OBSERVER Photo by Braden Carmen Fredonia Teachers’ Association President Michelle Greenough spoke on behalf of the association at the latest Board of Education meeting.

The planned changes to the Fredonia Elementary School schedule for next school year have upset parents and staff members of the district. In response to the changes, Fredonia Teachers’ Association President Michelle Greenough spoke on behalf of the association at the latest Board of Education meeting.

“You’re losing our trust,” Greenough said to district administrators and the Board of Education. “Reasonable people can disagree about whether the changes are good or bad, but when teacher concerns are used to justify decisions that teachers never asked for; when explanations change depending on the audience; when policies and contracts aren’t followed; or when the story being told doesn’t match our lived experiences, our trust dissolves.”

Greenough was followed by Elementary Art Teacher Kimberly Appleby, who fought back tears as she said, “I care about our students and I want what’s best for them. Our new schedule is not what’s best for our students or our teachers.”

The district recently announced that beginning next year, the elementary schedule would be adjusted. Among the changes include eliminating library and computer courses from the specials rotation, with a health education course added to the rotation. Teachers will have additional instruction time, while the new specials rotation will allow for art and STEM courses to meet more frequently. Classroom teachers will be encouraged to integrate technology and literacy into their lessons, with a weekly time slot for students to check out library books before returning to class. Passing periods will be reduced from five minutes to three minutes, as well.

Greenough took issue with an email sent to staff about the changes to the elementary schedule, specifically that the changes were necessary and that the willingness to embrace new opportunities speaks to an employee’s character.

“This email and the presentation to me at the end of the week prior sounded like decisions had been made, and shall stand, come what may,” Greenough said. “The note about character in the email implies that the inverse — being unwilling to embrace these changes — would be a character flaw. Not the most inviting way to create discourse.”

Greenough is frustrated with the lack of teacher input with the new schedule, which leads to what she calls “massive” workload adjustments for elementary teachers. “It’s no surprise that teachers were not thrilled with the information,” Greenough said.

Greenough believes the new elementary schedule will negatively impact students, as well as teachers. She highlighted reduced time at the beginning of the school day for “self-regulation” as students arrive, emphasizing the district’s percentage of students in poverty or homeless as reasoning for needing time to “settle into an academic mindset” early in the day, rather than going into special courses right after they arrive.

As for the teachers themselves, Greenough said that special area teachers are negatively impacted by the new schedule in a variety of ways. Teachers will be asked to teach seven periods, with one designated planning period. Additional time for planning comes at the beginning and end of each day, along with 10 additional minutes at lunch. Physical Education Teachers will be asked to plan and teach health lessons for five grade levels, in addition to their regular Physical Education curriculum.

Appleby has been an Art Teacher at Fredonia for 16 years, with all but her first year coming in the Elementary School. She came to Fredonia because it appreciates the arts, and she spoke highly of the art shows in her time at Fredonia. “This is not just a job for me,” Appleby said. “This is my passion.”

She continued, “I care about every one of my students as if they were my own children. I want what’s best for them. I want to be my best for them.”

In her time at Fredonia, Appleby has gone from teaching five classes a day to six, and with the new schedule, that will increase to seven. She will be required to teach roughly 10 extra lessons for each student throughout the year.

Appleby said that when her class load increased from five to six classes per day, concessions were made out of necessity. She believes that the new schedule changes will lead to more concessions because of not only more lessons to teach, but also less time to prepare. She often uses preparation time to display artwork throughout the school, which she is not certain she can do moving forward. The reduction in time for transitions between classes also puts a strain on the art class in terms of cleaning up materials and shifting between lessons for each grade level.

“I want to be able to display everyone’s artwork in the hallways and celebrate their hard work with an art show. … Unfortunately, this schedule doesn’t prioritize those things for us,” Appleby said.

Appleby said she was told the new schedule is aimed at becoming “more efficient.” She responded, “As if we don’t work hard enough — our students and our teachers. Efficient sounds like a machine to me. Our teachers and students are living, breathing humans. We have our own unique strengths and needs. I feel this schedule will create burnout for us all. I know they will not have my best self.”

Greenough said the final weeks of school should have been about all of the exciting things that come with the year wrapping up, like promotions and graduation, field trips, and award ceremonies. Instead, she said the positives of the end of the year are being “overshadowed by some systemic issues” throughout the district, which she implied have shown throughout the process of announcing the new schedule.

Greenough says the root of the issue is the district’s poor communication with its staff. She said there is “a vast difference” between the messaging to the public and what the staff was told.

“What we’re most tired of is constantly feeling like we have to fact-check everything,” Greenough said. “We’re spending so much energy trying to separate fact from spin … that it’s hard to actually focus on the big picture. It makes us wonder, is the chaos by design?”

Greenough also made the Board aware of two grievances the Fredonia Teachers’ Association (FTA) recently filed against the district, stating that the FTA does not trust the district to uphold the language of their agreement. She said it is “a real and widespread sentiment in the elementary school” that teachers are not comfortable questioning the district’s decisions for fear of retribution.

Greenough completed her speech to the Board regarding the new schedule by saying, “I’m hearing that conversations are happening. I remain hopeful that we can all do better. Rather than celebrating the end of this school year because it brings relief that we don’t have to spend another day dealing with friction and difficulties, we want to celebrate the end of this year with joy and pride in our collaborative accomplishments.”