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Five full-time teachers added to district

Date: 9/10/2015

LONGMEADOW – Superintendent of Schools Marie Doyle recently announced to the School Committee that five full-time teaching positions were added to the district as of the beginning of August.   

This school year marks increases to the district’s teaching positions and also reductions of staff due to enrollment numbers, Doyle said.

She added that up until the first week of August, positions are added based upon new enrollment and class size changes. The district hired a kindergarten teacher at Wolf Swamp Road School and Center School, a second grade teacher at Blueberry Hill School on Aug. 1.

Doyle later told Reminder Publications the district also hired a fourth grade teacher at Center School and a sixth grade teacher at Glenbrook Middle School on May 24. All positions are full-time.

She noted that the addition of the teaching positions was “highly unusual.” During the 2014-2015 school year, a full-time kindergarten teacher at Wolf Swamp and a full-time first grade teacher at Blueberry Hill were added to the district.

“Money comes from attrition,” Doyle said. “That frees up money in the summertime so that we’re able to put new teachers in classrooms at that time.”

School Committee Chair Janet Robinson said during the committee’s Aug. 24 meeting that the additional staff were hired by the district based on current enrollment numbers. In one instance, the New England School Development Council’s (NESDEC) enrollment projections indicated that 117 kindergarten students would enroll in the district

“We ended up with 153 [kindergarten students],” she added. “So, that’s two teachers.”

There were also 4.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions eliminated during the 2015-2106 school year, which included one FTE math coach, two FTE first grade teachers from Blueberry Hill, one FTE kindergarten teacher from Wolf Swamp, and 0.7 FTE reading teachers at Blueberry Hill, Doyle said.

The kindergarten teacher at Wolf Swamp was later rehired by the district and was not factored into the additional hirings, Doyle said. No positions were eliminated during the 2014-2015 school year, the 2012-2013 school year as well as the 2011-2012 school year. During the 2013-2014 school year, one FTE fifth grade teaching position at Center School was eliminated by the district.

School Committee member Russell Dupere said he believes the district should be more careful about eliminating staffing positions.

“Let’s make sure we actually we know we can hire them back because sometimes we do it for personnel reasons, I completely understand that,” he added. “But if it’s because of budget or enrollment numbers and then we have to hire somebody in August and we’ve lost somebody that is good.”

Doyle responded to Dupere by stating that this year was “unusual” compared to the trend during the last five years.

She noted that the district’s principals would “love to know much earlier” about additional staff hirings for scheduling purposes.

“I think we could certainly try and make that date prior to Aug. 1,” she added.

Doyle also addressed the elementary redistricting plan to move 70 students from Blueberry Hill to Center, which was approved by the School Committee in May.

“Our goal of redistricting was to make the schools as equal as possible,” she added. “You can see that over the past five years Blueberry far outweighed the other neighborhood schools as far as [enrollment] numbers. If you take a look at 2015-2016, and keep in mind that we grandfathered the fifth grade, we see we’ve closed the gap significantly. I think you’ll see the gap closing more once the fifth grade graduates.”

During the 2014-2015 school year, Blueberry Hill had 501 elementary students enrolled, Center consisted of 340 students, and Wolf Swamp had an enrollment of 351 students, according to information from Doyle’s slideshow presentation.

These numbers have changed during the 2015-2016 school year to consist of 428 students at Blueberry Hill, 392 student enrolled at Center, and 340 students going to school at Wolf Swamp.