Southern York County Life

One other thing, I believe salaries and benefits comprise 63% of the budget.

Right. So the school district is getting smaller, not news. We need to get rid of a few teachers as part of the process to lower the budget, again not news.

It’s not a matter of dropping teacher pay or benefits (though some re-working might be in order, especially concerning pensions). Rather, we need to eliminate a few positions and slim down the district a bit. We just aren’t growing as prospected, so like any other business, we need to cut back a bit. This however will not fix the budget. The PA school system is jacked up and needs to be overhauled. The way the whole thing works is too big and too much control at the state level.

Marge - 10 January 2012 11:25 PM

Total enrollment for SESD, by the way, as of November 2011 was 2,946.

Marge does that number include cyber and charter schools or just the number of kids that actually attend the district?

Mark, just curious based on what is happening with the charter school stuff do you still support vouchers?  Keep in mind that you would have to loose a good number of kids before the market begins to work and until then it’s like the charter school situation.

Jason - 11 January 2012 06:48 AM

Marge - 10 January 2012 11:25 PM

Total enrollment for SESD, by the way, as of November 2011 was 2,946.

Marge does that number include cyber and charter schools or just the number of kids that actually attend the district?

Mark, just curious based on what is happening with the charter school stuff do you still support vouchers?  Keep in mind that you would have to loose a good number of kids before the market begins to work and until then it’s like the charter school situation.

I am a free-market guy.  I think that vouchers and school choice would help make school districts better.  School districts that offer a better product in the form of education will get more children and therefore more money in the form of those vouchers.  Districts would be competing for students and in a free-market that results in trying to make the best product possible to get those dollars.  A better product generates more income, more to spend on the best resources (teachers and infrastructure) and more incentive to improve.  In the current system the incentive to improve is mandated by the state and federal government.  The bar is set low so that “no child is left behind” and we have many kids getting to high school that can not read.  Bikertrash was speaking to a high number of kids in reading and speech classes in an earlier post.  In this day and age that is a travesty!

Baltimore City is doing some amazing things with Charter Schools.  There are waiting lists to get into them because the public schools are so bad.  In a voucher program with school choice, the public schools as they know them in Baltimore would go away and the non-government run Charter Schools would flourish and propogate because of market demand.  I am all for Charter Schools!  I know there are some folks here on the forum that know about the Harford Christian School.  I am curious if anyone knows how much it costs to send a child there?  Dick, are you there?  I bet it is less than $16k per year.  They get a great education and it is really a charter school type model.  I know that in this politically correct world we can’t have “religious” institutions getting state funding to educate our kids, but the model works and it is cheaper.  Why?  Because the bureacracy is out of the picture.

Baltimore County has set up “Magnet Schools” that specialize in different areas.  The high school that I graduated from in 1982 is now the Patapsco Center for the Arts.  They specialize in music, arts and drama along with the core studies.  Students in the county have to apply to attend that special program.  There are other schools throughout the county that have other specialties (technology, CAD, marketing) and students have to excel in an area and apply for those schools.  Baltimore County does not have a voucher system, but this system works for them.  They transport kids from one end of the county to the other and have a great system.  The cost per child is considerably less than every district in York.  Maryland does a lot of things wrong, IMHO, but they have a pretty decent education model that is funded from the state level for the most part.

A voucher/school choice deal would have to start with a per student, state-level down funding model.  A student in the SESD would get the same $ as a kid from the Philly or Pittsburgh districts.  If we left it up to a local-based taxing and administration model, the local boards would tax us even more to try to build a Taj Mahal district to draw more students.  It has to be a top-down model with an equitable taxing system that is the same across the board.

My graduating class, 1988, had 166 students in it. That was close to the average size for most of the years I went to high school and for a few years after as I recall. My brothers class was slightly larger six years later. There were no real changes in the way the classes were sized during that time.

To put it in perspective, when I went to elementary school, 1976-1979, we had three classes in each grade in each of the three schools. Assuming we had about 166 across the board, that works out to an average of 19 students per class, but bear in mind, population density was higher in Stewartstown than Fawn or Delta, so we had more per class, they had less per class.

In Junior High, we were condensed into 5 classes. That means 34 students per class. This stayed the same into high school. High school was different though because you attended classes based on your interests in many cases (like shop, home ec, languages, etc). Your core classes like math, science, English… were almost always 28 - 35 students each.

As for ratios with special education, they will need to be different. I am just suggesting that this might be a cost savings worth exploring.

The problem with comparing class sizes now to when you guys graduated is two fold.

First, the requirements for students and teachers are different. There are significantly more requirements from the state and from the feds including IEPs, 504’s, PSSA’s, Keystone Exams and the like. Check out the PA SAS website if you want to know what is required for teachers and students.

Second, kids are different. Most of this is a direct result in cultural shifts stemming from a lack of actual parenting. Kids are far less driven and polite than they were even 10 years ago. I’ve noticed the difference and I know many teachers have notices the distinction as well.

Finally, you remember have near 20 kids in most of your classes and that is still the case for most classes. Delta Elementary is an exception which most of you probably already understand why there should be a difference. So in reality, there isn’t a significant difference in students per class than there was back when you were in school for the most part. Yes, there are smaller classes in some situations that decrease the average, some as small as just a couple of kids per class. On the whole however it isn’t much difference.

12-1 ratio is misleading.  it doesn’t mean the average class size has 12 kids in it.  teachers also get a lunch and planning time where they dont have students.  however someone has to be monitering them.  so by taking the student pop and dividing by the number of teachers isnt a good representation of how many students a teacher is teaching at one time.  sometimes i have a class with 25 kids and sometimes i may have an adaptive pe group with 4 kids in it.  either way i am providing an appropriate education for each child in the class.  some are needy for more and some are not thus a larger class size.  I would hate to see a calculus class with 35 kids in it, that would be tough.

i also believe there are nearly 100 more students in a grade now than what there was in the late 80’s. 

If the population was no bigger now then then, how do we explain the addition of the new high school and still using all the older schools???

Gymteacher - 11 January 2012 12:23 PM

12-1 ratio is misleading.  it doesn’t mean the average class size has 12 kids in it.  teachers also get a lunch and planning time where they dont have students.  however someone has to be monitering them.  so by taking the student pop and dividing by the number of teachers isnt a good representation of how many students a teacher is teaching at one time.  sometimes i have a class with 25 kids and sometimes i may have an adaptive pe group with 4 kids in it.  either way i am providing an appropriate education for each child in the class.  some are needy for more and some are not thus a larger class size.  I would hate to see a calculus class with 35 kids in it, that would be tough.

i also believe there are nearly 100 more students in a grade now than what there was in the late 80’s. 

If the population was no bigger now then then, how do we explain the addition of the new high school and still using all the older schools???

You are correct 12-1 is the ratio, not the class size.  That ratio is low compared to other districts and other states though.  While you cannot definitively say that there are 12 kids in a class based on that figure you can only assume one of two things from that number.
1. There are more teachers on staff than necessary or
2. Class sizes are smaller.  I don’t see any other scenario.

I don’t think a calculus class with 35 kids would be a good thing either, but if there is a French class with only 6 kids in it then you should be evaluating offering French and paying a teacher to teach it.  (I don’t know if there even is a French class or one with 6 kids just what if’ing) If it is a special education need that dictates a 6 person class, by all means that should be a higher priority.

To help out with your last question about population.  I know that a lot of the building of the new schools was in preparation for the onslaught of Marylanders and their children.  Well, statistically, it never happened after the new schools were built.  There was about a 13% gradual increase in student population over the 10 years (1995-2005) and since then the trend has been negative.
The current student population is almost as low as it has been since the 1995-1996 year when there were 2,867 children enrolled. 

Here are the stats since then:

95-96 2,867
96-97 2,934
97-98 3,007
98-99 3,026
99-00 3,079
00-01 3,116
01-02 3,203
02-03 3,249
03-04 3,292
04-05 3,284

The mean population for that timeframe is 3,107 and today we are at the current enrollment of 2,946.  The difference is statistically insignificant, but it is less and not the huge trend upward that was planned for when larger schools were built.

Jason - 11 January 2012 06:48 AM

Marge - 10 January 2012 11:25 PM

Total enrollment for SESD, by the way, as of November 2011 was 2,946.

Marge does that number include cyber and charter schools or just the number of kids that actually attend the district?

All of this info is available in the school’s minutes and attachments which are available on SESD’s website. 

Delta-Peach Bottom Elementary...............310.......0* = 310
Fawn Area Elementary............................316.......9* = 325
Stewartstown Elementary........................492.....11* = 503
South Eastern Middle School - West.........433.......0* = 433
South Eastern Middle School - East..........436.......7* = 443
Kennard-Dale High School......................910......22* = 932
TOTAL................................................2,897.....49* = 2946

*LIU students mainstreamed

There is a chart in the minutes which indicates the monthly enrollments for Alternative Education, Homebound, Charter, Home School & Out-of-District Educational Placements.  In November 2011, there were 100 kids in charter schools - the exact number as in November 2010:  http://www.sesdweb.net/3755_7542394453/lib/3755_7542394453/AGENDA_FORM_-_December_8,_2011.pdf

Look in the minutes - lots of data is provided:  it also gives the number of kids in private schools and how many are in York Co School of Technology.

Here’s where our tax dollars go.  You must remember, this is salaries + benefits.  Also, remember over 60% of the budget goes here.  In this economy this is where private industry starts cutting first through attrition.  Don’t forget, we also have double-dipping teachers (they retire and then come back and substitute).  We understand that this is not a private business, but are we in the business of educating our students or are we in the business of keeping teachers employed?  In manufacturing, in order for companies to survive in this global economy you must make your business as lean as possible.  In our local economy, we need to do the same thing.  Get rid of waste.

http://www.ydr.com/ci_16407578?source=most_viewed

It costs $15,000 to educate one student, yet I pay around $5,000 – how does that $10,000 gap get filled? From others who pay more?  And increasing debts and deficits.

The sad reality is that we can no longer afford what we have promised the parents and kids in the district without honest debate on the financial situation we are in.

Somehow the teaching profession has been elevated to a status where we are not allowed to criticize the system without being told we don’t’ appreciate those who choose a career in education. A salary of $45,000 is a very solid starting salary. And on top of that the benefits add tens of thousands of dollars to this base salary (medical, pensions, summer break, Christmas break, Spring Break, every holiday under the sun, personal days, sick days, etc.) Not to mention a guaranteed income after 30 years that most of us in the private sector could only dream of.  Some of us can no longer contribute to our own own retirement so that our property taxes can pay for someone else’s.

I certainly don’t think teaching is easy and I can only imagine how our cultural decline and lack of parental involvement affects the schools. However I will not be applying for the job as it is not something I would be good at, however, most of us don’t have “easy” jobs. We all work hard for what we earn. We cannot demand more from our employer than it can afford to give us for our labor simply based on the virtue of what we do. I worked as a staff nurse and I earned around $45,000 / year after five years experience. I chose to work at smaller community hospital even though I could have made a lot more working in a big scale hospital or a more intensive specialty area. Many teachers probably choose the same. Or they get experience in the smaller school districts before moving on to larger schools where the pay is higher.

And since there is no way to reward the exceptional teacher without also rewarding the mediocre – it is what it is. Everybody gets the same based on years of service and the “scale” … so yes, great teachers may not paid enough while mediocre or even poor teachers are paid too much when in reality they should be finding another profession. 

It is not the teachers as individuals that are under “attack”, it is the massive, powerful organization that they are forced to belong to based on their chosen profession that is the problem. It is bankrupting school districts.  This emotional trickery must end and we have go to face reality and be able to speak the truth.

The most fair way to generate revenue is to increase the tax base. That is what the sales tax will produce.  At over $15,000 cost per student (and rising), how much will property taxes have to go up in order to meet this cost? And what about those who opt out of the public system and either home school or pay for private school? The property tax system limits a parent’s choice as to how to best educate their child. 

A sales tax is a fair tax. And unlike the property tax, it is virtually impossible to “not pay.” And unlike the income tax it is transparent, right there on your sales receipt when you pay for something. And since the tax base is expanded so that most people pay into the system, it is that much harder to increase taxes without an uproar.