September 25, 2024

Akron Public Schools’ new full-day pre-kindergarten program is off to a rocky start, with teachers repeatedly raising issues about staffing shortages they say cause safety and hygiene concerns for some of the district’s youngest learners. The district-wide expansion has been a focus of Superintendent Michael Robinson, who responded on Tuesday to a Signal Akron report that made public emailed complaints from teachers. Since then, multiple teachers have agreed to speak with Signal Akron about their concerns. The district’s response does not align with what pre-kindergarten teachers told Signal Akron last week — the teachers spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect themselves from possible retaliation. All of the teachers currently work in the APS pre-kindergarten program and have been with the district for years, some of them for decades. They are all early childhood educators and Akron Education Association members. The teachers said they had little guidance or support from district administration before the start of the school year. This lack of support, they said, has continued during the first weeks of school and manifested in a lack of paraprofessional staffing, inadequate facilities and vague procedural guidelines they said have threatened the safety and hygiene of students and kept them from being able to do their jobs. “We want to stay a high-quality preschool,” one APS pre-kindergarten teacher said. “We want to provide what we know we need to provide them, and we just can’t do it.”Before the start of the school year, the teachers said there was little opportunity for input about what educators needed for a quality full-day pre-kindergarten program. Many of the current issues, they said, could have been avoided with teacher input and proper planning. “I think safety is my biggest concern,” a teacher said. “When there’s not enough paraprofessionals or not enough people to be with 18 kids, I’m worried to death that somebody’s gonna run out the door, somebody’s gonna run in the street. “And that’s one issue. The other issue is the kids’ basic needs not being met, you know, not being taken to the bathroom, not having their diaper changed.”All of the teachers raised similar issues. A veteran pre-kindergarten teacher said that part of a good program is making sure that the staff is trained and that they’re providing all the services students need. “But that’s almost secondary right now to all this,” they said. “I hate to say that. … Because right now it’s survival.”A consistent issue raised by the teachers is about guidance coming from the administration that they make the pre-kindergarten children take 90-minute naps so the teachers and paraprofessionals can take lunch. They said guidance from the administration on naptime was unclear – some said it was a hard policy, some said they had leeway with nap times. All said the policy wasn’t working. State law allows for there to be one professional in a classroom when kids are taking naps, which the teachers said is the impetus for the lengthy naptime guidance. By extending naptime, the district is able to cover the shortage of paraprofessionals in the pre-kindergarten program. “I think it’s unsafe to have an assistant be in charge of all these kids on the cots, making them stay on the cots,” a teacher said. “I just don’t think that’s appropriate, and it’s unsafe.”One teacher said the district’s vision for the pre-kindergarten program doesn’t align with this reality.“Many of the parents, the ones that I talked to anyways, were not even aware that there was gonna be a nap time or a rest time, and then when they found out how long it was, a lot of them are really horrified,” they said. “… It’s just not developmentally appropriate to expect a typical kid, let alone children who have some of these needs, to remain on a cot for the length of time that they’re expected to remain quietly on a cot.”Teachers, even some of the veterans in the program, are overwhelmed in ways they said they haven’t been in years past. “I can’t tell you how many [pre-kindergarten] teachers I’ve talked to today that said they are exhausted,” a teacher said. “They’re crying. You know, these are seasoned teachers who’ve been around a long time that are crying over what’s going on.”The post Akron schools’ full-day pre-K teacher: ‘Right now, it’s survival’ appeared first on Signal Akron.

Akron schools’ full-day pre-K teacher: ‘Right now, it’s survival’

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