‘Consolidation’ of schools rankles parents
Parent Amanda Stevenson is livid.
This week — two months into the school year — she was told that her daughter’s kindergarten class would be split in half and parceled out to two different teachers, a district decision based largely on the budget as well as staffing needs at other schools.
It was not, Stevenson said, based on the best interest of the diverse group of kids in her daughter’s class, who have thrived academically and socially, and whose routines and social circles will now be disrupted.
Hundreds of Oakland families and many more across the Bay Area have gotten that same dreaded notice in recent weeks, telling them their often beloved teacher is being reassigned and their children sent into another classroom with another educator.
The reason, officials say, is to balance enrollment with staffing levels, moving educators around like chess pieces, combining classes where there are fewer students than expected and moving a teacher to a school site that needs one.
The annual game of musical chairs, officially called consolidation, is now playing out in many districts across the state, leaving parents furious as their children say tearful goodbyes to teachers and start over with a new instructor.
The consolidation process often plays out in confounding ways, based on teachers union contracts and determined largely by seniority rather than logic.
“This is not the introduction to public education that any kindergartner deserves, but especially not at this school where the majority of the children come from socioeconomically and racially disadvantaged households, and where academic performance has historically been below average,” Stevenson said in a letter to district officials Wednesday. “As a parent I am feeling hurt, frustrated, sad for my child and betrayed by the school district to which I have entrusted my child’s education.”
Common sense should dictate the process, Stevenson said.
This year, 11 schools in the East Bay district are seeing consolidations, including four where classes now taught by long-term substitutes will be merged with another class that has a permanent teacher.
District officials try to predict how many teachers they’ll need based on demand for a school, but the numbers don’t always pencil out. Add to that a widespread teacher shortage that leaves districts like Oakland scrambling to balance supply and demand.
Consolidation is a necessary evil, school officials say.
“It’s idiotic,” said parent Sophie Hou, whose child will lose their first-grade teacher in the fallout of consolidation at Oakland’s Sankofa Elementary.
At the North Oakland school, two under-enrolled fifth-grade classes will merge and one of the teachers will move into a firstgrade classroom, where the teacher with lower seniority will be transferred to another school.
The school has faced a lot of upheaval in recent years, including a merger with another elementary school and the need for a string of substitutes to teach kindergarten for six months last year when the permanent teacher went on leave.
Many of the families from that class and others didn’t come back this year. Hou and other parents fear that consolidation of teachers two months into the school year will result in more leaving — even as district officials are trying to persuade parents to enroll in the city’s public schools.
Sankofa’s enrollment dropped to 238 at the start of this school year, down from 262 last year, according to district data.
School board member Sam Davis, who represents North Oakland, sympathized with the concerns, but said consolidation was a consequence of an assignment policy that allows a lot of choice, meaning enrollment fluctuates with demand and can be less predictable.
There are schools in East Oakland without permanent teachers, Davis said.
“We always hear from the parents who are losing a teacher,” he said. “But the parents (at the receiving school) are so happy when the teacher arrives.”
In San Francisco, district officials were able to avoid the consolidation process altogether this year, although they did so by limiting capacity at some schools to better predict and control enrollment so class sizes are more uniform. That policy has angered families who might have wanted a seat at a school that would otherwise have had more seats available.
Back at Sankofa, Hou believes the district and union need to get more creative about how to balance staffing and enrollment after school starts.
The current consolidation policy doesn’t account for the needs of students, including the acknowledgment that the first graders at her school already went through too much turmoil given the six months of substitutes. Should they have to lose their permanent teacher again?
“It’s not the right policy,” she said. “How can we be creative?”
District officials say they have to look at the big picture, whether that’s at the budget or at the needs of students across the city.
“Consolidations, not unlike school closures, are painful,” Davis said. “No matter how you do it no one is going to say, ‘That was great.’ ”
Stevenson, however, doesn’t believe that’s a given.
“Please show us parents some common sense, and give us a reason to continue to grow with OUSD and entrust our kids in your care,” she said in her letter. “Show some flexibility and openness to feedback and give us parents a reason not to start researching charter schools for our kids from now on.”