Large Class Sizes, Failing Infrastructure Are Just Some of the Issues Facing Montrose Schools
MONTROSE – A school-by-school, teacher-by-teacher assessment of the state of Montrose County schools concludes on Thursday, Oct. 11, and results from these surveys are intended to inspire a collaboration between school officials and the community.
Lack of staff, resources, money and larger class sizes are all serious issues the Montrose County School District RE-1J faces, with aging infrastructure coming up against modern-day operating budgets.
Nearly a year ago, local volunteers, funded through donations, created the Community School Improvement Team, which began working with the district to identify and take inventory of serious problems within district schools.
In September the CSIT, with help from a facilitator, visited half of RE-1J's schools interviewing teachers and staff and recording their concerns.
The second half of these school visits concludes this week, and a report will be presented to district principals on Tuesday, Oct. 16. The following week the same findings will be presented to the school board during their meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 23.
"It [the report] will raise people's eyebrows,” and hopefully make it obvious “that we need to do something different as a school district," Melanie Hall of the CSIT said Tuesday.
District Superintendent Mark MacHale said larger class sizes are a direct result of budget shortages and a hiring freeze.
Losses in revenue and millions of dollars in budget cuts over the years have collided with increased costs in staff health insurance, school supplies, fuel and energy consumption.
"We don't have the money to run the education system that we want overall," MacHale said.
While health insurance remains MacHale's largest concern, funding for electronic learning tools and technological improvements are also high on the superintendent's list.
These resources, which have been cut by nearly 70 percent over the past six years, represent the district's inability to keep up with new and modern learning applications.
"We've cut money into tech drastically," MacHale said adding the average age of a school district computer is nearly six-years-old.
Another area of concern is the district's ability to fund new training for current teachers and for new adaptive reading and science programs.
"Training is a huge issue for us; we have to provide good training to our teachers," MacHale said.
Hall said shared priorities between CSIT and the school district are to improve student performance and recruit and retain quality teachers.
"The purpose of [CSIT] is to bring the community and schools together to develop strategies that address the most important problems and achieve improved academic success," Hall said. Hall added that CSIT is now working to identify specific issues that each school faces.
At Columbine Middle School, class sizes are at all-time high. Inside, teachers are pulling weeds from classroom floors where large cracks have formed, the result of a crumbling foundation. Teachers are forced to stuff T-shirts into window cracks to prevent the nip of late-autumn air from blowing through classrooms.
The foundation has shifted in some areas, leaving some classrooms with sloping floors and loose windows. The 60,000 square-foot building was completed in the 1960s, but has now turned into a student safety and security challenge. School officials say the lack of air conditioning and dated light fixtures are not conducive to studying or learning.
MacHale said that CSIT has recommended a sales tax increase or mill levy, to bring additional revenues to the district, and has further recommended that 2013 would be a good year to go for a revenue increase.
"We’ve got to turn it around, we need to find more money to improve," MacHale said. Through a mill levy or tax increase, that money would only go to operating costs and not school replacement, according to MacHale.
MacHale said Columbine could only be replaced through a voter-approved bond initiative. He added that one of the district's goals in the future is to work with the Colorado Energy Office to reduce energy costs in Montrose district schools by 20 percent.
Improvements in school lighting, windows and upgraded boiler systems are a few things that could drive down energy costs.
MacHale said the school district is one of the most important economic forces in Montrose county.
"There are many, many forces at play in our economy, but the school district, as the largest employer, and the one responsible for educating our youth, is very important to the local economy," MacHale said.
The Tuesday, Oct. 23 school board meeting takes place 7-9 p.m. at district offices.
But nooooooooooooooo.............. has the school management taken any pay cuts? Noooo........ But they think it's a good idea to cut spending on IT and teachers and double class size....... If I didn't know better, I'd say the Montrose County Commissioners were in charge.........