Edison Population Hike Causes Changes to Team Structure

Rising population figures at Edison Intermediate School will change the structure of the school's team teaching approach in coming years.

Edison officials briefed the Board of Education Tuesday evening that a projected 798 student population for the 2011-2012 school year will be too much for the school's current team structure to handle. Sixth grade enrollment estimates project Edison to have 306 sixth graders in 2011-2012 compared to 250 from Roosevelt. The total school population estimate for that year is 798 for Edison and 747 for Roosevelt.

The estimated numbers show the sixth grade numbers for Edison dropping the next year to 255 and then climbing to 301 in 2013-2014. The total school population estimate for Edison in 2012-2013 is 804 and 862 in 2013-2014. This compares to 727 estimated students at Roosevelt in 2012-2013 and 749 at Roosevelt in 2013-2014.

Doug Layman, Edison's assistant principal, told the BOE that to maintain the team approach, the school will need to increase the amount of academic sections in the two teams to 12 from 10 and increase the number of core academic teachers on a team to six for the sixth grade class enrolling in the fall of 2011. He said this augmented academic section team, used in past years due to high population numbers at Roosevelt, will follow the 2011 sixth graders during their time at Edison and also be used for sixth graders entering in 2013.

"No teacher or student will be off team," Layman said.

The team approach allows a group of core academic teachers to focus on half of a grade level at the intermediate schools. Students take core academic subjects with other members of their team with teachers assigned to that team. The team teachers meet on a regular basis to discuss cross disciplinary learning, coordiante assignments and lesson plans and discuss individual students. The core academic subjects include math, science, language arts and social studies.

Teams also include physical education, health, art, music, drama and foreign language teachers. These subjects do not have the students matching up with only other students from their teams in the classroom.

Layman and other intermediate school educators, noted the teams are important to the intermediate school grade levels because of the unique emotional, physical, social and academic needs of young adolescents. They said the practice helps in coordinating the needs of the students by sharing information and coordinating lessons across the classes.

Layman said the higher population necessitates a need to add teachers to the teams and have a situation where students will have a team of five teachers and having four out of the five teachers, instead of the four out of the four teachers currently used in the system. He said the teachers will still have a chance to talk regularly and plan and stressed that the current team system has teachers in a team that may not have every student on the team. This would include a Spanish teacher being part of a team that included students who study French.

Anita O'Neal, the assistant superintendent of schools for curriculum, said the practice will allow for students to continue to have lower class sizes in light of the increasing student population. She noted it has worked at Roosevelt.

"The current eighth grade class at Roosevelt has additional staff in language arts and math," she said. "The students and teachers have still been on teams and they have been provided with a good education."

The plan, which is still in the proposal stages and will not be officially adopted to the spring of 2011, received questioning from the BOE. Board members Richard Mattessich and David Finn both questioned why a third team is not being added to Edison to handle the increasing enrollment. Both Mattessich and Finn, residents of the Washington School district, were elected to the BOE last year, following the redistricting of part of the Washington neighborhood from Roosevelt to Edison, which some blame for the larger projected populations are Edison.

O'Neal said the additional team members for the two teams at Edison is the best approach given the temporary nature of the increases impacting two projected sixth grade classes.

"It is an expansion of what we have done in the past when we've had more students than we've had for the team approach," Schools Superintendent Margaret Dolan said.

BOE Vice President Ann Cary asked about the specific staffing needs for the additional teachers and if the teachers will be part time or they will be shared with other disciplines. Dolan said not specific plan has been implemented at this time, but several options are being considered. The options include hiring part time teachers for those additional classes, having full time teachers with certification in multiple subject areas or sharing teachers between buildings.

Cary said she has objections to having the additional staff follow the sixth graders from grade to grade, which is currently not done as a part of the team concept. She said she would prefer teachers to stay at one grade level so they can become intimately involved with the curriculum and experts. Dolan said no decision has been made on this yet, but said there are also benefits to the teachers moving from grade to grade with the students.

Edison parents who live in the Washington neighborhood, who vocally opposed the redistricting plan last spring, were among those who questioned the board on the need to expand the Edison teams. Several questioned whether the population increase would have occurred if the students had not been moved from Roosevelt to Edison.

Dolan defended the controversial redistricting plan, noting that Roosevelt did not have the space to accommodate additional teachers and students while Edison has. BOE documents state that Edison has 38 classrooms while Roosevelt has 30.

"In each of the years of the plan we'd need additional staff even without redistricting," Dolan said.

Several residents asked Dolan about the costs involved with hiring the additional staff, noting Gov. Chris Christie's decision in March to slash Westfield's state education aid by $4.22 million, a decision which resulted in layoffs and job eliminations, along with a new student activity fee. Dolan said the fiscal situation will likely not improve and more state aid is not forthcoming based on the latest information she has received from Trenton. She said the need for the additional teachers will be met and she will work with BOE members to draft a budget plan to meet the amount.

Dolan said she is currently estimating the exact fiscal impact of the proposed Edison plan, but noted that there are several ways to handle the cost, including the teacher sharing plan.

Finn said the decrease in fifth grade students in future years will free up funds as teacher positions can be moved out of those grades.

Frustrations from last year's redistricting debate, where Washington parents complained that the BOE shut them out of the process and did not hear their opposition, came through during the public comments on the plan. Several parents noted that the BOE should keep their comments in mind during the planning for Edison and consider the overall impact.

"I want to express my frustration with this plan," one parent said to applause. "It is vague and we can't pin you down to cost. You are in this situation because you decided to redistrict Washington kids to Edison. I am asking you to take another look at everything. You have not been open to public comment. It is time as elected officials that you take our voices into consideration."

BOE President Julia Walker said she has been reading emails from residents on this issue and will keep them in mind as the process moves forward. She also cautioned that the decision will not be made in the coming weeks.

"It is still a year away," she said.