Nokesville News

We are sending out a special newsletter for our kindergarten families. With the recent changes in the budget and staffing, we want to make sure you are comfortable with how we are teaching and supporting your child. We felt this was also an opportunity to re-share our procedures for the year.

As we shared recently, we had to make some changes in staff due to a lower than expected enrollment this year in kindergarten. We were projected to have 121 kindergartners this year and ended up with 101 when our budget was fixed on September 30th. This date of Sept 30 is the date that is used to check enrollment to determine how much funds we receive in our budget for this year. This had us down by 20 students in kindergarten. Every other grade level ended up with enrollment pretty close to what was projected and expected.

When we planned last year and this summer on staffing for kindergarten, we expected to have five full classes based on the trend of enrollment in the past. We hired for five classes and had students enrolling even through the beginning of the year. Our class sizes ended up being about 20-21 students per class which we cannot typically support that low of a class size based on our budget. Our budget is based on having about 24 students per class.

We receive our official budget in the beginning of November. We then sometimes have to make tough decisions on staffing based on our current reality of student enrollment. In this case, typical change would be reducing a class from having five to four classes and split the students from the fifth class into the other four classes.

We met as a team with the kindergarten teachers before making any decisions. As a team, we decided that either way, this would be tough for us. If we split a class and add the students to the other classes, then class sizes would be about 25-26 students. The class size limit in PWCS for kindergarten is 27 students, so we were worried that if we had more students enroll during the year, that we would have to then split the classes again into a fifth class when they went over the limit.

As a team, we felt that the best thing for the students would be to not reduce a classroom and instead keep the students in their current class with their current teachers. This would help maintain the relationships that the teachers had with the students, keep our class sizes low, and keep the current routines.

To make this happen, we knew that we would have to reduce in other places. The teachers felt that they could still be effective for the students by sharing teacher assistants and instead of reducing a teacher and a teacher assistant (the fifth class), we could reduce our staff by two teacher assistants. The teachers requested that they could make a schedule to share the assistants, receive extra help when needed, and adjust their schedules during the day to make all this work. We agree to all of this.

The two teacher assistants that were overstaffed were Mrs. Munoz and Mrs. Trummer. They were chosen only because they had the least seniority in the school division in their role. Both were doing a great job as assistants. Mrs. Trummer stayed at TNS and now works in one of our autism programs. Mrs. Munoz now works in the English Learner program at nearby Chris Yung Elementary School.

In the budget, funds for two teacher assistants does not equal to that of a teacher and assistant. In order to help financially support this change, the administration team decided to sacrifice an addition position we added this year in our Administrative Intern. Essentially, the only way we could prevent a teacher from being overstaffed was to instead overstaff an administrator. Losing an administrator in a large school like ours is hard, but we wanted to show our full support for our students and do everything we could to keep teachers in their classrooms. Mr. Brunson, Mrs. Martinez, and I have now taken on all of the discipline, attendance, daily duties, and evaluations that were assigned to Mrs. Giovannelli, our Administrative Intern. She now works at Forest Park High School on their administrative team. We hope this shows the level of support our admin team provides for our teachers.

When these changes happen, we discuss them first with staff and then have to work with the finance and human resources departments before any information is made public to staff or parents.

We heard that some parents found out about some of these changes before we made the official announcement on 11/20. In this case, we also found out that when we did send out the letter to families midday that day, it didn't end up getting to all the families. Once we learned of this, we emailed it again to all the kindergarten families that evening. We are sorry about any confusion and concerns this may have caused.

Please be assured that our administrative team will share out this kind of information as soon as we possibly can in these kinds of situations. Unfortunately, we have limitations on when we can send this out. We have to make sure the information is official with central office and accurate before sending it out publicly.

Our current teacher assistants are Mrs. Worley, Mrs. Grimm, and Mrs. Elmore. They have already worked with students in all the other classes before this change, such as at recess and at lunch. We pride ourselves as a school in connecting with students across classes. This helped for this change since they already had relationships with students in classes they are now working with.

The kindergarten teachers and assistants created a new schedule to share teacher assistants across the five classes. They created the schedule based on trying to evenly divide the time but also provide additional support where they felt students and teachers needed it. See below for the current schedule.

We have had some questions about teacher assistants and support for students during lunch. Last year, we had a busy cafeteria with two elementary grade levels eating at the same time in the cafeteria. This year, we changed the lunch schedules to only have one grade level eat at the same time in the cafeteria. We also hired more cafeteria hostesses so we now have four cafeteria hostesses during lunch.

In the first quarter, we also had the teacher assistants eat lunch in the cafeteria with the students as part of what we normally do in the beginning of the year. When they cover for lunch, we have to provide them a different time during the day for them to have their own lunch. We were already going to change this to align their lunch with the students and teachers. The teachers asked if we could make this change now, so we did. Four hostesses in the cafeteria for one grade level is more than most elementary schools currently have for their students.

As before, the kindergarten teachers and/or the kindergarten teacher assistants will continue to personally escort their students to and from all encores, lunch, or any other transition in the building. At the elementary level, all teachers escort their students during transitions to fully supervise them.

Our arrival and dismissal procedures have not changed because of this staffing change. Below is an update on our procedures.

ARRIVAL:

• CAR RIDERS & BUS RIDERS - Students are supervised outside getting out of cars and getting off the buses. We then have four staff members at each of the Evol security screening stations to help support students. Then we have additional staff down the hallways and in the cafeteria for breakfast, at specific locations, to help supervise kindergartners and other students get to class. Students are never out of immediate sight of a staff member as they walk to class.
• SACC - Students in the School Age Child Care program are walked through the Evolv system together and then escorted down the main hallway to the kindergarten hallway.

DISMISSAL:

CAR RIDERS:

• Mrs. Cameron splits her class by having her bus riders go into the other teacher's classrooms at 2:55 pm for dismissal. She walks them to each of these rooms. Mrs. Cameron walks her car riders to the main gym. The teachers assistants gather the rest of the car riders from the other classes and escort them to the main gym as well.
• Kindergarten students sit in the front of the main gym in a group with Mrs. Cameron. We have many additional teachers from K-8 in the gym at that time to help with dismissal. When the students' car numbers are called, they are helped to line up based on the order of the cars. They are then walked out to their car by a middle school safety patrol and supervised by staff in the car rider line. FYI, due to teacher assistant work hours ending at 3:00 pm, our teaching staff mainly fill in for dismissal after 3:00 pm.
• SACC - Students in the School Age Child Care program are escorted with the car riders and dropped off directly with the SACC staff in the cafeteria.

BUS RIDERS -

• We use a system on the interactive boards to show which buses have arrived. Once a bus has arrived, students are then escorted directly to their bus by 5th-8th grade safety patrols. While they are being escorted, we also have teachers at all the class doorways and in the halls to supervise students. We also have staff stationed at the bus loop to assist students onto their buses.

"The most important thing that we have as kindergarten teachers is the relationships we form with students and their families. We know these relationships are invaluable to the success of your students. The kindergarten team was asked to join in the decision-making process involving this change. As we looked at available options, we felt that sharing assistants caused the least disruption to the kindergarten students. As a team we are committed to working together in the best interests of your students. We are committed to providing your students with a safe, welcoming environment where they can flourish. We look forward to continuing to have a wonderful year."

-Mrs. Cameron, Mrs. Sucic, Mrs. Dittmar, Mrs. Allison, & Ms. Embrey

If you have any questions about how we are supporting your child, please reach out to your child's teacher and/or Mrs. Martinez, Elementary Assistant Principal or Dr. Jacks, Principal.

If you would like to meet any of the staff, such as a kindergarten teacher assistant that works with your child, please reach out. We are happy to arrange time for this.

If you have questions about what we are spending money on and how we make decisions in the budget process, please reach out to Dr. Jacks, Principal.

Thank you for your support and understanding for this challenging situation.

Principal, Dr. Andy Jacks jacksam@pwcs.edu

Assistant Principal, Mr. Geoff Brunson brunsogr@pwcs.edu

Assistant Principal, Mrs. Abbey Martinez martinae1@pwcs.edu

The Nokesville School
Prince William County Public Schools

Email: jacksam@pwcs.edu
Website: https://nokesville.pwcs.edu/
Location: 12375 Aden Road, Nokesville, VA 20181, USA
Phone: (571) 781-3040
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheNokesvilleSchool
Twitter: @NokesvilleSch

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