 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Fearing loss of teacher, Cannella parents flood school with calls
By LOGAN D. MABE
© St. Petersburg Times, CARROLLWOOD -- When Cannella Elementary parents learned that the school might lose one of its six kindergarten teachers because of lower enrollment, they hit the panic button. "Urgent!" was the headline on a flier sent home with students from "Your Kindergarten Team" last week. "Our county has decided to take one of our kindergarten units and the teacher due to budget cuts. If they take the teacher, the class will be divided among the five remaining teachers. This will get our class numbers up to 30 plus. TOO MANY to teach effectively! The POWER is with you. PLEASE call these very important numbers." The flier listed the office number for area director James Gatlin and the home number of School Board member Jack Lamb, who actually does not represent Cannella's area. The correct board member is Glenn Barrington. "Keep calling until you voice is heard!" the flier said. "Demand to keep all six kindergarten units and teachers intact. Call Today!!!" And call they did. "The next thing I know, we were inundated with calls," Gatlin said. "On Friday, my office could hardly function. It crippled our offices." Lamb said he received 23 calls from concerned parents, plus a slew of e-mails. Every year, the school district takes roll on the fifth day of school and uses that number to determine which schools need more teachers and which have too many. Based on a decline in enrollment at Cannella, it at first appeared that the school might lose a kindergarten teacher. "When I contacted Cannella, I let the principal know that there was a possibility of a loss of a kindergarten unit along with some other units because Cannella lost 100 kids or so," Gatlin said. "In kindergarten, it was very close. What I said to the principal was that I would take it to my superiors. We review all of the numbers. If something is close, you request an exemption and generally they're granted." Cannella needed 150 kindergarten students to justify having six teachers, but the fifth-day count came up short. "At the time, they were only about two students off so I had no doubt in my mind that the exemption would be granted," Gatlin said. "You're not going to move a teacher based on one or two kids." But that's not the message parents got. "All I can say is that everybody was disappointed," said Cannella PTA president Laura Button. "We thought the classes would be overcrowded if we lost one. Parents were upset, so I know phone calls were made." Gatlin said they jumped the gun, though. "What a ridiculous controversy this has developed into," Gatlin said. "The whole controversy was ill-conceived and totally misdirected and suddenly I'm the villain here." By the time district officials began crunching the numbers on Monday, they found that Cannella's enrollment threshold had been met "so there really was no issue," Gatlin said. "It was all much ado about nothing. I hate to see parents upset unnecessarily." Cannella principal Rose Ann Cuervo said the parents were indeed upset with even the possibility of losing the teacher. "They were anticipating the worst," Cuervo said. "They wanted to do whatever they could to help the school. But it worked in our favor that we did get the children and we did keep the teacher, so all is well." - Logan D. Mabe can be reached at 813-226-3464 or at mabe@sptimes.com.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times |
