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Mostly Cloudy Lawrence student enrollment declines
Despite staff cuts, impact will be minimal, district says
Though the new school year has only just begun, Lawrence School District officials say they do not believe recent staff reductions have impacted the quality of the district’s educational programs, and that a small decline in student enrollment has left class sizes at optimum levels.
Overall 31 employees have been cut since May, including nearly 16 special education teachers , seven subject-area instructors, five elementary school teachers and four administrators, according to Gary Schall, the district’s deputy superintendent. Union figures have 17 employees eliminated last spring and eight of those were teachers and then 16 this summer and 13 of those were special education instructors. Overall, the district has saved $2.1 million due to the reductions, officials said.
Based on figures presented by Superintendent Dr. John Fitsimons at the Sept. 14 Board of Education meeting, the district finished the 2009-10 school year with 3,178 students. Officials anticipated a decline this year to 3,110, a 2.5 percent drop and as of press time, the enrollment was 2,976, a percent decrease.
“Even with staff reductions, there is no serious diminishing of our school programs throughout the districts,” said Fitzsimons, who added that a more comprehensive attendance report is due nextmonth.
Class-cap size — the maximum number of students allowed in a class, as determined by the contract negotiated with the Lawrence Teachers Association — is at or under the targeted figure for all grade levels. For universal Pre-K, the cap is 19 pupils, and for kindergarten and first-grade it is 20. Fitzsimons said that some classes numbered fewer than 20. In grades two and three, the cap is 22, and in the Number Two and Five schools, those classes are “well below the caps,” he said.
In grades four and five, the cap size is 25, and Fitzsimons said that the district is in good shape at that level, while at the middle school, where the cap is 28, and at the high school, where it is 30, very few classes have that many students, he said.
