More children are crowding into classrooms in Modesto, Calif. Parents are paying extra to send their kids to full-day kindergarten in Queen Creek, Ariz. And the school buses stopped rolling in one St. Louis area school district.
These are but a few of the unwelcome changes greeting children as they start the school year. Tight fiscal times are forcing school districts to lay off teachers, enlarge class sizes, cut programs and charge for services that were once free.
"School districts are going to be stripped down from what there were a few years ago," said Jack Jennings, head of the Center on Education Policy, an advocacy group. "They are really feeling the economic squeeze."
The national economic downturn has sucked state coffers dry, forcing cuts to school districts and municipalities. The Obama administration’s stimulus package softened the impact, but many districts still found themselves having to downsize.
"Every student is being affected in some way or another," said Dan Domenech, executive director of the America Association of School Administrators.
Teachers are experiencing the brunt of the budget cuts this year, even though Congress last week gave states an additional $10 billion to keep an estimated 140,000 educators and support staff employed.
Still, the number of teachers who won’t have a job this school year could be as high as 135,000, experts said.
While grateful for the federal funds, school officials are not sure they will be able to use it to bring back many teachers this year. Many states have yet to say how they will distribute the money and many districts have already started or set up their class schedules.
Some plan to use it to hire tutors, counselors and non-core classroom educators such as art and music teachers. But others say they may hold onto the money until the next school year, when the last of the stimulus money is set to disappear.
"We’re all looking ahead over the next couple of years and not seeing any respite," said Chris Nicastro, Missouri’s commissioner of education.
More kindergarteners per class
The great wave of layoffs means students will have to share their classrooms — and their teachers’ attention — with more of their peers.
In California, for instance, state education officials have approved 23 requests from local districts to increase their average class sizes beyond the maximum allowed. At least 33 more are scheduled to be reviewed in coming months.
This is quite a change from the previous decade, when the state received no requests.
"It’s rising exponentially," said Judy Pinegar, manager of the waiver office at the California Department of Education.
Facing a $25 million budget gap for this year, Modesto City Schools district officials decided to raise the average class size in kindergarten through third grade to 25 kids, up from 20.
The school district was initially looking to lay off one-third of its teachers, or 500 people personal loan for poor credit. But after educators agreed to give up their raises and some retired, only 50 teachers were not rehired for this school year.
Still, the larger class sizes will have an impact, said Megan Gowans, executive director of the Modesto Teachers Association.
"Students are going to feel that they are getting less one-on-one attention," she said.
Neighboring Sylvan Union School District now has elementary school classes with up to 34 students in them. That’s 12 more than the average size last year. The elementary schools now only have one librarian and no dedicated art teachers, when there used to be four of each. In all, there are 19 fewer educators on staff, said Superintendent John Halverson.
The district has gone so far to combine several grades, teaching kindergarten and first graders and first and second graders together for the first time in recent memory.
These moves allow school officials to keep some classrooms dark, helping close a $5 million gap in its $60 million budget. But the changes won’t go unnoticed.
"I can’t say it won’t have an impact because I think it will," said Halverson, who has been in the California school system for 33 years.
Paying for programs
Elsewhere in the nation, school districts have cut back on programs and services or are charging for them.
Take Queen Creek, a small town 38 miles southeast of Phoenix. When the state cut funding for full-day kindergarten programs, Queen Creek took a $900,000 hit, but decided to continue offering it…at a price. Parents have to pay $200 a month to enroll their 5-year-olds.
"Our community was used to having it," said Shari Zara, the district’s chief financial officer. "We thought we’d still offer it for those who could pay."
Some 122 kids signed up for the extended program, while another 216 are in the free half-day class. Charging tuition spared the district from having to cut teachers or programs, Zara said.
Busing is another area that has taken a hit in scores of districts.
In the Bayless school district in the St. Louis area, for example, the board and administrators decided to eliminate bus service instead of laying off staff and raising class sizes beyond the current 25 to 30 per room. The decision affects about 650 of the district’s 1,650 students and saves $240,000 a year, said John Stewart, chief financial officer.
Getting rid of transportation helped close the roughly $650,000 gap in the district’s $14 million budget. Employees also agreed to pay more toward their health insurance.
"We wanted to impact the classroom and educational process as little as possible," Stewart said.
Hawaii’s initial unemployment claims were down 1.2 percent last week.
The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism released a report Thursday showing that a total of 2,466 first-time unemployment claims were filed statewide in the past week, compared to 2,497 claims during the same week in 2009.
Oahu, the Big Island and Maui all saw decreases in new claims filed, while Kauai had a significant increase in the number of first-time claims.
Kauai’s 231 new claims was an increase of 90, or 63 saving account payday loan.8 percent, compared to the 141 claims it recorded during the same week last year, according to DBEDT data.
Oahu showed 1,383 new claims last week, a decrease of 2.7 percent from last year. The Big Island recorded 430 first-time unemployment claims, down 12.1 percent, and Maui had 347 new claims, down 7.2 percent from the 374 first-time claims during this week last year.
A majority of businesses in New York are optimistic about the prospects for economic recovery — but it doesn’t meant they’ll be hiring soon.
So says a new survey from The Business Council of New York State, a 3,000-member lobby in Albany that includes many of the state’s largest employers.
"Our members believe their businesses will grow and their bottom lines will improve over the next 18 months," says Ken Adams, president and CEO of the Business Council. "They are not reaching for any champagne yet, but they see economic improvement ahead in 2011."
About 300 of the lobby’s members responded to the electronic survey done in July.
Of that group, 41 percent expect revenue to grow over the next six months. That figure jumps to 59 percent when asked about expectations over the next 12 to 18 months.
But it appears the revenue growth will not coincide with big jumps in new hires.
A full 60 percent of respondents said they will keep their workforces the same size over the next six months, compared with 27 percent who plan to hire.
Employers were also asked about hiring plans over the next 12 to 18 months. Just more than half said they will not expand their workforces during that time, compared with 40 percent who plan to increase their head counts.
Employers in The Business Council survey were unanimous in their opinion of state government.
No employers said they were satisfied with the way state government is operating. Thirteen percent said they were somewhat dissatisfied, while 87 percent said they were not satisfied at all.
Also, close to 80 percent of respondents said they’d seen an increase in state regulatory activities that come with fines, fees or penalties.
A majority of respondents said neither their state senators nor their state assembly members deserve re-election this fall.
The number of homes sold in July fell 11.5 percent from July 2009, according to the Charlotte Regional Realtor Association. The group says 1,968 homes sold last month in the region vs. 2,223 last year.
The average sales price rose 2 percent to $217,320 from $212,977 in July 2009. The average sales price rose 1 percent from June.
Pending sales contracts in July totaled 1,802, down 23 percent from the year before, and down 4 percent from 1,880 in June saving account pay day loan.
The statistics are culled from the association’s Carolina Multiple Listing Services Inc., which carries information on homes for sale in a 10-county service area.
USD 259 has closed on a deal to buy 127 acres southeast of Wichita for a new high school.
The district bought the property Friday on the southeast side of 127th Street East and Pawnee from Wichita developer Gary Oborny, of Occidental Management.
Oborny declined to release the purchase price. The district has said the price was $1.56 million.
USD 259 plans to build a high school on the property next year as part of its $370 million bond issue. The school is expected to be open by the 2013-2014 school year.
Oborny retained about 30 acres on the corner for a future commercial development. He says the property isn’t likely to be developed for another five years, depending on how fast housing developments pop up in the area, which is mostly rural.
“If it happens sooner, it happens sooner. I can’t imagine it will,” Oborny says.
More information about Oborny’s plans can be found here.
Debbie Yow hasn’t been on the job long, but she’s already making her presence felt as N.C. State’s athletics director.
“We are doing a reorganization,” Yow said in a phone interview Monday afternoon.
Yow, who took the helm of the Wolfpack athletic department in July, already has promoted department veteran David Horning to executive senior associate AD, making him the clear No. 2 administrator in the department. She also is looking to hire at least one, and possibly two, new senior associate ADs.
Additionally, Yow is shifting around some duties and responsibilities. The process will be complete in a couple of weeks, she says, and then the changes will be reviewed again a year from now.
Yow, who previously served as AD at the University of Maryland, says that she doesn’t intend to fire any employees as part of the reorganization and hasn’t heard of any employees that are leaving voluntarily.
Yow replaced Lee Fowler as AD. Fowler stepped down from the post after a decade as AD.
Insitu Inc. has won a $43.7 million contract for up to 56 of its unmanned surveillance aircraft for the U.S. Marine Corps.
Bingen, Wash.-based Insitu, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA), said it will now begin a 24-month engineering, manufacturing and development process to build and test its Integrator unmanned system.
Work on the project will be mostly split between locations in Bingen and across the Columbia River in Hood River and should be completed by September 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Defense website.
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