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A teacher and AUTA representative urges higher wages, smaller classes and more supervision at Auburn Elementary
Summary
Sarah Hedspeth, an ELD teacher and AUTA negotiation chair, told trustees class sizes are uneven across TK–8 sites, lunchtime supervision is inadequate at Auburn Elementary, and the district lacks a consistent middle-school science teacher — she urged prioritizing pay to retain educators.
Sarah Hedspeth, an ELD teacher at Auburn Elementary and AUTA negotiation chair, told the board that class-size imbalances and staffing gaps are harming instruction. "Teachers are being given class lists that are well above the desired class size in some of their classes," she said, and added that large classes create behavior problems and logistics issues that undercut instructional time.
Hedspeth also described inadequate supervision at lunchtime for the district's youngest learners and said teachers are frequently covering lunch duty, which costs them contractual planning time. She urged the board to "prioritize keeping quality educators by providing a competitive living wage to avoid attrition so that we can build continuity within our programs and across all three school sites." The board received the comment as association input and thanked Hedspeth for bringing classroom-level concerns to the trustees' attention.
