Letter: Charter Cluster Would Reduce Class Sizes

November 6, 2013

Dear DeKalb County Schools Board Members and Superintendent Thurmond:

I know you are being bombarded by information and impassioned letters, and I appreciate your reading this.  I spoke to you at Monday's meeting, but I'm hoping a letter might allow for me to say more.  I'm concerned about what might happen at the Charter Cluster next week, and I'm afraid the Board might not have the whole picture—and I'm deeply concerned about what might happen as a result.

Please hear the whole story: I love my school.  I love DeKalb and have lived in the Belvedere/Midway Woods area since 1997.  I am committed to making DeKalb public schools work.  I've been teaching for 22 years and chose to return to high school after my PhD because I believe this is where I can make a greater difference.   

I am NOT the voice of white privilege.  I am the voice of a highly qualified, passionate, committed teacher who believes in the mission to provide quality educational opportunities to ALL.  There are a LOT of teachers like me behind this charter—and we are telling you that we are NOT empowered to do our jobs effectively.  The charter we wrote with stakeholders will allow us to better meet students' needs, and we are desperate to make it work.  We're holding our breath.  We're counting on you.  Please: Hear us.

Why should you vote yes for the Druid Hills Charter Cluster? 

First, existing charter law requires that charter petitions must be approved unless they are 'not in the best interest of students.'  Absolutely: Reject a charter if it is not in the best interest of students—we are here to serve students' needs.  But if you choose to vote no, understand what you're rejecting.  Put aside the highly charged public criticism of the charter proposal for a moment, and review the actual charter plan.  Here is what the charter proposes:

v  The charter will immediately reduce class sizes in our very overcrowded classrooms.  Because the charter reduces the overhead of administrative costs, it provides funding for additional classroom personnel and gives decision making power about hiring to local administrators.  Who exactly does this benefit?

_  At Druid Hills High School we have special needs students and English Language Learners integrated into giant classes of 36 (and more).  Making these classes smaller will allow teachers to give these students the individual attention they deserve.

_  Any class where teachers should be helping students learn how to write essays needs to be smaller.  Current Board policy makes teaching writing impossible.  Don't believe me?  Read the footnote. [1]

_  This is without a doubt in the best interest of students.  I can't see how any argument that it is NOT in the best interest of students can be valid.  If you reject the charter, you will have to defend the claim that reducing class sizes is NOT in the best interest of students. 

v  The charter centers on the needs of students who require the greatest assistance in order to achieve their potential.  If I see bias in the charter, it is toward students with special needs—where the charter provides for direct and specific enhancement of existing programs.  This is as it should be, as we as educators must seek especially to provide necessary additional support for students who are at risk.  The charter adds a special education coordinator and ELL specialists.  What the charter proposes improves on existing programming offered to our under-served students.  This is most certainly in the best interest of students.  Consider:

_  Laurel Ridge's program retains EVERY employee with full funding and ensures protection of the current policy of drawing students from outside the attendance area for these programs. If you have heard that special needs programs will suffer, please read the charter and its appendices to confirm that these fears have no basis in fact.

_  Retired veteran teacher and Special Education Department Chair Virginia Knox examined the charter and wrote to you explaining that the charter outperforms existing program design for special needs students.  Please refer to her communication with you if you would like to have a special education expert help you understand what the charter is offering special needs students.

v  The charter immediately reinstates employee pay raises, immediately ends furlough days, and nearly doubles pay toward employees' medical insurance premiums.  At this point in the Druid Hills Cluster—as well as the county at large—teachers are overworked, exhausted, underpaid.  Our morale is terrible.  We make less than we did six years ago.  Excellent staff are leaving DeKalb every year because of these problems. Druid Hills High School lost 15 teachers last year, and some were the best teachers in our school. 

_  In order to reject the charter, the Board will have to make the claim that the charter proposal is NOT in the best interest of students.

_  You will have a great outcry of your most devoted and highly qualified employees if you claim that our charter plan's provisions to end furlough days, reinstate raises, and pay substantially more toward our medical premiums is not in the best interest of students. 

_  Moreover, and this is what disturbs me most, a vast number of highly qualified teachers in the Druid Hills cluster will leave DeKalb if you reject this charter.  This will definitely NOT be in the best interest of students.

Is the Charter Cluster fair?  Who is it for? 

It's true that you've heard from outspoken members of our community, many who appear to come from wealth and privilege.  We have the luxury as a community to have law firms donating time pro bono.[2]  We have the luxury as a community to have outspoken parents who can rally grass roots interest in our cause.  Maybe you see only affluent parents as the face of our cause.  Maybe you think our school's aims are merely about the children of such parents.  Charter cluster critics have certainly suggested so. 

But if you read the charter proposal, you'll see otherwise.  And if you spend time in our classrooms, you'll see that the assumption that the bulk of our students come from wealth and privilege is flatly not true.  Our ethnic and socio-economic demographic variation is huge.  You'll also quickly debunk the assumption that students' needs are being met by what the institution of public education is providing them.

If things were going well for all at Druid Hills, you'd not have so much push behind the charter.  Teachers are behind this, and here's why.  We can't do our job, and we're watching our neediest kids fall through the cracks.  I teach some of our more privileged students in some of my classes, and I'm not worried about them—even when I fail to deliver on my promises to them, I'm never fretting that their futures are deeply at risk.  But I am super-worried about a lot of our students—and without the charter, I see no immediate solution in sight.  For years now, the teachers who care most for students have been spread the thinnest.  We're stretched super-thin.  We're downright flattened.  Year after year, we're dropping from your employment rosters in increasing numbers, and it's because we're bending over backwards to help kids without being given resources to do so.  Druid Hills has a lot going for it, but it's no utopia.

What former DeKalb school board member Jay Cunningham said at the board meeting Monday is valid: The Board should devote attention to low-performing students—and to low-performing schools.  He's right: ALL kids should have what the charter cluster proposes—smaller class sizes, additional special education and ELL services, pragmatic approaches to standardized testing that preserve instructional time, teacher input into effective programming and curricular decisions tailored to kids' individual needs.  What the Charter Cluster proposes is sound educational practice for everyone, and everyone deserves it—which includes not only Druid Hills High School and all its feeder schools, but every student in every school in the county.  We are all in this together.  The Druid Hills Charter Cluster is merely a start—and cannot be our final aim.  But it's a start that needs to happen—and can do good for all.  Stay with me here: This is more than Pollyanna conjecture.

Justice for all?  Really?

The charter proposal sets up some tall orders for us to work toward.  As the first charter cluster in DeKalb—and in the entire state—we'll be required to put that 'all in this together' mantra to the test.  We will HAVE to commit to every kid's success.  We will be required to demonstrate achievement gains for ALL students and ALL schools in the cluster.  If you want to reject the charter because you think it demonstrates favoritism, look again: If the charter is built on favoritism, it will fail—and we will forfeit the charter.  Hold us accountable—we expect this, and we're ready for the challenge.

The charter must demonstrate results.  Every elementary school will be the high school and middle school's responsibility.  Every student in the high school will then be the obligation of the entire charter.  In this sense, the cluster can't 'coast' on the successes of a few—its employees must commit to success for everyone.  This is a pedagogical application of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called "an inescapable network of mutuality"—that "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." 

Maybe that sounds too idealistic.  But can't we shoot for ideals?  Must we really be so jaded as educators that we cease to stand up for the principles that drew us to our profession in the first place?  What if DeKalb approves the Druid Hills Charter Cluster, and it's successful?  What if it really works—and kids who aren't successful now demonstrate achievement?  What if we gather our own lessons about what works and doesn't in the cluster approach—and become invaluable consultants for others?  If we achieve what we say we will, we can become a tremendous resource for others in the county.  I would love, as Jay Cunningham called for, to focus attention on every area of the county—and to use the cluster model to reach students we aren't yet reaching.  I would love to help educators in other schools examine the needs within their community and generate solutions.  But you have to trust me as a teacher first that I can set high goals and then actually meet them.

Please, please: Vote YES. Let us try. We want to stay with you—but we have to know you believe in us.

I respect that the Board has a massive job in trying to provide effective leadership for DeKalb schools, to try to solve problems that might not have easy solutions.  I know that you have inherited problems that you didn't create.  I hope that we have a great number of similar hopes for our schools—I'm hoping also that we can find some common ground in solutions.

I came into education to make the world a better place.  Sure, I was 21 and naïve, but I still believe in the tremendous possibilities of our profession, and I truly want to do what's in the best interest of all students.  Believe in me.  Believe in us.  Say yes to the Druid Hills Charter Cluster. Let us show you what we can do.

Sincerely,

Melissa King Rogers, PhD

[1] If a senior English teacher with a full load (3 classes of 36) assigns an essay and each student writes 4-5 pages (a typical lit essay for college-bound seniors), she's going to take home 500 pages of student writing for one assignment.  If that teacher spends just 10 minutes reading and commenting on each paper, that's 18 straight hours of grading.  Want her to give your child 15 minutes of attention instead of 10?  Let's apply that fairly to all: Now she's expected to set aside 27 hours of her life to grade ONE assignment.  How many essays do you think she can have your child write in a semester-long course?  (If we use the two-semester course model, then she'll have 5 or possibly 6 classes, not 3—which makes the numbers even worse).  Is this how you want YOUR child to be taught how to write?  The charter aims to fix this problem by reducing class sizes.  Can you truly, in good conscience, argue that reducing class size for writing teachers is NOT in the best interest of students?  This is what voting no to the charter will say.

[2] David Schutten's derisive vitriol Monday night regarding the 'high priced law firms' of the cluster is patently false.  The lawyers at work are unpaid volunteers—and a charter consultant is paid for by grass-roots donations.