June 12, 2024

Dear Families,

Our re-scheduled Family Game Night happens this Thursday at 6:00.  The forecast is clear, so this time, we won’t face flooding.

Please come to the school yard on Thursday evening, ready to play alongside your child.

Budget and Staffing Update

Public schools have received their initial budgets for next year.  Compared to this year, our budget for 2024-2025 looks tighter.

As inflation and housing costs keep rising, our city has respected educators with several consecutive years of raises.  I celebrate staff earning what they should.  I also wish funds going to schools increased at the same rate. 

Public school budgets mostly come from a per-student formula.  Next year, the formula will give elementary schools 0.04% more per student; our average teacher salary is going up eleven percent.   Rising salary costs far outpace the other budget increases.  In fact, keeping the same positions for September leaves our school only about $30,000 for a whole year of supplies, substitute teachers, and programming. 

Things will ease up this winter, when our school usually receives a little extra money.  But our school doesn’t hire in the winter; we set our staffing in summer, before the first day of school.  The funds we have in June define our staffing for the entire year to come. 

So, what does our budget mean for staffing in 2024-2025?  We do not have enough to add new positions, such as an art teacher.  As of today, I also do not expect to have paras supporting the upper grades. 

I hope sharing this sounds not gloomy, but transparent.  Our community should know what the school can afford.  This will be the tightest budget I’ve seen in my seven years at CPE1.  We’ve always ended up okay, and we can be especially happy if circumstances get better across this year.

Update on Special Education for 2024-2025

Starting in September, we will be expanding our full-time integrated collaborative teaching (ICT) program. 

Integrated collaborative teaching is a special education service in which a class has both a general education teacher and a special education teacher.  Forty percent of the students in an ICT classroom require special education services, but the majority do not.  In ICT, both teachers support all the children.

For more than a decade, CPE1’s special education teachers divided their time evenly between two classrooms.  That model is called part-time ICT, because the special education teacher supports each classroom for part of the school day. 

This year, we tried full-time ICT in Hansel’s K-1 class.  Instead of serving as a special education teacher in two classes, Selena worked in only one class, all day, every day.  While Selena and Hansel teamed up for fulltime ICT in one class, Patricia’s went from part-time ICT to no ICT.

Starting in September, we will have a similar change in 2/3s.  Andrea will co-teach with Grace.  That means Andrea mostly will stop working with Aishah’s class.  Grace will teach third grade math while Andrea teaches second grade math.  Then, across the hall in Aishah’s class, Andrea will teach second grade math again while Aishah teaches math to her third graders. Thus, in both 2/3 classes, everyone will learn math in a smaller group.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Full-time and Part-Time 

In full-time ICT, both teachers have more time to work with children in smaller groups, more opportunities to support children in meeting their IEP goals, and more opportunities during the day when the two teachers can provide individualized support.

The part-time ICT model comes with its own advantages.  With half-time ICT, all K-5 children could benefit from having two teachers, half of the time.  Part-time ICT also lets us place children in either class on their grade; with full-time ICT, every student whose IEP requires a second teacher must be in the same class, no matter how they work together.  The part-time model lets students stay in their classrooms even if they get a new IEP midyear.  When there’s only one (full-time) ICT class for that child’s grade, that child is supposed to change classes. 

How We Decided to Grow Fulltime ICT

Last June, I wrote to families about piloting full-time ICT to learn more about its impact.  Honestly, this did not turn out to be a thorough, scientific pilot.  The full-time ICT students in Hansel and Selena’s class made very good progress as readers.  But so did those in Patricia’s class.  Almost all – but not quite all – of the students with IEPs in our fulltime ICT grew significantly in reading.  We can’t say that full-time ICT positively improved everyone’s learning.

We also faced a tricky situation.  One of Patricia’s students did get a new IEP midyear.  I honored the family’s request to wait until next year to start ICT.  But we might have had to switch a child from Hansel and Selena’s class to Patricia’s, because classes with kindergarteners are not allowed to go above 25 students.  That would not be the case in other grades, but in K-1, a midyear move could affect more than one child.

In the end, our staff could see good reasons to expand full-time ICT and good reasons to stick with part-time.  Part-time is more flexible, giving some support to more classes; full-time focuses support for students whose IEPs require it.  By expanding full-time ICT into the 2/3s, we give up benefits for all, but offer more for the children who require specialized support in the first place.

Looking Forward

The best of all worlds would be full-time ICT in every class.  The reason we don’t have that now comes back to funding.   Schools are given funds for the specific number of students whose IEPs require ICT.  As things stand now, we don’t enough to hire more special education teachers – or any kind of teachers, period.   

In the future, how New York City implements a state law about reducing class sizes could lead to more changes.  Soon, the city may reduce the number of students with IEPs allowed in each class.  What would happen to full-time ICT if we had too many children to fit new class size requirements?  In the year ahead, we will see how the city funds this kind of scenario. 

Dressing for Warm Weather

As the weather becomes summery, this is a short reminder about dressing for school.

Children should be able to run, skip, jump, and climb.  Flip-flops and slides should not be worn.  Please do not send children to school in sandals.  To run outside, and especially as children finish their project work, toes need protection. 

Also, you should wear comfortable shoes on Thursday for Family Game Night.