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Sullivan on Gatsas' Solution for the Wrong Problem

by: Dean Barker

Thu Dec 03, 2009 at 19:14:19 PM EST

I haven't seen a takedown this clear-cut, data-driven, and devastating in a long time. Kathy Sullivan on Mayor-Elect Gatsas' plan to move 9th grade down to the middle school in Manchester schools:

The Gatsas plan is based on the faulty premise that Manchester's high schools have too many students. As Memorial High School Principal Arthur Adamakos points out, each of the three high schools is designed to hold 2,500 students. Currently, none is at capacity.
There is a significant overcrowding problem in the classrooms, however, because of a lack of teachers. This problem is the result of the budget Ted Gatsas wrote with Alderman Mike Lopez. That budget's flawed math resulted in teacher layoffs, which in turn caused too many students in classes. It is a little unsettling that an incumbent alderman who is about to become the city's mayor is confusing building capacity with classroom capacity.

According to school board member Arthur Beaudry, the one group of Manchester schools that does have capacity issues is the elementary schools. They cannot absorb the city's sixth-graders. The Gatsas plan would solve the nonexisting capacity problem in the high schools by exacerbating the very real capacity problem in the elementary schools.

But read the whole thing.

Dean Barker :: Sullivan on Gatsas' Solution for the Wrong Problem

Tags: Kathy Sullivan, Ted Gatsas, education, (All Tags)

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Sullivan on Gatsas' Solution for the Wrong Problem | 3 comments

Gatsas' proposals are consistent with the belief that mandating (4.00 / 1)

attendance at school aims to control and contain juveniles until they can be put to work doing something useful. The role of teachers, in addition to maintaining order, is to infuse information that may or may not be useful later on. So, of course, if order can be maintained by electronic means and the information dispensed from machines, live teachers are dispensable.

How a matter is understood really depends a lot on the preconceived notions at the base.

What's perhaps most distressing about the report are the comments from readers who are looking to fund free tutoring and after school programs without any apparent awareness of the contradiction in "fund free."

by: hannah @ Fri Dec 04, 2009 at 03:59:15 AM CST

by: you @ soon

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Otherwise click cancel.

My wife has a new student in her first grade classroom. (0.00 / 0)

He comes straight from Indonesia, and doesn't speak much English at all.

This alone would be a challenge (but not an insurmountable one) for my wife. Their school DOES have a single ESOL teacher on staff, after all.

But this boy also has quite a few behavioral problems. He routinely hits, kicks, and bites other students. He often runs out of the classroom and down the hall, prompting a chase. He's been to the principal's office COUNTLESS times, in the four days he's been at school.

Really, the boy needs a full-time aide AND a full-time language tutor. But the school doesn't have funds for ANY sort of full-time, one-on-one attention of that sort.

And so now, an entire class of first graders is getting a substandard education, because their teacher must effectively babysit a single child, who ALSO isn't getting the education he needs and deserves.

Let's hear it for state and municipal funding of education in New Hampshire! Woo-HOO!

Regards,
Corporate Dog

by: Corporate Dog @ Fri Dec 04, 2009 at 13:18:06 PM CST

[ Parent ]