A guest post by Julie Cho
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I volunteer once a week in my daughter’s classroom. When I am there, the teacher and a teaching assistant (TA) each meet with small reading groups while I answer questions and check the work of the children who are working independently while waiting their turn. I can’t imagine what it would be like without the TA. What loss of progress would occur if students could meet with someone only two or so times a week instead of every day?
I am sure you have your own story about how a TA is essential to your child’s classroom. Whether it be helping with academics, helping with behavior management, or helping make sure our kids have a safe place to go to school, TA’s are a vital part of our school communities.
Unfortunately, we are set to lose some of these crucial assistants.
The recent North Carolina state budget proposal cuts funding for TAs except for kindergarten and first grade. This loss of over 3,000 assistants is “in exchange” for hiring 1,800 more teachers. While more teachers is obviously a good thing, with almost 2,300 public schools in North Carolina, it will not come close to making up for the loss of elementary assistants. For example, CMS will loose 400 assistants across its 88 elementary schools.
In addition, last year the legislature imposed a requirement starting next year that 3rd graders not be promoted unless they are reading at grade level, and this session it is proposing to lift restrictions on class size in K-3. Without TAs, this will create a disastrous learning environment.
Last, and certainly not least, is safety. Recent events have shown that one of the best ways to protect our students is to have well-informed, vigilant adults on site. Reducing the number of TAs reduces the number of people watching our children and is not consistent with a goal of keeping our schools safe.
In order to tell our lawmakers how we – parents and other people “in the trenches” of elementary education – feel about the possibility of losing teaching assistant positions, we started a petition on Change.org. Please take a minute to sign it and leave a comment with your own story of how a teaching assistant helped your child.
Link: Keep Our Teaching Assistants Petition
I hope this post didn’t come across as political or partisan. Those who have signed the petition have diverse beliefs, but we have come together on this issue because we know first hand that teaching assistants are essential in today’s classrooms.
Thank you!
Julie Cho, Advocacy Chair, Providence Spring Elementary PTA
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