Harries Seeks To Preserve Class Size Amid Teacher Cuts

You can't have dessert if you don't eat your vegetables.

You don't offer a Saturday academy if we cannot staff our classrooms appropriately during the school week.

You don't pay for bus transportation to Saturday academy if we cannot afford to run the buses properly during the week.

I know all the extra things are yummy, but stick to the boring but essential stuff.

Jill,

Saturday Academy is paid for with grant money, I believe Title 1. There are rules about using this type of funding, one of which is that it must be used on supplemental projects, and cannot be used to supplant district obligations, such as transportation.

Basically the saturday academy budget was never going to be available for regular transportation and such.

A lot is made about NHPS spending; these comments generally fail to account for the fact that the spending on supplemental items is a requirement of quite a bit of this grant money.

The real issue with NHPS handling of grant money is the no bid contracts, some of which call for daily rates that are beyond absurd, and run into 6 figures.

@Itsbecky-- I don't understand the Title One grant structure well, but the application has line items for teachers and transportation. Your example is surely better and identifies a major financial leak in the system, but wouldn't even the Title One funds be better spent in school? At least Saturday academy directly affects kids, whereas some of those contracts -- it's not clear who they help.

Let's be serious. There are a ton of people making six figures in the district and they couldn't come close to that kind of pay in any business endeavor. I would bet that in an afternoon you could identify $2 million in salary that could be eliminated without impacting student success. That is a sad, but true, statement.

Jill,

Title 1 money is spent in the schools, there are very strict Federal standards. As I said, its supplemental money, you can't use it to run day to day transportation as you had suggested in your earlier comment. That is the districts ordinary responsibility, but you can use it for supplemental transportation on saturday. Same goes for the teachers.

Saturday Academy is a good idea, hopefully they continue to develop it.

Will Garth hire an expensive consultant to help him figure out which 20 teachers to fire?

On reflection, I should not grouse. Harries is doing what we asked him to: if cuts must be made (that's the legitimately grousy part), make them mindfully with an eye on their impact. There probably are a handful of teaching positions that, if not actually extraneous, would do more good moved to an understaffed school.

20 teacher's jobs = 8 administrator's jobs.

And, Mr. Harries plans to cut teacher's positions.

Why not?

We stupid people let NHPS and the BOE get away with this kind of stuff all the time.

And thats right, I said "We stupid people."

Once again, didn't Harries purchase the "Amplify" software for, if I recall correctly, around $90,000? One of it's features was allegedly to assist in looking at where human capital was distributed.

Teachers who are currently only assigned two classes, although they are listed as full time, is a good start. The disparate sharing of student load has been a long-standing problem.

It's also a violation of the requirements for participation in the pension fund, but that seems to get swept under the rug as well.

This is where New Haven needs to offer an early retirement package to those who have been stagnant in the system for too long. Don't cut, offer an enticing way out.