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Revenue falls, but student-teacher ratio improvesTue, 02/03/2009 - 4:43pm
By: Ben Nelms
By Ben Nelms and Cal Beverly As the Fayette County School System grapples with an upcoming deficit of between $11.7 million and $14.5 million out of a $197 million yearly budget, personnel cuts are being considered. According to the system’s own accounting, the student-teacher ratio — the number of students divided by the number of teachers — has actually improved during the past three years. With a ratio of 13.78 in October 2005 and a ratio of 13.70 in January 2009, that means that there are fewer students in a Fayette County classroom per teacher now than there were more than three years ago, when the system was not facing a money crunch, according to figures from the school system. The figures also demonstrate that the system theoretically could lay off upwards of 100 teachers and still maintain a student-teacher ratio of under 15-to-1, well within the state average. The student-teacher ratio went from 13.78 in 2005, down to 13.71 in 2006, down farther to 13.56 in 2007 and back up slightly to 13.63 in October 2008. A lower student-to-teacher ratio is generally considered to be a desirable goal in education. The state average for all school systems is around one teacher for every 14 students as of 2007, the last year for which statistics have been released, according to Dana Tofig of the Ga. Department of Education. The local figures show that the system pays 60 more teachers this year to teach an additional 701 students, compared to October 2005. In October 2005, the system employed 1,562 teachers. In January 2009, the system has 1,622 teachers, same as last October. The high-water mark for teachers and students was October 2007, when the system paid 1,649 teachers to instruct 22,367 students. The Citizen requested and obtained information relating to student enrollment and the number of classroom teachers employed for 2005-2008. School system staff also provided those numbers for January 2009. Dr. Reanee Ellis, director of human resources, said the teacher count is based on data contained in the relevant Active Employee Summary Sections of the Certified/Classified Personnel Information (CPI) Report submitted annually to the Georgia Department of Education. The data shows that the number of teachers increased during the 2005-2007 school years as the number of students increased. The number of teachers decreased in 2008, corresponding to a decrease in student population. Teacher/student data supplied by the school system showed: • October 2005 — 1,562 teachers to 21,531 students. • October 2006 — 1,625 teachers to 22,291 students. • October 2007 — 1,649 teachers to 22,367 students. • October 2008 — 1,622 teachers to 22,108 students. • Jan. 23, 2009 — 1,622 teachers to 22,232 students. The overall teacher/student ratio for the period ranged from 1:13.56 to 1:13.78. System-wide ratios, however, are not considered by the local system to be a benchmark because some classrooms, such as special education classes, have a much lower required teacher/student ratio. Ellis in the information supplied also noted several factors she said impacted staffing allocations. “The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, required school districts to ensure that all teachers of core content academic subjects were not only certified to teach the subjects but also ‘highly qualified’ to teach the subjects,” Ellis said. “In some cases, school districts, including the Fayette County School District, had to employ additional staff to meet this mandate.” Ellis said that in 2006 the state school board amended Rule 160-5-.08 that presented challenges for school systems in Georgia. “(The amendment) resulted in a reduction of maximum class sizes and eliminated the ability for school systems to be in compliance with maximum class size requirements by using a system averaging formula in some cases,” Ellis said. “With the requirement to meet the lowered class size requirements came the additional burden of hiring additional teachers for classes that exceeded those newly established limits.” Another change occurred in 2007 with passage of the Special Needs Scholarship Act, Ellis said. Under Senate Bill 10, parents were essentially given the opportunity to withdraw their children from public schools and enroll them in private schools. “We had no way of knowing how many parents would take advantage of this opportunity when projections for the upcoming school year were made. In fact, we would not have any way to estimate this during any school year,” Ellis said. The number of teachers and, more significantly, the number of school system employees, their benefits and a variety of ways to reduce spending have been and continue to be in the forefront of discussions held during school board meetings due to the economic recession. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office in January projected that the recession and increased unemployment will continue well into 2010. If correct, the current revenue problems experienced by the school board and other local tax levying entities will only worsen. login to post comments
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