Letter to the Editor

We need teachers

Posted

To the Editor:
The June 2-8 editorial, “School board must stick to its own policies,” seems to have missed the core of the criticism from Riverside parents.
Riverside parents never requested that a class be split prior to the August walk-through. We are not asking to be treated any differently than any other elementary school in the district. We are simply asking that if the Board of Education issues a policy, then our administrators should not violate it — which is what they have done.
Since it has been violated, we can only question its true intent. Is the balancing supposed to prevent overcrowding, or is it to avoid hiring the necessary teachers for our elementary schools?
If we are to believe that the original intent of the balancing policy was to prevent overcrowding, then it should never be taking students away from a small school like Riverside. Riverside should always be considered a “receiver” of students and not a “provider.” We welcome more families and more students to our elementary school!

If we are to analyze the implementation of the balancing policy, the evidence is clear. It has been utilized to avoid hiring teachers. We saw this at Hewitt in 2013, and we are seeing it now at Riverside. The policy has left our elementary schools short-staffed, with kindergarten through second grade classes across the district larger than they should be.
With a budget of $109 million, funding for teachers should never be an issue. A premier school district should never have to settle for classes as large as 26 students. Our school budget includes funding for four assistant principals at $1,025,000 for a high school with just over 1,000 students. We recently saw the retirement of one of those administrators. Rather than filling the position, perhaps we can utilize that funding for the needed elementary schools teachers?
Ultimately, this is not a “balancing” issue but rather a prioritization issue, and we do hope the board and our administrators prioritize the education of our youngest students.
We are encouraged to hear that the board has suspended the balancing policy this year and we look forward to working with them and our administrators to ensure that our elementary schools are properly staffed.

Anthony and Marianna Bracco
Rockville Centre