in Schools
School Board Members’ Comments on Reading Aides in Park City
There has been much discussion on taking Reading Aides out of Park City School District classrooms. There have been some emails from School Board Members floating around social media. Just in case you care and haven’t seen those, I wanted to make sure everyone had access to better understand the issue:
Here a citizen provides part of an email exchange with school board member Julie Eihausen. According to the citizen, Ms. Eihausen emailed:
1: Our current reading/ESL programs are not working. While we understand and appreciate that aides have become a part of the educational family for students and parents, we cannot continue to invest funding in programs that have been shown to be failing our students.
2: All day Kindergarten was moving forward for the 2016-17 school year with or without any changes to the reading program. These two decisions are not related. Programs are assessed and funds are reallocated on a regular basis. PCSD did not determine how much money was needed to fund all dayK and then go and look for a program to cut, reallocations are a part of our annual budget process.
3: All day Kindergarten has been proven in study after study after study to assist in closing the achievement gap, engaging students by providing them with the opportunity to succeed and creating a much better attitude towards school. When children aren’t always “behind”, they enjoy and excel much more in school. Investment in early childhood education saves thousands if not millions of dollars in intervention costs.
4: While some aide positions are no longer viable, several others are new. The new opportunities provide full-time employment that includes benefits. This is a desire we heard loud and clear from our Classified Employees Association and we are proud to be able to offer stable, desirable employment to more employees.
Thank you for your input and we look forward to all working together as a community to improve education in Park City. Again, we encourage anyone who has questions to please get the facts and not rely on neighborhood postings/blogs/Facebook.
As always, I am willing to sit down and meet with anyone who would like to discuss this further.
Sincerely,
Julie Eihausen
The citizen also received a response from school board member Tania Knauer. The response from Ms. Knauer was:
I think the Reading scores show we need to change something. We’ve been doing the same thing for way too long. Not that there aren’t amazing reading teachers and specialist in the district, there are.
I don’t think anything is cast in stone and it will be evolving as we implement it, some things will work and some will need tweaking. The best part about all of this is the discussion and attention it’s getting. It had been plugging along for a very long time virtually unnoticed.
We don’t have all the answers and we probably won’t until we get started. Like DI, there is a great deal that we didn’t know until we got farther into the implementation. It’s really about keeping a pulse on it and making sure we are adjusting course as needed.
I personally believe Ms Knauer and Ms Eihausen make good points. I applaud their willingness to push change. As anyone who has been in corporate america knows… change is hard. Willingness to force change shows gumption.
Parkrag
We believe in citizen journalism. We believe there are stories to tell that can help to shape our community for the better. We believe tomorrow's Park City can be better than today's.
Comments
3 Comments
I have also been reaching out for assistance on this topic with Board members and Superintendent Conley. I do still have questions and encourage all to engage directly. Know that those who want to keep reading staff in place are plentiful within our community, close to 400 having signed the recent petition to Board members.
I wish to respond to a few of the statements above.
‘Our current reading/ESL programs are not working. We cannot continue to invest funding in programs that have been shown to be failing our students.’…
The Park City School District has not released all data. Galileo scores have not been released and only partial DIBELS and partial SAGE score results have been released in a manner suitable to the school district within the ‘district narrative.’ There exists little evidence that our Reading Aides, Reading Specialists, and ESL Aides have not been accomplishing their goals to improve students’ ability to read throughout grades K-5. I ask all concerned parents to reach out to the School Board members and Dr. Conley for more detailed data (ask in writing at the District Building next to Treasure Mountain Jr. High School).
The PCSD has been paying our Reading Specialists to attend the University of Utah for their reading endorsements. The programs in which they are endorsed are well documented. Please visit this web site for more information: http://uurc.utah.edu/General/Research-EmpiricalStudies.php. The knowledge base and experience dwelling in our reading staff will be all but thrown away for 1st through 5th grades, no longer accessible to our students. To replace the knowledge lost, the district is asking all classroom teachers to take a district-written course.
‘Programs are assessed and funds are reallocated on a regular basis.’
Many people do understand that money is moved around in our school district budget, however the budget is not wholly transparent. It includes sweeping categories as line items. It is because money is moved around frequently that parents are left scratching their heads as to why educators would be defunded at all, let alone reading educators released during a push to increase reading learning for all students in K – 5th grades.
‘All day Kindergarten has been proven in study after study after study to assist in closing the achievement gap, engaging students by providing them with the opportunity to succeed and creating a much better attitude towards school.’
Research further shows (as recently as 2015) that longitudinal results wane by the third grade (http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/ReportFile/1548/Wsipp_Full-Day-Kindergarten-A-Review-of-the-Evidence-and-Benefit-Cost-Analysis_Final-Report.pdf). Peter Yogman wrote a thorough piece on academics in elementary and middle school (http://www.parkrag.com/school-realignment-academics-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/).
‘While some aide positions are no longer viable, several others are new. The new opportunities provide full-time employment that includes benefits. This is a desire we heard loud and clear from our Classified Employees Association and we are proud to be able to offer stable, desirable employment to more employees.’
The new position of Interventionist at each elementary school is not a Reading Specialist. It is a position dedicated to non-English-speaking students who struggle with reading learning and comprehension. While the Interventionist position is undeniably a value-added position for our district, it does not remotely make amends for the loss of all Reading Specialists and Aides, who are trained to teach all students who struggle to learn to read, in grades 1-5.
Will well-educated instructors who preferred their part-time position be pushed out? How many Reading Specialists, Reading Aides, and ESL Aides were among those in the Classified Employees Association who were requesting such position changes?
Thank you to one and all.
I have also been reaching out for assistance on this topic with Board members and Superintendent Conley. I do still have questions and encourage all to engage directly. Know that those who want to keep reading staff in place are plentiful within our community, close to 400 having signed the recent petition to Board members.
I wish to respond to a few of the statements above.
‘Our current reading/ESL programs are not working. We cannot continue to invest funding in programs that have been shown to be failing our students.’…
The Park City School District has not released all data. Galileo scores have not been released and only partial DIBELS and partial SAGE score results have been released in a manner suitable to the school district within the ‘district narrative.’ There exists little evidence that our Reading Aides, Reading Specialists, and ESL Aides have not been accomplishing their goals to improve students’ ability to read throughout grades K-5. I ask all concerned parents to reach out to the School Board members and Dr. Conley for more detailed data (ask in writing at the District Building next to Treasure Mountain Jr. High School).
The PCSD has been paying our Reading Specialists to attend the University of Utah for their reading endorsements. The programs in which they are endorsed are well documented. Please visit this web site for more information: http://uurc.utah.edu/General/Research-EmpiricalStudies.php. The knowledge base and experience dwelling in our reading staff will be all but thrown away for 1st through 5th grades, no longer accessible to our students. To replace the knowledge lost, the district is asking all classroom teachers to take a district-written course.
‘Programs are assessed and funds are reallocated on a regular basis.’
Many people do understand that money is moved around in our school district budget, however the budget is not wholly transparent. It includes sweeping categories as line items. It is because money is moved around frequently that parents are left scratching their heads as to why educators would be defunded at all, let alone reading educators released during a push to increase reading learning for all students in K – 5th grades.
‘All day Kindergarten has been proven in study after study after study to assist in closing the achievement gap, engaging students by providing them with the opportunity to succeed and creating a much better attitude towards school.’
Research further shows (as recently as 2015) that longitudinal results wane by the third grade (http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/ReportFile/1548/Wsipp_Full-Day-Kindergarten-A-Review-of-the-Evidence-and-Benefit-Cost-Analysis_Final-Report.pdf). Peter Yogman wrote a thorough piece on academics in elementary and middle school (http://www.parkrag.com/school-realignment-academics-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/).
‘While some aide positions are no longer viable, several others are new. The new opportunities provide full-time employment that includes benefits. This is a desire we heard loud and clear from our Classified Employees Association and we are proud to be able to offer stable, desirable employment to more employees.’
The new position of Interventionist at each elementary school is not a Reading Specialist. It is a position dedicated to non-English-speaking students who struggle with reading learning and comprehension. While the Interventionist position is undeniably a value-added position for our district, it does not remotely make amends for the loss of all Reading Specialists and Aides, who are trained to teach all students who struggle to learn to read, in grades 1-5.
Will well-educated instructors who preferred their part-time position be pushed out? How many Reading Specialists, Reading Aides, and ESL Aides were among those in the Classified Employees Association who were requesting such position changes?
Thank you to one and all.
Correction: Partial Galileo scores have been published, but not all.
The source of the data shown on the graph on the first page of the District website under the ELA tab is unclear (http://www.pcschools.us/index.php?page=384), however, Kindergarten has been doing far better than 1st and 2nd grades. It follows, according to this graph that more Reading Specialist and Aides and ESL Aides are needed in 1st and 2nd grades, alongside our teachers.
Leave a Comment