School board committee weighs tutoring costs

At its final meeting for the school year on June 28, the budget committee for the Rondout Valley Board of Education discussed options for lowering the cost of tutoring students suspended from school.
The district spent $62,865 on home tutoring this school year, which includes students absent for medical reasons. Out of 25 home tutoring cases, 13 were suspensions. Ten of those were high school students. Students under at-home suspension are required to receive two hours of instruction per day. Elementary students receive one hour.
“Are there other choices?” David O'Halloran, committee chairman, asked. “Could we set up a classroom with teachers to serve the students on property at an isolated location that would be sufficient for the purposes of suspension?”
“Would it be difficult to offer a two-hour program on site?” board member James Blair said.
“The cost would be transportation because you'd have to pick the kids up,” said Timothy Wade, Rondout Valley deputy superintendent of schools.
“If we were going to do it on property, it would be a full student school day just like any other day,” O’Halloran said. “You wouldn't make suspension easier than the school day, you'd make it harder.”
“If you had a two-hour program on this campus after school,” board member Michael Redmond said, “are you telling me if you suspend them to that it’s my responsibility as a taxpayer to go get that kid and bring them here? See, I think you’ve got to inconvenience the parents. Guess what? They'd be in school then.”
Superintendent Rosario Agostaro said another possible avenue to explore is web-based tutoring if the student has Internet access, “where the teacher’s in the room providing instruction via FaceTime or Skype or whatever it is. I know some districts do it that way.”
Agostaro said the district saw a recent spike of freshman and sophomore suspensions. “This was an unusual end of the year,” he said.
An aide runs the current in-school suspension program in the high school. A teaching assistant runs the junior high program, according to Wade. “Their work is assigned there, they do it on their own. The teachers may check in with them, but there’s no actual instruction during that time,” he said.
“So it’s kind of like a study hall?” Blair asked.
“Well, no, it’s much more strict than a study hall. They each have carrells, they have their work that they’re expected to do,” Wade said.
Substitute teachers tutor students at home during the school day. There are some teachers that tutor after school, according to business administrator Debbie Kosinski. Tutors are paid $41 an hour.
“Well there’s no easy solution,” O'Halloran said. “Ideally they would be here, or at BOCES.”
“BOCES has an out-of-school program,” Wade said, “and the high school has asked to use it, and we’ve set up students to go to it, and inevitably they don’t go.”
“But that saves us money,” O'Halloran said, laughing.
“That’s not my problem, [that] they don't go,” Redmond said.

“It’s not all about the money,” Kosinski said.

“I was waiting for a reaction,” O’Halloran said.

“The whole idea is if some student got 10 days’ suspension you want to keep them up to speed,” Kosinski said.

“They're not up to speed at home with two hours a day,” O’Halloran said.

“Let me tell you something, the ones that I know that have been suspended,” Redmond clapped his hands and stomped his foot, miming dancing. “That's what they're doing. They're at home, having a ball. They could care less.”

O’Halloran requested more information on the BOCES option.

“But they don’t attend,” Wade said.

“Remember this committee’s responsibility, why it is funny sometimes what I'll say,” O’Halloran said. “If there's a more efficient way of doing it -- it might get trumped by curriculum committee, by the full board, or others for academic purposes, and we’re happy to be trumped --however, lacking that, we want to most efficient way to provide it.”

Agostaro suggested the board consider that it may not be a good idea for some of the suspended students to be in the same room together. Wade added that another concern with busing students for an in-school or BOCES suspension is that the “vast majority of suspensions are about drugs,” and that the bus route is where they have contact with other kids.

O’Halloran ended the meeting thanking committee members for their hard work this year, which saw the creation of 14 new programs, and “pushing hard on class size, especially at the upper levels.”

Speaking about the upcoming school year, O'Halloran said, “I have a few efficiencies I want to target.”