CSD Enrollment up 9% This Year
Decatur Metro | July 28, 2011In connection with our recent post about 2010 Census data showing a dramatic increase in Decatur families the last 10 years, this paragraph in Superintendent Edwards’ “Start of School” letter to families gives us the latest data on school enrollment growth…
Our enrollment has increased. Our last counts show an increase of 9%, which includes new tuition students. We have hired approximately 75 staff who are new to Decatur, with a few returning to us after working in other systems in the interim. We are thrilled to have such an accomplished group of new teachers. Every elementary position had upwards of 300 candidates for each job. We know that our teachers are our best asset.
An article in Patch earlier this week reported that the largest enrollment growth is still occurring in Oakhurst.
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With over 300 applicants per job you would figure it would be a good time to get rid of bad teachers. I’m not talking test scores or tenure but the ones parents cringe when they open the letter stating your son/daughters teacher this year is ______.
+1…
So, base it on what? Word of mouth?
Can you define “bad teachers”. How do you know we have any? I know through my many years as a parent, that “bad teachers” have been dealt with appropriately in the Decatur system, unlike DeKalb (where several family members are teachers.)
Based on experience & talking to neighbors with older children.
Inappropriate attire worn by some elementary school teachers. Poor grammar by both teachers and administrators. Bad classroom management such as showing non educational cartoons to kindergarten & 1st grade students.
Don’t get me wrong, We have a great school system. I believe 90% of our teachers are good but with over 300 applicants per job opening we should be able to move out the 10% that are not.
Yesterday a boy who looked to be about 12 years old knoocked on my front door. I opened it and asked “can I help you?” His response: “yeah, do Angie live here?” I said no, closed the door, and wept for the future.
Seriously, ‘Really’, stick around. I love it when discourse goes all Harper Valley PTA.
Ohhhh, I am really gonna have to throttle you for that earworm! GAHHHHH!
Try to change the subject in your head, think about something else…like the day that Billy Joe MacAlister jumped off the Tallahatchee Bridge….
(Sorry, some kind of evil force has a hold on me today!)
Wait. Billy Joe? Wasn’t he that sweet-talkin’ son of a preacher man?
The note said, ‘Mrs Johnson, you’re wearing your dresses way too high.’
+1 …I’m cringing, OK maybe just not thrilled, based on experience with older siblings.
Again… aren’t we all glad that we didn’t annex in a thousand or so more kids.
Clearly the CSD is doing something wrong.
Previous to this letter being posted, an earlier letter was sent on similar/related topics for back to school to CSD parents. It was printed, and mailed and there was an error in it. It just absolutely bugs me, I am not talking about an email, a blog, etc. where we all make mistakes — I am talking a printed, mailed home letter. Last year there were two grammer/punctuation errors in the back to school letter that came home from our K-3 principal. My child in 4th grade last year, got points off of a paper for items just such as this…so I say C-!!
But let me stop here and say as bugged as I am, I am rechanneling my frustration to remember to be thankful for a great school system and for one that is not involved in a cheating scandal…one that was heralded as an example of a system that may have a good approach actually….
There I feel a little better.
“grammer”?
You misspelled grammar.
In addition, “mailed home” should be hyphenated.
Now, now, Parento DID say that he/she wasn’t referring to blogs but to official letters mailed home. Although I have to say I notice this problem a lot less here than I did when I had teacher friends in Los Angeles. They would show me official guidance coming out from the school system or principals and it was shocking, scarey, depressing to see how even the basics of spelling or writing were violated.
Agreed. A bit surprised at the pile-on responses to parento’s arguably reasonable vent, which even made the point to differentiat between blog posts and official correspondence.
*differentiate
“scary”
Good pick up. I’m talking even worse than sloppy blog spelling. Like “We advice you to use the rite spelling” or lists of spelling words with several third grade level words mispelled. (It was years ago so I don’t have any true quotes on hand.)
To be fair to us sloppy blog commenters, there’s no spell or grammar check on DM yet. But a Los Angeles school system had access to a spell checker in whatever word processing program they were using a the time!
This is just so so true
Muphry’s law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law
Anyhow, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that a parent would be irked to see typos in *official* letters sent out. Of course everyone is busy this time of year, but maybe it just gives the appearance of being a little sloppy? Not a huge deal, but parento’s point was valid.
Sort of on-topic: did anybody get the letter with the teacher assignments? We have 2 kids at Oakhurst at one at College Heights, and nada. I thought the letters were supposed to go out yesterday.Waiting a day or two more won’t kill us, but I am curious.
FYI, bus schedules have changed for some routes in the last day so good to check those on-line. See post over on CSD Bus Schedule thread.
Thanks for the info on bus schedule changes.
And worse than a typo, we were missing some of the pages of information in the packet from one of the schools . . .
More on bus schedules: They are getting modified as parents inform CSD of omissions. It may take a while for the website to reflect modifications. So if your stop has been omitted, be sure and call/email CSD and it can’t hurt to turn in your Transportation Form again. Transportation forms are like votes, you can’t submit them too often.
All teacher assignment postcards were mailed yesterday, but we didn’t get ours yet. I think something is up with our mail because they mailed the principal letters and school suply lists last Thursday and I did not get mine until Tuesday this week.
OK, thanks–in the next day or two then, I hope.
We got the postcard for our Clairemont kindergartner today.
Not to mention–it can’t be that difficult to upload the teacher assignments to the Portal. I’ve been checking everyday for a week but I guess my hopes are too high for this system. We got our Glennwood teacher assignment yesterday but haven’t heard from 4/5. At least we got school supply lists.
Also, I hope that there will eventually be an option to do submit things forms, e.g. the transportation form, on-line. Through the Portal? There’s very little that cannot be done on-line in most other areas of government. It probably takes a big IT investment and has to be done correctly, not amateurishly, but I’ll bet the investment pays off in terms of administrative hours spent on sending out, collecting, and tracking forms–e.g. costs of paper and copying, not to mention aggravation for all the teachers, principals, school secretaries,
Sorry your hopes were “too high for the system.” Consider instead our intentional decision for the past three years:
The Parent Portal was turned on today after postcards were mailed midweek. This provides equity among those that may not have immediate access to the Internet.
Best,
Thomas
Regarding your concern that “equity” would somehow be violated by conveying information on the portal: In several class action cases, we had to devise communication mechanisms that were good channels for reaching low income families. We polled legal aid offices across the country as well as other offices with extensive contact with low income community. Almost everyone agreed that our concern, echoing yours, that the internet was not a good communication channel, was wrongheaded. The best, fastest, most reliable and most egalitarian way to reach everyone is via internet and email. The portal is available relatively quickly to everyone at home, work, libraries and, most frequently, via smart phones. CSD can and should stop withholding information because you fear some unfair advantage to one group or another. Just announce that you will publish information on the portal and, believe me, everyone will find a way to get that data. If anything, you should be worried about the bizarre vagaries of the postal system with some folks getting a card one day and some getting theirs one and sometimes two days later. Moreover, since lower income families typically move more frequently than moderate and upper income families, mail can be a particularly iffy mechanism for reaching them.
Thank you for your feedback. A secondary reason for using the postcards is that we use returned mail as another mechanism toward residency checks.
In the research world, folks are finding that the best way to reach low income folks is through cell phones, not mail or land lines. There’s use-as-you-need-them cell phones that are the cheapest option for folks on tight budgets. Hard to find those numbers and trace them though.
Oh and forgot to mention that folks on budgets are using cell phones for their cheapest internet access too.
Send the cards, by all means, if only for the reason you mentioned. It provides a nice check on address updates. Just don’t hold off on using the portal. If it ever made sense, the reason you cited for not putting the information on the portal right away no longer seem to make sense.
sigh
Hmm…yes, it’s kind of weird that we’re hoping everyone gets the postcards before turning on the portal, when the class lists at Glennwood have been posted on the front door for a week. Not sure about other schools. So posting on doors, then sending postcards, THEN updating the most sensible channel for information. Doesn’t make sense, but thanks for the heads up!
To TOK,
We received our teacher letter for College Heights two weeks ago tomorrow. We received our letters from Winnona Park today, but several of myOakhurst friends also did not receive their letters today. Sorry.
This new 9% enrollment information exceeded the estimates provided for in the milage rate increase analysis. It looks like the estimate provided a month ago was off by about 22%. (9/7). Given the increase in benefits and compensation proved last year and this, it would seem the two courses of action available are 1) a) reduce the number of tuition students or 1) b) raise tuition (mid year if need); 2) increase the milage rate right now (an additional rate increase is planned for next year.) Maybe proof of residency will be looked at more closely.? What is the percent of paying versus free tuition students?
Tuition students are projected to bring in over a million dollars into the CSD budget.. This includes the city local portion of equivalent taxes in addition to the state allocated funds that follow each student.. I am surprised that CSD does not require enrollment verification every year, not just once during initial enrollment.
There are CSD students whom formerly live in the city limits that have moved away, but their address in the directory reflects the old address. Since some of these students formerly lived in public housing and have been displaced, I’m ok with them continuing to attend CSD schools.
We do have to provide proof of residency from time to time. I have had to provide it for my oldest child at least 3 times since he’s started school– he’s in middle school now.
I have had to provide proof of residency almost every year, if not every year, for every child, despite being at the exact same City of Decatur address the entire period of time.
I am under the impression that CSD has been quite strict about residency since realizing that it was a huge problem around 5 years ago. It was painful because there had been a tradition of being loose about it prior to that and some long-time CSD students, including some excellent well-liked athletes, had to leave. What made it complicated is that some extended families had CSD students who truly lived with a parent some of the time and with another parent, grandparent, or other relative the rest of the time for child care, financial, or other reasons. I know of two families that had to carefully document guardianship and residency so that their students could legally and appropriately attend CSD.
I may not know the whole story, but as far as I know, CSD is on top of the residency issue.
Point well taken. I wholeheartedly agree that CSD has policies and process in place that are consistent and top notch. No place is perfect and every situation may have background that on the surface is not clear or may look suspect. One does not always know the family situation and who has guardianship.
We have been at College Heights four years and have had to provide proof of residency for each of those four years. Regardless of how much tuition students bring in, if we don’t have the room, then they shouldn’t get a place. Any tuition child taking a seat that should rightfully belong to a resident should move along.
No tuition student takes the place of a resident. For example we were able to place paying tuition students this year particularly at Glennwood Elementary because they had room.
Best,
Thomas
I am wondering what the rate of increase will be next year? My daughter just turned 4 and will be entering Kindergarten in the fall of 2012. I feel like there are a ton of kids here age but it is just an observation no actual data gathering here. However I was told when I had her in July 2007 that was the most babies ever born in one month at Crawford-Long, again just a nurse telling me. But should be interesting to find out. And it is good to hear that us residents get first priority.
It’s not your imagination. Everyone is noticing it. Unfortunately, we also noticed an increase back in 2004 but were not believed. This time, not even the previous Board member who said he wouldn’t count baby carriages could miss it. He’d trip over the little ones!