Pickerington Schools Board of Education Member Mark Hensen contributed the following Letter to the Editor about the state of the district’s classrooms.
Following are my views and do not necessarily represent the views of the board or other board members.
April 16, 2024
PLSD classroom sizes have been growing since 2020. Ohio law indicates we should work towards no more than 25 kids in a classroom. Our elementary and middle schools have dozens of classes with 28, 29, or 30 kids. At the same time, classroom and teacher requirements have grown in recent years, and kids are entering PLSD schools much less prepared and more needy. All this and much more has increased teacher burnout, which combined with PLSD BOE and superintendent inaction, led the teacher’s union to vote “no-confidence” in the board.
We need to go on the ballot this year – 2024 – for increased revenue and staffing to support our teachers, support staff, and administrators and maintain and increase the academic improvement we’ve had in recent years.
Superintendent and District Leaders Need to Act.
Although the Pickerington Education Association (PEA’s) vote of no confidence on April 1 was directed toward our BOE, it’s clear that the PEA’s concerns are largely driven by district administration actions (or, more to the point, inaction). Specifically, district leadership recommendations to the BOE drive persistent staffing issues, primarily insufficient classroom staff.
The district is supposed to be co-led by our PLSD BOE and the district’s Superintendent/Treasurer. In cooperation with the Board President (according to policy), the Superintendent is responsible for the board’s meeting agendas. As the organization’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the district superintendent is directly responsible for what the board addresses. That said, the PLSD BOE is supposed to lead, not follow, so we must work to ensure our agenda includes items of business that ultimately address all significant district issues.
Our PLSD BOE and the Superintendent are collectively failing the PEA: our teachers, counselors, other certificated personnel, and, by extension, our students and families.
District Not Spending Enough Per Student
To a large degree, our level of funding resources determines the effectiveness of the district in the long run. Unfortunately, PLSD has one of the lowest dollar expenditure levels per student compared to other similar Central Ohio school districts. Our operating expenditure per pupil was $13,441 last school year – the state average was $15,584 (we spent nearly 14% less than the average).
Compared to our four main peer districts – Gahanna, Hilliard, Westerville, and Worthington – we spent 7-14%+ less than they did. Over the last 3½ years of attending school board meetings, there have been frequent BOE member comments about our district’s “sound fiscal spending.” About 80% of our primary
(General Fund) spending is on personnel (staff), including salary and benefits.
Given our growing, excessive class sizes, between 28 and 30 kids in dozens of elementary and middle school classrooms, a more realistic and honest assessment of our low-cost spending per student is that we have been “penny-wise and pound-foolish” for many years, neglecting our staffing needs. Ohio law indicates we should be shooting for no more than 25 students in each class.
Large Classrooms Negatively Impact Students.
To some, the difference between, say, 24 and 30 kids may not seem like a big deal—it’s just six more kids—but it is actually an enormous difference. First, that’s a 25% bigger class, which is very significant.
More importantly, it has many negative impacts – everything from reduced student engagement to significantly increased student behavior issues, getting all kids involved in good discussions to simply overwhelming teachers, dealing with all those additional parent contacts, emails, increased English language learner translations, and on and on.
Not to mention that many kids have greater needs than they used to. Most importantly, it simply means many students get less attention and support and, ultimately, less learning.
In my view, we are driving our people into the ground, treating them like a rubber band, seeing how far we can stretch them. This appears to result from a lack of engagement, focus, and commitment, but regardless, it needs to stop immediately.
How Pickerington Schools Compares.
As a quick comparison, we have about 500 more students than the Worthington City school district, but they have more than 100 more teachers than PLSD (a gap we will never be able to close). We also have the largest general education class sizes among 28 Central Ohio school districts.
In the fall, we will have 15 classroom spaces become available (14 elementary/1 middle school) as these preschool classrooms move to our Pickerington Early Learning Center. Serious consideration should be given to using as many of them as possible in general education classrooms to lower the class sizes in our elementary (and middle) schools.
That would not fix the classroom size issues but would help significantly. Alternatively, if those classrooms will be utilized for other purposes, we need to hire more teachers so that many of our overcrowded classes have two teachers until our new facilities are constructed/renovated.
How the District Currently Handles Large Classrooms.
Our district policy on class sizes indicates that one of three things should happen when a classroom hits the “soft cap” – 26 students for elementary school classes.
The district should:
- Shuttle kids from the overcrowded class/school to a different school (we do that currently for seven students).
- Make “overage” payments to each teacher, which is the primary tool that we use. We’ve paid about $248K through early February (the fiscal year ends 30 June).
- Reduce the size of the class (which involves hiring an additional teacher). We have not attempted to reduce the class sizes by hiring additional teachers. Classroom sizes have been increasing in the district since at least 2020.
Extra Focus Needed on Elementary Schools
Our elementary schools are the foundation of learning. However, whether we do well or poorly in educating kids in kindergarten through 4th grade impacts students through high school and graduation. If there’s one area (grade band) we should be extra-focused on, it should be our foundation.
Unfortunately, we seem to be doing the opposite, which is especially harmful given all the new requirements and workload the elementary schools have absorbed in the last few years, including new, ongoing dyslexia support literacy training and reading improvement management programs.
Incoming Students Have Increasingly More Needs
Also, our students are coming to us less prepared and more needy than ever. Kindergarten students take a Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA) early in the fall, and the results of those tests have plummeted over the last seven years.
In 2014-2015, over 77% of PLSD kids who took the assessment were “on track” in their language and literacy development. Last year (2022-2023), only 42% of kindergarten students were on track.
Some studies have shown that some kids who start behind in kindergarten never catch up. We’re neglecting our elementary school workforce when they need significantly increased support.
Given:
- Our General Fund deficit spending in three of the last four years (soon to be four of five years)
- The recent personnel recommendations (26 additional staff to address Special Education,
English Learners along with several other needs – if approved) - The need to reduce class sizes in many of our elementary and middle schools
- A potential change to full-day kindergarten in a couple of years.
I believe we need to go on the ballot this year (2024) for an operating levy to maintain and further the academic improvement we’ve seen recently.
Our objective should not be to stay off the ballot for an operating levy as long as possible. Our goal should be to spend our funds wisely and transparently on our needs over time and then be prepared to ask our community for additional resources when required.
Beyond our lack of necessary spending on increased staffing, we haven’t had to be on the ballot for an operating levy in so many years (since 2011) because, unlike most other school districts in Ohio, we have a school district income tax (1%). Although our property tax revenue doesn’t generally increase over time due to state law, our school district income tax revenue does increase with the new income from more taxpayers.
We must start better supporting our educators, education support professionals, and administrators in the challenging work they have ahead. Doing otherwise is unacceptable.
Mark Hensen
PLSD BOE Member
