School committee presents plan to hire two itinerant teachers

SOUTH KINGSTOWN—Following moths of requests from parents and teachers, the school committee was presented a plan Tuesday that would allow for the hiring of two elementary school itinerants, one to teach Spanish and the other health.

Superintendent Kristen Stringfellow told school committee members that she was “happy to recommend the additional two FTEs (full-time employees).”

Currently, elementary students are visited each week by five itinerants. The plan, explained assistant superintendent Pauline Lisi, is to add a sixth itinerant, alternating on a two-week schedule between Spanish and health.  

This is good news for the many community members who have advocated over the last several months for the addition of itinerant school positions. The itinerant positions had been on a list of additional supports the district could use, but didn’t quite make the cut when it came time to approve the district’s fiscal year 2018-19 budget.

“People have been asking for this and they’ve continued to ask for it after the budget was adopted,” school committee member Raissa Mosher said, thanking Lisi for putting the plan together. “This is a really big deal and we’re grateful that you were able to come up with this plan.”

The town’s recent agreement to take over caring for South Road School meant an additional operational savings of $50,000 in the upcoming school district budget. 

“It’s an investment in instructors,” Stringfellow said, “and it’s a pullback of operational expense, which is from a school finance perspective always good.”

Stringfellow said she was also recently notified of students previously supported by 1:1 teacher assistants who are leaving the district, and CFO Maryanne Crawford also found various other non-personnel line item reductions in the budget. 

“On the one hand you can just keep that savings,” Stringfellow said. “But I felt like I was directed by the committee to be extremely creative, and we’ve been actively trying to find a way to give all kids in the district Spanish.”

Adding a Spanish itinerant who can travel between elementary schools means greater exposure to the Spanish language for students not enrolled in the Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program, Stringfellow added. Since the expansion of DLI has been put on hold—the school committee voted last month against growing the program into the Matunuck and Wakefield elementary schools—she said she hopes the itinerant can be something of a compromise.

Students in the DLI program would still be taught by the Spanish itinerant, Lisi explained, but the lessons would likely have more of a focus on cultural competency.

“Because they’re not getting to that in the DLI program,” she added. 

The other itinerant will teach health. Stringfellow said that position was born of “over a year of parent inquiry.” 

“I co-chair the wellness committee,” Lisi added, “and for the last two years we’ve heard repeatedly about the need for health to be taught by a certified health teacher.”

Under Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) requirements, roughly 100 minutes per week must be devoted to health and physical education.

“And that burden falls upon our elementary teachers in our district,” Stringfellow explained. “And so when we’ve talked about the health piece and the language piece with elementary teachers in the last few weeks, their feedback has been exceptionally positive.”

Teachers have said the itinerant would free up their time to focus on things like professional learning communities and common planning time, Stringfellow added. 

Feedback on the itinerant additions was overall positive. But while most committee members supported the idea, school committee chair Roland Benjamin was hesitant to jump right into using what he called “found money.”

“On this particular case I want to say that while I really like the innovation and creativity of the FTE scheduling, I want to push back a little bit on the instinct to as soon as money is found we move into trying to identify new spending opportunities,” said Benjamin, the only committee member who would vote against adding the itinerant positions. “I don’t expect this to change anyone’s mind, but I’m not inclined to support it.”

The school committee voted 6-1 in favor of the addition of two FTEs to support itinerant positions for Spanish and health, with Benjamin opposing.