Parents, teachers and students urge MMSD board to reverse proposed educator allocation cuts

More than a dozen parents, teachers and students told the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education on March 17 that proposed educator allocation changes will push class sizes to the district maximum and damage supports for students with disabilities.

Speakers at the district’s public-input period singled out Lapham, Marquette, O’Keeffe and East elementary schools and West and East high schools as facing cuts that would reduce classroom and special-education staff. Catherine Howley, a Lapham parent and Latham Marquette PTG board member, said the school will lose “a second grade teacher” and “two special education assistants,” a change she said would leave two second-grade classrooms of 27 students each in a building that routinely overheats.

“The plan is teeing us up for two classrooms of 27 second graders each,” Howley said during public comment. “We are setting our teachers up for failure, and that will absolutely fall down on our kids.”

Teachers and staff echoed concerns about both class size and the district’s transparency about how allocations were calculated. Leland Pan, a school social worker and MTI building representative, said the lack of building-level data…