Kaiserslautern Middle School teacher Dorothy Goff Goulet guides seventh-grade students through a beginning French course in 2008. If a Department of Defense Education Activity proposal goes through, some 350 middle school teachers could be out of a job. Goulet’s school, Kaiserslautern, could lose as many as 10 teachers. (Kevin Dougherty/Stars and Stripes)
Read memo by DODEA Director Shirley Miles
Internal documents from the Defense Department Education Activity call for more than 350 middle school teachers to lose their jobs, according to a union representing the teachers.
The union, the Federal Education Association, provided the documents to Stars and Stripes.
But Shirley Miles, who took over as DODEA director last year, said the three internal documents are only proposed changes for the next two upcoming school years. The union is misinterpreting those documents, she said.
"We have no plans of eliminating 300 teachers," she said Friday in a phone interview from Wiesbaden, Germany, where she’s attending a series of meetings. "That’s just crazy."
Michael Priser, president of the Federal Education Association, agrees that the idea is crazy. But he said he believes Miles is backing away from an unpopular decision.
"I believe the document is very clear," he said in a phone interview, also from Wiesbaden. "It says what it says. I don’t think it’s being misinterpreted at all."
One of the documents reads, "I am changing the Middle School staffing to a Pupil to Teacher (PTR) ratio of 25 to 1. The current Middle School PTR is 16 to 1. The formula will calculate 6th grade through 8th grade at 25-1 pupil to teacher ratio resulting in an overall decrease of Middle School teachers DoDEA wide."
It continues, "The following are the proposed staffing changes by school ... ."
The document gives a school-by-school breakdown of middle school teachers in three columns: the number of teachers in a 16-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio; the number of teachers for a 25-to-1 ratio, and the difference between those two numbers.
It appears to indicate the loss of 354 teaching positions.
Priser said he knows of local principals in Europe who are using the proposal put forward on middle school class sizes to decide how they’re going to get by without a specifically determined number of teachers.
But Miles and other DODEA officials say that interpretation is not correct. They say that number might accurately reflect the difference if DODEA were in reality going from a 16:1 to 25:1 ratio. But they said the 16:1 numbers don’t take into account a host of specialized instruction such as music, physical education and art, where class sizes could be larger than 25.
If you combine those teachers and DODEA classes for sixth, seventh and eighth grades, the ratios are running at about 22:1, Miles said. She said some teachers might lose their jobs if a task force that starts in the fall decides to go to a 25:1 ratio, but nowhere near the numbers that appear in the document.
Responding to Priser’s comment about at least some principals using those numbers in their calculations, Frank O’Gara, DODEA’s senior public affairs officer, said the document probably wasn’t as clear as it could have been.
"I’m sure, in some circles, by some principals, it probably has" been misinterpreted, he said in a phone interview.
Miles said that the proposals are "three pieces of a total puzzle. There are many other pieces of the puzzle." He said they shouldn’t be lumped together.
Those who do lump them together could come to the conclusion that a loss of 350 instructors in middle schools is tied with the proposed addition of 96 teachers at the kindergarten level and 160 resource managers proposed to help principals. Miles again denied any plans to cut that many teachers and said one plan doesn’t pay for the other two.
"That’s not true," she said.
She said the kindergarten proposal would take effect this fall if principals tell her they have the classroom space to handle it. The middle-school proposal wouldn’t take place until at least a year later. The proposal to hire resource managers would likely happen over an undetermined period.
Miles said the kindergarten proposal would reduce the size of a classroom to 18 students to one teacher from the current ratio of 29:1.
Teachers would be added to handle the creation of more classes, but the classroom aides who assist the teachers would be greatly reduced.
Priser said those aides — many of them military spouses — are greatly needed as a second adult in each classroom.
"Our teachers are telling me very strongly they don’t want to lose that aide," he said.
But Miles said the feedback that she’s received from teachers has indicated they would prefer to have smaller classrooms even at the expense of a full-time aide. She said all aides would not be eliminated and that it’s possible one would serve several classrooms.
She said the resource managers are needed in the schools to free up principals and assistant principals from spending most of their time dealing with paperwork and chores better left to others.
She said she wants to have principals spend more time in classrooms "evaluating teachers and helping the teachers instruct the students. I believe that the principal should be the lead instructor."
Miles said she sent the documents to administrators to get feedback.
Each document asks for responses by May 15.
She said she’ll weigh that feedback in making a decision on the kindergarten staffing and class sizes, while others — including the middle school task force — will review the other proposals.
