We, the parents and supporters of Thornton Creek school, request that the district allocate six general education classes at 4th/5th grade for 2015-16 instead of five as currently planned.  Making this change would prevent overloaded classes and would better serve district enrollment needs in the highly crowded Northeast cluster.  

In the closing school year, Thornton Creek has three classes at 3rd grade and three classes at 4th grade moving up to 4th and 5th grades respectively in 2015-16.  District budget formulas that allocate only five classes for 2015-16 instead of six will unnecessarily diminish the overall quality of our children’s education.

Maintaining a sixth class would enable Thornton Creek to remain a viable option for the district to assign additional students, especially when nearby neighborhood schools are bursting at the seams.  The planned allocation of five classes at 4th and 5th for 2015-16 would remove that option, since the school would be considered full in that configuration.

Having only five classes would overload those five classroom teachers as well as the PCP teachers in PE, library and art, and would require overload stipends for all eight teachers as agreed to in the collective bargaining agreement for classes exceeding the maximum number of students.

It is common to have additional students added to Thornton Creek over the summer months. If this trend continues, the district will have to add another teacher before September 2015 to meet the collective bargaining agreement. We believe it would be optimal to allocate funds for a sixth teacher immediately versus waiting until September, to allow time to pro-actively hire from a larger candidate pool and train a new teacher.

In the interests of both the students of Thornton Creek and the district, please allocate a full-time teacher for a sixth class at the 4th/5th grade at Thornton Creek in 2015-16.