Issues in Education - Presentation

Hello, This is Erin Sullivan for Ed 6 71.

My consultation presentation is about educational funding.

I chose to highlight a few main points that I thought are really important,

such as mental health and class sizes.

I saw these issues have some negative effects in

some of the previous school districts I've worked in

and I can also see these issues continuing in

the districts, albeit in the future.

So I'm not currently in the Fargo public school district,

but I wanted to include some breakdown of budgeting in my presentation.

Um

This is the Fargo public school district budget from 2021,

kind of assorted by source. So

for the most part, public schools are funded by the government on the local,

state and federal level and the amount that comes from

each of those varies across districts and different states.

So you can see in the Fargo public schools,

most of it is state revenue or property taxes.

And then the smaller pieces of that

graph, our federal revenue, local revenue, and then other sources.

So something that I think is a huge, huge issue in schools right now.

One of them being mental health, the other one will talk about later is class sizes.

So mental health is a huge topic circulating not only in

and within education and school districts, but kind of everywhere.

Almost everywhere realm. We've seen this

COVID-19 really brought out a lot of mental health issues

and those were prevalent before we experienced the pandemic, but

the pandemic brought those to the forefront and

we definitely saw those in schools a lot.

Teachers had to be responsible for a lot of

different things with our students

and I think all students and teachers should have more access to resources.

Teachers should be working on prevention and intervention

in their classroom when those problems arise.

So I read an article called mental health in schools and public health

and they talked a lot about the deep rooted issues related to mental health

and they talked about the goals being

um you know,

within education around mental health is directly

facilitating physical social and emotional development,

minimizing psychosocial and mental health problems,

identifying and correcting and minimizing problems as early as possible.

Um So that's where the prevention comes into play

and then a few more

are providing coordinating treatment of

severe and chronic problems and providing

services for those severe chronic kind of mental physical psychosocial issues.

And the article talked about a few ways we can start to do this and that's going

to require a plethora of interventions and that's going

to range from school systems promoting healthy development,

preventing problems.

Um and that would be where the primary prevention comes from.

They continue to talk about how we address these

issues and addressing them developmentally with ranges of programs.

Some of those programs can be focused on individuals,

some of them on environmental systems,

some focus on mental health,

some on physical health education and social services.

So this is going to take the whole school being involved,

the whole community to get to those deeper level issues

coming from different angles

and the next

big topic. Issue related to funding is class sizes.

So there are so many benefits of reducing class sizes from the Institute

of Education Sciences and this is who does research for the U.

S. Department of Education.

They talk about you know how reducing class

size is one of four evidence based reforms

that have been proven to increase student achievement.

So there there is so much research on

how closely correlated smaller class size is with higher achievement.

And just from personal um you know, experiences, I've taught classes with

More than 30 Children in them in 3rd and 5th grade

when I was in a school district near the Minneapolis area

and I would say you know all teachers, parents,

staff students are going to have different

ideas of what the perfect class size really is and there isn't a perfect answer

but trying to figure out maybe that middle ground of

two little students and too many students.

So for my research I found a lot of benefits to smaller class sizes,

differentiation is going to be more achievable,

especially for you know newer or younger, less experienced teachers

when they're smaller groups of students

differentiation is more achievable because there's a

smaller range of abilities within the students of your classroom.

And then I've also found that younger grades makes this point even more true.

Um And then a lot of my research talked about

how my groups of minorities also benefit from smaller class sizes

with smaller class size students and teachers are able to

get to know each other better and build better relationships.

And I am a huge proponent of relationship building.

I think it makes a huge difference in students learning

and then, you know, with that

better differentiation and stronger relationships,

students are more likely to be engaged throughout the day.

So

that kind of leads to better behaviors, less behavior issues and

not as much need for redirection or, you know,

as much classroom management for your class

with the smaller class sizes.

This will unfortunately cost districts and

schools more money because more sections means

you need to have more teachers.

So this is something district should be aware of, It may cause some problems,

but this is something that, you know,

should be prioritized in my opinion.

So, I think it's something to definitely focus on.

We'll go back to this class size slide

from my research, I found a quote from diane sketching bach and it says,

you know,

research shows that students in the early

grades perform better with small classes.

This is especially the case for

students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds who

experience even larger performance gains than average

students when enrolled in smaller classes,

small class sizes

enable teachers to be more effective.

And research has shown that students who attend small classes

in early grades continue to benefit over their entire lifetime.

So really, by taking this step earlier in our students, you know,

elementary middle school, they're going to have a bigger

benefit throughout their lifetime.

The recommendations that I had

and kind of came to after doing all my research were

for mental health,

having highly trained mental health professionals in all schools.

I really believe that within our education systems in the next 10, 15 years,

we are going to start seeing

mental health professionals in all schools who are trained to equip or

trained and equipped with the knowledge to help students and school staff.

Yeah,

an example of a school doing this with really

great success comes from the phoenix Union High School district

In 2021,

this Arizona School District hired two wellness specialists for

the teachers and staff members at their campus.

At no extra expense to those teachers.

The licensed professional counselors were able to meet with employees on

site and they offered strategies for conflict resolution between teachers,

problem solving within your classroom

and just someone to listen to a shoulder to, you know,

sit next to someone to validate their feelings

because that is something that teachers really need.

The feelings of being super overwhelmed and you know, maybe drowning in your work,

especially over the pandemic, were really, really huge.

So having someone listen empathetically invalidate your feelings is important

outside of this.

They're able to make referrals for outside help

if if they feel like that was necessary.

Um and then

this also was a way for teachers to take one step

out of the process of maybe getting that mental health help.

It's easier for teachers to make an appointment at the place they work,

whether it's during their school day, after their school day, during their prep

that way they don't have to drive somewhere else and make additional plans

other than the individual meetings and sessions,

they were able to do group meetings

that taught self care practices like mindfulness and

really great resources for people in group settings.

So I think that's something we're gonna start to see a lot more

within the next few years and I think that would be a really,

really great thing for our teachers.

You know, when teachers come to school

in a better mental state,

they're able to help their students and be a better teacher overall.

And then I also believe

even with the extra cost of

smaller class sizes hiring extra staff,

it is very important to increase that engagement and close the achievement gap.

Like I said earlier with one of my

articles that I found primary prevention is going to be

key to help with a mental health crisis in schools and

smaller class sizes is going to greatly

help that.

So

here is the source list that I used

and thank you so much for listening to my presentation.

I look forward to hearing everyone else's

Issues in Education - Presentation

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