Some Coaldale parents are asking that question of Palliser school officials
Caroline Zentner
lethbridge herald
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While the restored education funding has allowed school divisions to hire more staff for classrooms, some parents at Coaldale's Jennie Emery Elementary School are questioning the wisdom of adding new teachers and classrooms when the school year is almost half over.
Superintendent Kevin Gietz maintains hiring new teachers, even if children have to adjust to new classes and teachers, was the best decision for students.
The parents are also upset a quarter of the school's library was transformed into classroom space over the Christmas holidays so an additional Grade 1 class could be added.
"It's too bad the library had to be the main space that had to be down-sized," said Robyn Henderson, one of the concerned parents. "It's crammed and there are no tables in there."
Research indicates the importance of libraries to literacy and she and two other parents, who want to remain anonymous fearing repercussions on their children, are wondering why their wishes didn't seem to be considered.
"Palliser hired all teachers even though schools were asking for other ways to use that money," a second parent said.
Trustees met with about 40 parents from Jennie Emery on Wednesday, Dec. 14.
"Trustees told us on the night of the 14th that no decisions had been made," said a third parent.
"We asked them to take our opinions back to the board. We felt there were other options."
Rather than disrupt established classrooms, the parents said the district could have added education assistants and kept both classes and the library space intact. The ideal solution, from their perspective, would have been to hang onto the extra funding for use next year.
"Every year we've had something like this happen," Henderson said. "I think that's hard for kids. (Administrators) don't think attachments or consistency matter for these kids."
"We keep getting force-fed this idea our kids are resilient. I think people are starting to lose faith in the system that their voices are going to be heard," one of the parents said.
Bright and early on Dec. 19 work to reconfigure the library space was started. To the concerned parents, it seemed like the decision had been made long before they met with trustees.
Gietz said Palliser hadn't heard from the fire marshall when the Dec. 14 meeting was held so a final decision had not been made.
He defended the decision to boost teaching staff and said the district looked at every possibility for adding classroom space at Jennie Emery before about a quarter of the library space was converted into a classroom.
"When you look at the research the biggest factor to improve student learning is the teacher," he said, adding smaller class sizes better facilitate learning. "As we've reduced class sizes we've seen our student achievement go up."
The other spaces under consideration didn't meet fire regulations and the work needed to divide four large classrooms into six couldn't be completed over the Christmas break.
"It's a large library and we thought we could make a classroom out of one corner of it and still maintain a functioning library. We didn't have to reduce resources or anything like that," he said.
An obvious solution to the problem would be to add a modular classroom.
"We don't qualify for one. There's a formula the Alberta government has and it's based on square footage, so many feet per child. That formula doesn't reflect the class-size initiative," Gietz said.
While the province stipulated the restored education funding, other than those designated for the Alberta Initiative for School Improvement, had to go into classrooms, divisions were given the freedom to choose how to best use the funds.
Throughout the province, about $65 million was spent on hiring teachers, $23 million was spent on hiring staff such as educational assistants and $19 million was spent on classroom materials, teacher professional development and technology and equipment.
Palliser chose to spend the $1.2 million it received on hiring more teachers to address classroom sizes.