Subject:  Teacher move upsets parents |
Author:
Duplicate Dawg
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Date Posted: 07:58 11/03/09 Tue
(published in, Lowell Sun, 11-3-09)
By Erin Smith
esmith@lowellsun.com
DRACUT -- Parents of Greenmont Elementary School kindergartners said they worry that school officials are trying to pull a fast one by quietly transferring their kids' teacher to another school in the middle of the year.
Currently, Kelly Lane teaches the half-day kindergarten class at Greenmont in the morning and then travels to Campbell Elementary School to teach the half-day afternoon class there. But school officials want to divide the 27 kids in the half-day class at Campbell and create morning and afternoon kindergarten classes.
Kristina Maraganis said she worries her son, Nicholas, will be negatively affected if he loses Lane as his teacher halfway through the school year. One proposal being floated calls for the School Department to transfer Lane to Campbell to teach both morning and afternoon half-day classes and hire a new part-time kindergarten teacher for the Greenmont morning class.
"It's frustrating. We should have received some sort of notification," Kim Tierney-Honan told the School Committee last night.
Tierney-Honan said she first learned about the proposal when she found a job listing for a part-time kindergarten teacher on the School Department's Web site.
Superintendent of Schools W. Spencer Mullin said he didn't announce the possible change because the plan is contingent on the school funding cuts passed at last night's Town Meeting. Town Meeting voted to slash the school budget by $250,000, but Mullin said despite that cut, he should still be able to hire a part-time kindergarten teacher.
Parents of Greenmont kindergartners said they want Lane to continue teaching their kids.
"We were advocating for her to stay," said Tierney-Honan, shortly after she and other parents showed up at a School Committee meeting. "We're not opposed to the split but just not at our children's expense."
Other parents said it isn't fair that school officials are working to make the half-day kindergarten class size smaller at Campbell, while the half-day kindergarten class at Greenmont still has 25 kids.
School Committee members promised to look into the proposal. The School Committee plans to discuss the matter again Monday at its 7 p.m. meeting.
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