Tonight, our Union felt that it was appropriate to update you on a very important topic you discussed last week, and will discuss later tonight: sectioning and staffing.
Last Monday, you received a staffing report from our Administration at the P&P Meeting, and you are to vote on it tonight. This process, and its effects on class size, staffing, and programming have been a fairly contentious topic during the last 2 years, especially in light of a decreasing enrollment in our schools. We recognize the tense tenor of our reports on these topics last year, and that some of you at this table may be feeling some unease. But we wanted to start by injecting a little relief at the top of this address – there were a lot of positives about the class sectioning and staffing process this year, and a lot of things we are happy about as a Union that we’d like to acknowledge. We will address some concerns that fall on the table of the BOE, but we will start by reporting on these positives that we feel everyone in this room wants to continue.
This year, the District started following a Memorandum of Understanding in which our Union Executive Board and District Leadership met and went through the sectioning data and discussed any potential concerns. We had 2 separate meetings, and our Administration listened to all of our concerns, both big picture and granular. We felt heard, and we saw action on a few items that came of this meeting that we were very pleased to see. We had constructive conversations about class optimums. Our teachers do not feel that being above the optimum is best for students in a single class section, as simply, it decreases the amount of individualized instruction for any student. On the other side, the District needs to be financially responsible and needs to run courses as close as possible to this optimum without extending financial resources to overstaffed, wherever possible. These 2 priorities will sometimes be at odds, at multiple points in the process, every year. (There is always some contingency FTE, and sections added later on in the process for some of the larger classes, to allow some grace when balancing these two. ) (Include this)
In our different positions as Teachers Union and District, we may weigh these two priorities differently. An environment of collaboration, respect, and trust is necessary in order to navigate this. We are pleased to say that we were mostly satisfied overall with this process. We hope we had some input that helped, and it also gave us the ability to communicate with more context with our own members when they had concerns. It feels like a net positive, and the collaboration should continue.
We felt it important to emphasize to the Board a few philosophies as a Union as it relates to sectioning. The first is that we believe in the talent of our staff. We believe our teachers are an important piece of our district’s overall educational success. Recognizing this important fact isn’t an issue when enrollment is steady. This isn’t an issue when enrollment is increasing. But when there is declining enrollment and there are financial challenges in a district, it can be difficult to keep teachers “whole” (which is Union speak for retaining a full-time job) without challenging usual class sectioning practice. While waiting it out for a retirement, or enrollment to swing back, this might mean running an extra section of a class here or there. Some of our teachers may have to shift into other subjects they are certified in, but not necessarily as experienced, for a year in order to alleviate some of the sectioning pressure elsewhere that might cut a full time teacher to part-time status. But we wanted to state, on the record, that a declining enrollment should not result in losing our talented teachers. Remember, these are the teachers who will be your experts as enrollment is increasing! The teachers we will depend on to continue to provide the quality education we expect at District 128. The teachers who we want mentoring the young teachers of the future in our District.
This philosophy was discussed during our sectioning discussions last week, and we feel our administrative team agrees with us. We feel there were a few small changes, amounting to less than 1.0 FTE, that they made in order to ensure we retain our excellent staff. While they were not always the exact changes we suggested, we applaud Admin’s decisions. We believe, and hope, that you also applaud these decisions.
The second philosophy that we have as a Union is about the importance of running electives. As an example, we expressed our disappointment last year when the decision was made not to run French I at LHS during the 24-25 school year, excluding students who did not have an opportunity to take that class at their middle school.
When approaching our elective programs in sectioning, it can turn into a numbers game. If only 10 students sign up for a class, we may not run it every year. Some classes have always existed this way, and some classes still survive by running every other year. However, there are some classes that are connected to others, and their success has potential fallout. An example for the upcoming 25-26 school year is German I at VHHS. There were a low number of requests, and the staffing report you have in front of you DOES NOT include running German I. We view this as a potential program killer. From our vantage point, this decision says to us that either “we no longer support our German program” or “we can’t afford a German program any longer.” It is shortsighted to take steps that move towards eliminating a world language from our curriculum when our enrollment is expected to start rebounding soon, and there is a new world languages requirement in the state of Illinois starting in the 28-29 school year.
A different example we have is a new Project Lead the Way course at Vernon Hills that was scheduled to be added this year. It is not running, even though students requested the class. To add hurt to this engineering loss, a previous class – Electronics I, which has run every year – was eliminated to make way for Project Lead the Way. But rather than giving that course this year to “get it off of the ground” it was decided not to run.
All told there was less than 1.0 FTE worth of courses that fit under these elective program concerns. To Admin’s credit, they listened, and they considered, and spoke more within their teams about these electives. However, the concern that was relayed to us is that “The District has limited resources, and we need to be careful with how we dedicate our financial resources.” We accept this argument at face value, and this is why we bring this to the Board. We are not asking you to micromanage our administration. We trust them when they say they’ve had to make some tough decisions. We understand the challenges they have in this decision. However, we don’t think this is a very significant ask, in the broad scheme of things. If you have been tracking our numbers across both of our big priorities, retaining talent, and retaining programs, the additional FTE that we felt would benefit our students now, and in the future, amounted to less than 2.0 FTE. The total FTE on the report you have is around 300 FTE. This is an ask of less than 1% of an increase. This ask costs much less than the administrator contracts that the board approved for 1 more year last meeting. This is much less than the unanticipated interest we made on our different investments this past year.
As a District, we section efficiently – on average 22.6 students per classroom according to the Illinois Report Card for 2024. This is in spite of the variety of electives we DO offer, which sometimes run at a lower class size, thus lowering our average. That 22.6 average is higher than some of our neighboring districts, and lower than others. The state average is 20.8. This is all to say that this District does not section inefficiently. This sectioning practice applied to the vast majority of our classes allows us to have some flexibility when it comes to adhering to these values of retaining teachers and programs that we feel our community values.
We feel this should not even be a discussion in a school with the resources such as District 128. We call for the School Board, during the sectioning discussion today, to publicly acknowledge that retaining our talent and retaining our unique elective are priorities for our District. Please support and empower our Administration to make some decisions that won’t necessarily benefit the bottom line next year, but will certainly benefit our schools long term. Don’t deprive students, who happen to be attending our schools at a time of enrollment decline, from the quality programs that have made our District special. We will ask this of the next elected board as well. We look forward to the very near future, when our enrollment is projected to increase again, where this appeal will be unnecessary.