First Week of School

Wow!  It has been a crazy 1^st week of school. We started our kindergarten classes on Tuesday. As expected, I got my 20^th student on the 1^st day and so did several other teachers.  We enrolled 12 students between Monday and noon on Tuesday.  This gave all but 3 of our 14 teachers 20 students. At 2:00 the District Superintendent and Principal were discussing whether to hire a new teacher or wait until after Labor Day when they were informed another kindergartener had enrolled.  After school we were called to a meeting and informed that another teacher was hired and would start the next day. The empty K class was being used by the resource teachers, so everyone went into action. Within a few hours, we moved the resource teacher to another room and help the new teacher completely set up class to receive 18 students the next day. Some of us lost the last student enrolled and a couple of teachers lost 2 students. This left 8 of us with 19 students and 7 with 18. We have had several more enroll so as of today 11 teachers are back up to 19. The ironic part of this is that in May we were told because of the low numbers the last 2 years, the District was lowering the Kindergarten staff down to 12 and 2 teachers would be moved to another grade or school.  At the end of the school year, we had one teacher move to 2^nd grade and the rest of us not knowing if we would be moved. The middle of July enrollment for Kindergarten was 50 students above the year before, so a teacher was hired at the end of July and now they have had to hire another giving up 15 teachers. The way things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up with 20 students again. It has defiantly been a long, exhausting, and exciting week. I have 19 wonderful students and can’t wait to get to know them.

 uRose