Class-size waivers in state hands

Yes, this is definately a waste of money.  There's nothing NEW to the curriculum.  They have ONLY restructured some of the objectives, illiminating some obj. in one grade and moving it to another, etc.  BUT it is so important to have all this training on something that isn't NEW.  The "words" have changed, but nothing else.  I don't need someone to come in and teach a math lesson, I don't need someone to model a lesson for me.  I know how to teach, I know my curriculum...just get these class sizes down by using money for CLASSROOM TEACHER positions.

Staff funding is driven by actual enrollment.  Some of the YR waiver requests are from schools running at <70% capacity. All schools, YR and traditional receive X number of staff hours for various staff categories based on enrollment. Also, keep in mind that you cannot have 9/10 of a teacher, so just a swing of a few students can be the difference between hiring or having to let go another teacher or not. Principals have certain discretion in trading hours between categories (i.e. can trade a certain amount of TA hours for a teacher hour).  On traditional schedule a number of schools likely chose to trade TAs for teacher hours and hire another teacher to reduce class size. They can do this because all the students at the same grade level are on the same schedule.  For example, say you have 84 3^rd graders – you can have 3 classrooms of 28 (over limit) and shared TA hours or 4 classrooms of 21 but no TA hours. On traditional, going from 3 to 4 classrooms means switching 7 students per classroom to a different classroom. On YR it means switching those students to an entirely different track schedule, which means their families have to completely rearrange their plans. Therefore, I think YR schools tend to not chose the trade for more teachers option, but rather keep the overcrowded classes and use more TA and other staff support to compensate.  What struck me in reading the waiver request was the large variety of approaches schools use to address situations where class size is over the limit. Like I’ve said, schools here are like a box of chocolates.

In NC, schools are primarily funded by the State.  The State is primarily funded by income taxes.  The economy goes down, income goes down, income tax revenue goes down.

 In many other places, schools are funded primarily by property taxes, which are based on property values, which are reevaluated every 10 years or so. 

 The result is that school funding is much more vulnerable to changes in the economy in NC than elsewhere.