ORANGE — Parents and teachers are urging town and school officials to consider factoring at least one additional teacher and paraprofessional, but ideally several, into the proposed elementary school budget to help accommodate growing class sizes.
“We come before you to advocate for our students’ needs,” said Orange Elementary Teachers Association President Jayne Fleck, reading a statement on behalf of the union at an Orange Elementary School Committee meeting Monday night. “We know that early intervention in the younger grades gives our students a better chance at a successful academic career and smaller class sizes at the lower levels are critical to successful early intervention. This is why we continue to advocate for the tools and personnel that have a direct effect on our students.”
With 77 students currently divided between three sections of the first grade, parents and teachers expressed concern for classroom sizes at that level averaging approximately 26 students. Several parents and teachers who spoke to the School Committee noted the heightened need for student support after years of lost learning and social-emotional development due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We can’t anticipate how many more students will come back, but I think it makes really good sense the numbers aren’t going to decrease with a brand new, beautiful school,” said parent Josefa Scherer, referencing Fisher Hill Elementary School. “The numbers aren’t going to decrease … in second grade if kindergartners are retained. What I’ve heard so far is there are too many students for three second-grade classrooms. Twenty-six is too many.”
Scherer was referring to the 20 out of 75 kindergarten students who are not meeting certain benchmarks to progress to the next grade level, as Superintendent Elizabeth Teahan-Zielinski relayed earlier in the evening.
As it is currently proposed, the Orange Elementary School Committee’s fiscal year 2024 budget of roughly $8.05 million represents a 6.6% increase over the current fiscal year, according to Director of Finance and Operations Michele Tontodonato.
This amounts to a full-time equivalence staff increase of 111.5 to 116.08, she said. In total, the proposed budget accounts for a total of 45 teachers, 11 of whom are special education teachers.
According to Tontodonato, adding an extra paraprofessional and teacher would increase the proposed FY24 budget to about $8.13 million, representing a 7.7% increase over the FY23 budget.
As the evening progressed, members of the community began to advocate for adding positions at other grade levels, too, given several grades are seeing class sizes totaling 60 to 70 students across three sections. School Committee members, however, were hesitant to increase the budget by too much before getting a chance to present it — and proposed additions — to the Finance Committee.
The conversation included a debate over whether the school district, rather than the Police Department, should be funding a school resource officer. Chair Stephanie Conrod said the proposal for the position, which is currently part-time and cost-shared with the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District, came from Police Chief James Sullivan. Conrod was among the committee members in favor of the position, arguing that a school resource officer is intended to create dialogue within the community and provide the students’ with a positive experience with police officers.
“I don’t want it to fall onto the teachers and our staff to regulate the emotions of a grown adult who obviously is coming in with concerns, but doesn’t know how to articulate them,” Conrod added. “Is it really the responsibility of the principal or the secretary to take care of those issues? There have been issues that Chief Sullivan has let the administration know about that is not common knowledge for everybody else, where we’ve dealt with parents and families.”
Still, Scherer said she was disappointed in the School Committee for being hesitant to consider striking the officer’s salary from the budget “particularly in light of context where you don’t have enough money to pay for educators.”
“Tell them sure, we’d love to have a community resource officer for regularly scheduled programming, but we don’t need to hire a police officer in an elementary school,” she said.
Ultimately, School Committee members agreed that rather than vote to amend the budget Monday night, they would wait for an opportunity to explain to the Finance Committee the rationale for funding additional positions.
“We can say it until we’re blue in the face, but if [public opinion] doesn’t come … it won’t go anywhere,” said School Committee member Mallory Ellis. “It has to be that partnership.”
The Finance Committee is expected to meet remotely with Conrod and Teahan-Zielinski on Monday, April 17, at 6:30 p.m. to discuss the elementary school budget. The Zoom meeting can be accessed via bit.ly/3MCzWdq.
Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne.