On instructional assistant placements

I know there are conversations going around about this, and I've gotten several calls, so...

Instructional assistants for kindergarten are placed as follows:

• every school gets one.
• schools with the highest number of kids per class get additional IAs, in order. Thus, the two classrooms of 30 at Chandler Elementary meant that school got another IA. Then the Quadrant Managers go through all of the classes of 29, all of the classes of 28, and so on down the line until we run out of IAs to place. WPS does not have enough IAs to have one in every kindergarten class..

Note that this means a couple of things:

• as always, we're only as good as our most recent information. We can only shuffle so often (I think we only shuffle once, but I'm checking on that), and if a class that was 23 suddenly gets four more kids, then yes, there may well be a class of 27 out there that is still sharing.
• this is done without regard for need. Thus, it may be a class of 24 kids with five with particular needs: that doesn't figure in. Nor does poverty level, nor does school level (aka: Level 4, Level 3, and so forth). 

I suspect this will come up at the Worcester School Committee meeting on Thursday--Mr. O'Connell has put in an item regarding Union Hill--so expect more discussion.

And by all means, keep the calls coming! We're only as good as our information!