School district hopes to add teachers next year

Sisters School District would like to add three teachers to its staff next year. Whether that will be possible depends on final budget numbers for 2006-07, of course. The district budget committee will hold its first workshop on the budget May 8.

Sisters Superintendent Ted Thonstad told The Nugget last week: “We need at least 1.8 FTE (full-time equivalent) at the middle school and 1.5 FTE at the high school, based on what’s happening enrollment-wise and with the move of the fifth grade to the middle school.”

He said that in recent times the middle school “has been really short…Class ratios (students per teacher) are over 30. If we could lower the class size in a few classes, that would be good.”

Additional pressure is being placed on the middle school because of the planned shift of the fifth grade there. That move is being made to relieve crowding at the elementary school. The change will have grades 5 through 8 in the middle school.

“We want to put the fifth-grade teachers on the same schedule that the rest of the building’s teachers are on, rather than on an elementary schedule,” Thonstad said. Middle school teachers get 55 minutes of prep time per day compared with only 35 minutes for elementary teachers. And the class periods are longer.

Altogether, current middle school students receive 990 hours of instruction per year while elementary students receive 949.

While there is no assurance yet that the district will be able to add the 3.3 positions Thonstad has in mind, it has received some preliminary help in the form of unexpected state revenue (see related story, page 1) that will become part of the 2006-07 beginning balance.