A plan that proposed basing staffing levels next year on D97’s enrollment figures was put on hold after some community members complained that they were concerned that schools would be losing positions and increasing classroom sizes.
“This is an opportunity here to pause and reflect so that we can better understand ourselves as an Oak Park community,” said Supt. Ushma Shah in an email addressing concerns sent to district families on May 4.
While no changes will be implemented for the upcoming year, district officials said that staffing numbers nevertheless need to be revisited each year.
“The annual staffing process ensures that financial resources-in the form of staff salaries- are invested based on enrollment data,” officials said in a statement published on the district’s website. “In District 97, however, we had not been making annual staffing adjustments based on enrollments and were rolling over the same staff regardless of enrollment projections. This has resulted in fiscal inefficiencies.”
The district had planned to reallocate the positions based on enrollment data, which according to district figures, has been on the decline. Allocations would have been adjusted to each school, with positions cut at some schools, while others would have maintained staffing, a district report showed.
According to the district, teachers would not have lost their jobs. They would have been reallocated to different positions.
The proposed changes also included an increase overall in out-of-classroom positions both on a school-wide and district-wide level. According to the district, five additional district-wide out-of-classroom positions would have been added, increasing the number from 11 to 16.
Officials proposed plan suggested changes in two areas: classroom section positions and out-of-classroom positions. The latter are teachers who work with small groups of students. That could be an interventionist or a reading coach. They are not daily classroom teachers.
In her May 4 email to D97 families, Shah said the goal was to “strategically allocate resources.”
That included:
- Aligning with elementary school improvement plans
- Addressing underinvestment in middle schools
- Providing new leadership opportunities for teachers
The proposal was made with recommendations from principals about their schools’ needs, and on what kind of out-of-classroom positions would better support the school’s “focus on core instruction.”
Shah pointed to the board’s Equity Policy 7:12, which says “the superintendent shall develop and recommend to the Board both a viable long-term plan for funding, staffing, and implementing activities and initiatives to achieve the equity objectives as well as annual updates.”
But that hasn’t been done.
“Right now, we don’t have a strategy for how the out-of-classroom positions are allocated at schools,” Shah said. “There is not a data strategy. We have some positions at this school. One position at this school. There are just kind of legacy positions, but we can’t really describe how they are linked or aligned with what that school is trying to do or what we are trying to do as a district.”
“In order to get to different outcomes,” Shah added, “We are going to have to change the way we use our resources so that we support what is really going well already and be much more strategic about how everything lines up for universal success.”
According to the district, although Brooks Middle School and Julian Middle School are the largest schools, there isn’t a proportional number of out-of-classroom teacher positions allocated to them.
However, after receiving negative feedback, officials changed the proposal.
Maintaining staffing levels
Molly Greenwood-Whalen, president of the Beye Elementary School PTO, expressed concern over the possibility of Beye losing key positions at the school.
“What this means for Beye is that we will lose specialized staff that our students need to thrive, while other schools will maintain those specialist positions,” Greenwood-Whalen said in a letter addressing Beye families.
“We understand that ‘fair’ doesn’t mean that everyone gets the same thing, but rather that everyone gets what they need to success,” Greenwood-Whalen said. “… However, we believe that resource allocation needs to be equitable across the district’s elementary schools, as well as between elementary and middle schools.”
Greenwood-Whalen said she supported keeping positions such as an enrichment specialist, a role she said is crucial because it meets with every Beye student from first through fifth grade for critical-thinking skills work, while also offering math and other enrichment opportunities to students.
“We believe his [Mark Bulger] role positively impacts and encourages students to be empowered problem solvers, no matter what their MAP score might be,” she said.
Although parents complained – many on social media – that class sizes would increase if the changes were implemented, the district said class sizes would not do so in a way that would negatively impact students.
Projections so far show that grades K-2 would increase by one student per classroom, going from 19 to 20, and grades 3-5 would remain the same at 20 students.
At the middle school level, the average section size is expected to stay the same.
Now, according to officials, out-of-classroom positions will remain the same next year, and the proposed new teacher-leadership opportunities will no longer be available.
“We determined that implementing this plan with tight alignment between central office and across schools would require more time,” Shah said in the email the May 4 email to families.
According to the district, the only changes being made are to classroom sections.
Based on trends in student enrollment, data projects indicate a reduction from 212 sections in school year 2024 to 209 in school year 2025, with each school being “impacted differently.”
“There may be differences in section sizes across and within schools due to varying overall enrollment and special populations in each grade-level at each school,” district officials said.
Making changes would ensure alignment with the goal of the district, which is to “support high levels of student learning and engagement at all schools.”
As the district works on its highly anticipated “Portrait of an 8th Grade Graduate,” this could also be a way to redesign positions and figure out various ways to prepare the district for the future.
“We are very glad that as of Saturday night, Dr. Shah has decided to revisit that timeline and to keep the positions in place for next year,” Greenwood-Whalen said. “But we still have concerns about what happens after this coming year. I am hoping that the longer timeline is going to lead to more transparency and more stakeholder involvement.”
The next D97 board meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 14 at 7 p.m. in the district’s main office.