Public school overcrowding sends teachers traveling

Photo by: Abby Bellow

 

While most Oklahoma teachers enjoy the use of their own classroom complete with personal space and amenities, a group of teachers on the south side of Oklahoma City do not have these luxuries. Instead, these “traveling teachers” – educators who do not have their own classrooms – have to haul their materials from location to location, a process that takes away time and energy.

 

“Traveling teachers really have a hard time because they have to take all their materials with them,” Stephen Reece, eighth grade teacher at Carl Albert Middle School and Oklahoma Christian University alumnus, said. “And they usually have a little cart that they wheel behind them to take their books, computers and all the material they need for their classrooms. It is really hard on these teachers to try to figure out how they are going to use classroom space when they don’t even know what classrooms they are going to be in each day.”

 

The number of traveling teachers saw a steady increase over the past several years in response to the growing number of students in Oklahoma public school systems.

 

“I help teach at Cross Timbers Elementary School and it is double the size of a normal elementary school,” senior Christi Stewart said. “We have enough teachers for the students but we don’t always have enough textbooks. Some books have to be rotated so that all the students get to read them.”

 

Other schools similar to Cross Timbers Elementary are becoming overcrowded. The number of classrooms available has not matched the student growth.

 

“We have eight third-grade [classes], which is a lot because usually three is normal,” Stewart said. “Four of the classes cannot fit in the main building, so they have us outside a portable building and that is tough because when there is an earthquake you can really feel it and the kids get scared. It gets cold and the heaters do not work very well. It is really hard on the kids to be able to focus.”

 

According to Oklahoma state law, there is a maximum and minimum number of students per teacher that must be met in each school. With an increase in students, schools have to bring in traveling teachers to help.

 

“The problem with overflowing is once you have reached a certain number of students, then you have to bring another teacher or a teacher’s aid,” Allison Cassady, assistant professor of education said. “That’s why they are using those rolling carts and traveling teachers – so that they can meet the needs of their students as best as possible given the resources they have.”

 

The Oklahoma City Public Schools’ Board of Education proposed new boundaries to help eliminate some of the overcrowding in the district schools. A couple of the schools that can expect changes within the 2014-2015 academic school year are Britton Road Elementary and Ridgeview Elementary. All first grade students in Greystone Lower Elementary School will be moved to Greystone Upper.

 

“I think relocating students to other schools that are less crowded is a temporary solution to the problem,” Reece said. “Long term, I think that they need to start pumping more money into the school systems so they can build more facilities to help take care of the problem.”

 

Analysts did not foresee the population increase, even with some of the schools in Edmond.

 

“There are people out there who are assigned to predict student population growth, but sometimes these trends do not follow what you might expect,” Cassady said. “For an example: Edmond is growing north really fast, and if someone did not predict that then that’s where you would be having a lot of issues bringing kids into schools.”

 

Reece said having students switch schools would affect them psychologically, and that parents are less likely to go with the new proposal if their children are being uprooted from a good school to less desirable neighborhoods.

 

“Transitioning is hard for kids and … it is tough, but I think they can adjust,” Reece said. “I think parents will agree to the proposal depending on where the kids are getting moved. If they are getting moved to better school districts, then I think that the parents will be thrilled, but if they are getting moved to rougher areas, I don’t think the parents would appreciate it at all.”

 

Should the new school proposal pass, Cassady said parents would hesitate to agree with it if they felt their children would not benefit from the new school district arrangements.

 

“Unless the teacher communicates that there is a problem in the classroom, the parents are not going to like uprooting their children from their old schools,” Cassady said. “The parents will have to drive farther and the students will have to wake up earlier, and they are not going to like it.”

 

Cassady pointed out that in a perfect world the issues of overcrowding would not pose a problem, however the reality is that schools have limited funding, so they have to play the hand they are dealt.

 

“In an ideal world we would have small classroom sizes – every teacher would have their own nice, big classrooms – but we don’t live in a world where money is running out of the faucets,” Cassady said. “We have to do with what we have, and I think that is what the people in charge of school districts are trying to do – make the best with what we have.”