the cuts, and second-grade teacher Kim Davidson also attended. She said she was hesitant to speak up, but felt she had to.
"I have to be a voice for what these people do in the classroom; they've worked with many kids over the years, and they're the ones that get to the kids that I don't always have time to get to," Davidson said. "They get these kids over the bump. I had 25 kids last year and Chris (Title aide Chris Reynolds) worked with two or three students on basic things they needed, that I couldn't use my time to do. I can't tell you how much she did with them. ...This is not one of these frill things; I think it's one of the main reasons Highland got their (significantly improved reading and math) test scores this year."
