Channahon schools OK hiring of two teachers
By Jeanne Millsap For The Herald-News April 24, 2012 11:42AM
Updated: May 28, 2012 8:29AM
CHANNAHON — Two new teachers will be hired in the Channahon School District for next year’s school year, but the appointments likely will be for only one year.
Laura Young, a third-grade teacher at Pioneer Path School, will be taking family medical leave/child-rearing leave for the 2012-13 school year, and one teacher will be hired to replace her.
Should Young choose to return the following year, the replacement teacher probably would not be re-hired.
The second position is to replace a retiring second-grade teacher.
Under normal student population growth, that new teacher would remain employed after that first year, but the district’s growth is down recently, with the numbers of students declining by about a hundred each year.
That trend is expected to continue, Supt. Karin Evans said, and the district might decide not to continue the new teacher’s employment in order to keep up with the declining number of students in the district.
In fact, the board was faced with the decision of whether to even hire replacement teachers for next year, with the decreasing student population.
The matter was discussed at Monday’s board meeting, but in the end, the decision was unanimous to hire in order to keep the number of students per classroom in the younger grades lower.
Hiring the new teachers will leave second grade with 20.3 students/class and third grade with 21.3 students/class.
Retirements in the upcoming couple of years will probably take care of any further adjustment to declining student numbers, Evans said, but in the years following, the district may be looking at teacher reductions in force to adapt to the student population.
