Parents at several San Diego Unified schools are raising concerns about a routine district process that they say is increasing class sizes and transferring away valued teachers from their children’s classrooms.
Forced teacher transfers aren’t unique to San Diego Unified, and the district says they’re necessary to align staffing with declining enrollment. But San Diego parents say it tends to happen so late in the school year that it significantly disrupts students’ learning and emotional well-being.
Before each new school year, San Diego Unified projects enrollment at each school and assigns teachers based on those projections. On the third Friday of the school year, in early September, the district collects enrollment data to see how many students actually signed up for each school and grade level.
Then San Diego Unified adjusts how many teachers are allocated to each school based on the actual enrollment. In some cases, as the district’s overall enrollment continues to decline, fewer students show up to enroll than the district projected.
So if a school enrolls fewer students in a particular grade level than the district projected, then the district may transfer one or more teachers away from the school to fill vacant positions elsewhere in the district. Unless a teacher volunteers, the teachers with the least seniority are required to transfer. Several parents said they learned about their child’s teacher’s reassignment within the past two weeks, and transfers are happening in mid-October.
Once a teacher is transferred, it often leads to a reshuffling of students. To balance class sizes, that teacher’s students are dispersed into other classrooms, making the classes bigger for the teachers who remain. That can sometimes require creating classrooms that combine students from two grade levels.
Parents complain that the process is especially disruptive to younger children such as kindergarteners. It can be emotionally devastating for a young child to lose a trusted adult with whom they’ve formed a relationship over the past two months, parents said.
“We can’t keep taking away their teachers,” said Laura Woodward, a Language Academy parent, at a school board meeting Tuesday.
Kate Smyres has twin boys at Ocean Beach Elementary. Her son Daniel started the school year in a third-grade classroom, and her son Christopher started in a combo second- and third-grade classroom.
Starting next week, Daniel is losing his teacher, Bailey Ringer, and is moving to another third-grade class. Meanwhile Christopher is keeping his teacher, but his class will lose the second-grade students and absorb some of the third-graders, Smyres said.
Both her sons cried after they learned their classes would change, and they have been anxious since.
“This is all happening the ninth week of school. It just seems a little crazy,” Smyres said.
While parents acknowledged that there is declining enrollment, they said the district is adjusting staffing far too late in the school year — and multiple weeks after officials learn schools’ actual enrollment.
When asked, the district said it could not yet provide a list of schools that had teachers transferred or how many teachers are impacted.
San Diego Unified Superintendent Lamont Jackson acknowledged at Tuesday’s board meeting that the process causes “some consternation” and disruption for students and families. Jackson said the district will work on moving up the timeline for reshuffling teachers earlier in the year next time.
“We will work with our labor partners and central office staff to make sure we are reviewing, improving and refining this process,” he said.
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October 14, 2023 at 07:00PM
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Two months into the school year, some San Diego Unified schools are losing teachers due to low enrollment - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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