Chardon Schools Reconfiguration is Working
It seems that there is a lot of buzz out there about the possibility of going back to the way Chardon Schools buildings were set before reconfiguration. I would like to speak to this.
- Why was it done in the first place?
- Whenever class sizes were uneven, e.g., 17 first-graders in a class in Hambden and 30 in another in Munson, we had no way to fix it.
- Teachers were not able to work together to plan classes at grade level because there was often only one section of a class in a particular building. Planning together is an important element of keeping classes moving forward at the same pace, and of helping teachers do the important work they do. They trade ideas and create tests so that all students benefit.
- Inefficiencies in staffing the buildings created higher costs as enrollment was coming down.
- We often had no rooms for classes such as art and music, or for advanced classes and special needs students.
- Advanced students had to be transported separately to Park School and leave their neighborhood school and friends if they were to participate in the program.
- How has it helped?
- (Conservatively) We have saved over $3 million on reconfiguration alone.
- With other savings and careful spending over these years, we have saved a total of $7 million. This savings and creating space has allowed us to institute both all-day, every-day kindergarten (free to all) and our preschool program (Tiny Toppers), which has been incredibly successful and has also saved us money because we no longer pay to send our preschool special needs children to other programs. For the record, people had to pay to send students to all-day kindergarten before reconfiguration. All-day, every-day kindergarten, by all reports and research, is an extremely important factor in creating academic success for all students.
- Class sizes can be kept relatively even in size.
- Teachers are able to meet to plan within their grade levels.
- We have room for our specials (art, music) to have their own rooms.
- Special needs and advanced classes are much more accessible for all students.
- In order to participate in advanced classes at the high school, eighth-graders had to go to another building (the high school). They are now able to take advanced classes and college credit-plus classes, which can enable them to earn college credit while still in high school. This can save thousands of dollars in college tuition for parents.
- The high school is at capacity, as it was in the 1990s (I believe). Because of declining enrollment, within two years, the high school, including eighth-graders, will be back to where we were at 9-12 levels when we started reconfiguration.
- What if we go back?
- Our enrollment is still declining. If we tried to go back to grades K-5 in four buildings, grades 4-8 in middle school and grades 9-12 in high school, our buildings will be underutilized, i.e., we will not have enough students to fill them. Yet, we will have uneven class sizes and lack of room for special classes and possibly for Tiny Tots, because we would still need to do at least one classroom at each grade level in a K-5 building.
- Staffing and running all buildings will put us right back where we were in terms of costs.
My Thoughts
If kids are in any school setting, younger ones will be with older ones. So, how is the worry about “little” fourth-graders being with “big” seventh-graders any different than “little” kindergartners being with “big” fifth-graders? I taught eighth grade; some kids were the size of fifth-graders and some of them had beards. This is a fact of growth at that age.
We have provided incredible programming at the high school for the eighth-graders. Our teachers presented this programming at a conference where it was highly praised — and they are making it stronger all the time.
A recent survey of our eighth-grade students showed that they overwhelmingly like being there. Before reconfiguration, the ninth-graders were always intimidated by coming into the high school, just as sixth-graders were scared of going to middle school, and some kindergartners (like my daughter) cried daily as they went to kindergarten.
Putting certain ages together in a building has been a construct that we are used to, but it isn’t something that HAS to be the way it was in the past.
This reconfiguration is working. Our teachers love being able to plan together and this has created solid academic progress and better test scores. We have been able to add kindergarten and preschool programming that we were not able to afford nor house in the prior configuration. Our administrators and staff have created ways to make this configuration better for our kids, much more cost effective, and academically sound.
To go back now seems to me a disservice to our students, our staff and our community.
Madelon Horvath is a former longtime member of the Chardon Schools Board of Education, most recently service as board president.
