In the wake of AAPS’ $25 million budget crisis in June of 2024, nearly 200 teachers were laid off district-wide and a myriad of classes are no longer offered at Skyline.
Teachers reported feeling burdened by untold stress and pressure as they pushed on with their jobs amidst the threat of cuts. “Teachers were stepping out to experience their emotions because no one knew who was getting moved or how the cuts were going to happen,” says Psychology and English teacher Kristen Winter about the building morale at the time. “We’re on stage, 24/7… and we’re not supposed to show our emotions. We’re supposed to be this happy face for everyone to see.”
In the teacher contract, there are set maximum numbers of students that can be seated in each class. Principal Casey Elmore reports that we are “closer to those than we have been in the past, but most classes are still not over those contractual maximums.” Increasing class sizes is a method that aims to utilize every part of the budget at its lowest cost.
This increase in class size has put a strain on many teachers and their classes. “To consistently go from a maxed out class to [another] maxed out class and still feel like you can be directly available academically and personally and socially for that many people is exhausting,” says History teacher Ashley Ducker. “It doesn’t make me feel as effective as I have in the past.”
Grahm Hannah, Spanish teacher, agrees: “You’re the same person, you can’t expand your bandwidth; but you have that much more electricity running through it.”
Many courses are not being offered this year due to unmet minimum course request numbers. Although it may appear more noticeable in the budget crisis aftermath, classes with lower enrollment have always been cut to maximize the district budget.
According to Elmore, 16 is the minimum number of students required to run a class. “In the past, we’ve run classes smaller than that because we’ve had FTE (Full-Time Equivalent) to work with,” Elmore explains. “But this year it was a strict 16.”
One example is the reduction of Physics II: Electricity and Magnetism (E&M). ”It’s more about Physics II enrollment rates,” Physics teacher David Greene says. “If there aren’t enough requests put into E&M, only the Physics II: Mechanics course is offered.”
Administrators approached the budget crisis by taking cuts from classes historically unable to run at full capacity. “We build our master schedule every year based off of the course requests that students put in,” says Elmore. “The decisions about which courses wouldn’t run or where FTE could be cut were based on where the lowest number of course requests were.”
Many courses can return with enough enrollment. For example, AP French was initially not offered for the 2024-2025 school year, but was later added by administrators after receiving sufficient course requests. Like many other high level language courses, it is now taught along with another level, French IV.
Languages and social studies have borne the brunt of the cuts, particularly the Latin program. “It’s being phased out across the district,” Latin and History teacher Collin Ganio says. “Anybody who was enrolled in Latin last year can still take it, but they’re not adding new level 1 classes.” He will shift to teaching history courses such as World and U.S. History. “It’s a little bit sad of course, because Latin is one of my passions,” says Ganio. “But teaching is a passion.”
Similarly to Ganio, other teachers are being moved to teach courses with more enrollment. “We lost a lot of staff, which means you lose a lot of course offerings.” History teacher Ashley Ducker says. “That’s certainly going to lead to a shakeup also in teaching.” Ducker will continue teaching AP US History and World History Through Film; she will teach regular US History in place of the newly cut AP World Humanities. “[Regular US History] is a class that I haven’t taught in a while, but it’s still in the same wheelhouse of content,” says Ducker.
Winter is teaching English for the first time in nearly ten years due to its high enrollment rates. She has taught in Skyline’s Psychology program since its start as a single Psychology class to “…having to hire teachers for AP classes and then Applied Psychology” as interest grew. She currently teaches 10th grade English alongside regular and AP Psychology.
Overall budget cuts have been made in the music department, limiting co-teacher support at Skyline and the number of instruments able to be repaired. “The middle school teachers come over here for a certain amount of time,” Orchestra conductor Andrea Murray says. “We used to have five hours of co-teacher support, and [now] we only have three hours of that co-teaching support.”
Murray has shifted from teaching one trimester of Guitar to teaching it across all three trimesters. Along with this, a noticeable increase in class size has occurred: “Now we have Guitar I and Guitar II in the same hour,” explains Murray. “Not only do you have a bigger class size, but now trying to teach two different levels in the same hour at the same time.”
Like the special education and music departments, the Spanish program has seen an increase in class sizes. “Spanish 1 at Community [High School] in the past has normally run in the teens, and now it is up in the high 20s,” says Spanish teacher Grahm Hannah. Skyline has seen a similar increase as well, he explains. “It’s not every class that sees that dramatic rise, but a class that usually ran at about half the size is now much larger.”
Many teachers have been splitting their time between two buildings, adjusting to fill the shoes of the curriculums and different schedules at each respective school. Skyline and Pioneer French teacher Laura Davis says “It’s the same curriculum, but it’s not gonna be the same curriculum because [Pioneer is] on semesters and we’re not.” Skyline’s fast-paced trimester courses are a stark difference to the semester pacing that many other AAPS schools employ. This poses another stressor on traveling teachers’ plates, as daily lessons have to be planned and paced differently to accommodate each school’s schedule.
Splitting teachers across schools has been a practice used in previous years to minimize budget spending. Enrollment rates in certain classes differ across schools, causing split FTE depending on the demand for teachers of the course. ”You try to piece that part you have with another school who has a piece that they need to fit with something,” explains Elmore. “It’s kind of like a big jigsaw puzzle when you’re putting it all together.”
Although he taught at both Pioneer and Skyline last year, Hannah now spends his afternoons teaching Spanish at Community. He notes that “…an impact of having large class sizes with less staff is that sometimes staff need to go to other buildings.” Many teachers of specialized courses and electives teach at two different schools, as those courses typically fluctuate the most in enrollment.
Since the Special Education department is funded by services independent from the district budget, teacher assistants (TAs) are staffed depending on the needs of individual students with IEPs. According to Elmore, three TAs were transferred to other buildings because Skyline’s “…[caseload] numbers were below those max sizes for the caseloads.”
Since these transfers, Special education teachers have reported a lack of TA support in their classrooms as Skyline’s caseloads got closer to the maximum. Elmore says, “Special Ed caseloads got larger for case managers, but we’re still providing all of those services. “
Read this article for an in-depth overview on the full extent of the budget cuts.
