No class size worries

Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 3:24 pm

News, Schools

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By ROBERT LINNEHAN | The Cherry Hill Sun
Parents with students at Beck Middle School should not worry about overcrowding in the classrooms for the next school year, Assistant Superintendent Jim Gallagher said. Even though the middle school reduced the number of teachers, the average class size at Beck will remain steady for the 2009-10 school year, Gallagher said.
Class size at the middle school will remain steady, he said, even though Beck has four fewer teachers than it did in 2008-09. The teachers were included in the reduction of 63 district employees after the flax tax budget was approved by township voters last year.
Voters approved a tax rate of $3.19 per every $100 of assessed property value. The 63 eliminated district employees saved the school district about $3.8 million.
Because the middle school was losing a team of teachers, Gallagher said there were two possible class options for the upcoming year. The first, he said, would be to limit three teaching teams to each grade. With this option, each sixth grade class would have an average of 28 students, 22 in seventh grade, and 24 in eighth grade.
“Another way of looking at the situation is that we could divide our resources differently. The school could allocate more resources into the sixth grade which has the largest number of incoming students,” Gallagher said. “Right now there are 337 students coming into the sixth grade for next year, 262 for seventh grade, and 292 for eighth grade.”
See this week’s print edition of The Sun for the full story.

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2 Responses to “No class size worries”

  1. Christine Says:
    July 29th, 2009 at 5:08 pm

    Dear Mr. Linnhan: I must write and tell you that there are a lot of worries from the parents perspective. If you would have attended the meeting a couple of weeks ago you would have found many parents worried. I am sure if you ask 7th grade parents if they are worried that their class sizes have to go up due to the fact that the administration cut a team, I bet you they would say they are worried.

    And the real kicker is the administration let us all know that they would be cutting teachers and a team at Beck, however, they failed to inform us that it would increase the size to almost 30 kids per class. That is a big worry.

    The next question you should be asking the administration, since it seems you only spoke to them, is how they are going to handle the 2010-2011 6th grade class which right now seems to be the same size as this incoming class size. Are they going to split 6th,7th and 8th grade because I can’t seem to get an answer out of them.

    Like my husband, Christopher Benedetto, you can include my name on the list of parents to contact if you want to hear our side of the story.

    Thank you,
    Christine Benedetto

  2. Karen Says:
    July 30th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    I am surprised that the Sun chose to run this story - which was clearly one sided and not backed up with facts.

    At the July 9th meeting (which was not a public meeting) it was acknowledged that Administration did not do a great job communicating the loss of a team of teachers at Beck. The class that left had over three hundred students, the class that is entering has over three hundred students.

    Using Rosa as an example as to how a split team model works is a slap in the face. Once again let us educate the community, ROSA IS A CHOICE!

    I would suggest the Sun check their facts. This budget was not to affect the classroom and maintain team structure. 50 sixth graders at Beck this year will be segregated into a very small learning environment. All 262 students of the 7th grade class will have increased class size of almost 7 students then what they have had in the past. 50 students in 7th grade are being combined with students younger then them where the team approach will have math and language teachers out of the class room for sixth grade trips, NJASK (6th grade is given a different week then 7th and 8th) meetings, IEP prep and so on.

    Shocking how the facts were not presented.


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