Letter to the Editor: The Parent Movement Aims to Preserve Class-Size Ratio and Teachers' Jobs

By Dorothy Theodore, The Parent Movement

I am the parent of two children who are in 3rd and 1st grades at Castro Valley Elementary. I am working with a group of motivated parents from my children's school to fight to save our teachers' (and other elementary school teachers') jobs.

We have started a group which we call and we want every school in to come and join us and work as a team to change the minds of our board members.

I'm sure you are aware of the . The school board claims that an estimated $450,000 will be saved by . Fourteen elementary school teachers stand to lose their jobs. At the same time, there is estimated to be as little as $5 million in emergency reserves and possibly upwards of $13 million.

As parents, we are organizing our community to be a voice against this class size increase and against laying-off teachers. We will urge our school board to use the emergency funds. Even if there is only $5 million in the emergency reserves, using $450,000 to preserve our smaller class size and save jobs is not even 10%. They recommend furlough days, but that too reduces the amount of teaching days and takes the money from the pockets of our teachers and hurts students, rather than dipping into the emergency funds. 

If this is not an emergency, then what is? Preserving our small class size and keeping our quality teachers should be the priority.

The Parent Movement is reaching out to all parents throughout our district to work together to save these jobs and preserve quality education in Castro Valley. We are encouraging attendance at the next Board Meeting on March 22 at 7 p.m. in the Board Room at the CVUSD Offices on Alma Avenue. We hope to start a wave of outrage that our board is being overly conservative at the expense of our children and the jobs of our teachers.

The Parent Movement says NO to 28:1 and NO to lay-offs!

Please help us get this message out.

Editor's Note: The Parent Movement invites those interested in joining "the movement" to its first meeting which will be held at at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, March 19. For more details about the meeting, .