Trusting the Funds: SMSD’s plans for 2021-2022 pandemic relief

The SMSD Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund plans are sorting out new hires and building improvements throughout the district for the 2021-22 school year. 

According to East principal Dr. Scott Sherman, there will be 11 new staff members hired in the building including new principal Jason Peres. Although the principal hire is solely due to Sherman’s new promotion to Director of Secondary Services, Peres will be overseeing all new hires in the fall. 

The first wave of ESSER funding was issued by the federal government last spring dedicated for building upgrades to aid learning loss, preparing schools for full reopening, academic testing and repairing and renovating projects to improve air quality. 

Another fund is currently in development — ESSER II — as funding allocations are being decided at the district level with $10,564,000 in federal funding overall. 

While East has yet to learn of the exact amount in funds they’ll receive, Sherman plans to use the funding for the 11 new hires with the goal of reducing classroom sizes, lightening workloads for teachers, creating more personalized learning for students and creating new opportunities for student by matching them with a real world learning (RWL) counselor. 

The RWL counselor, which will be available to all students who want it, will be there to guide students and teach them how to work in the real world through instruction and hands-on opportunities. They’ll be hired through the Career Tech Ed program in collaboration with the Kauffman Foundation to gain real world experiences for students like internships. 

There will be a total of $327,000 dedicated to four SMSD high schools for new, RWL counselors who give high schoolers more options to learn about jobs and to find opportunities for internships in fields they’re interested in. 

In addition to the RWL counselor Jodee Merriman, the building is also hiring Tia Hurt and Trent Ditto in the special education department, Anna Thiele in the Spanish department, Emma Chalk in the art department, Mallory Dittemore in the business department, Craig Heeney in the science department, Doug Archer in the physical education department and Greg Welch in the math department. 

Along with the hires, there will be a shift in which classes current East teachers will be teaching. 

“It’s kind of a shift, one of the new hires may be PE but it’s because we have PE teachers that are certified in social studies and they want to teach social studies,” Sherman said. “…We needed an additional social studies teacher for example, but we have two PE teachers that want to teach social studies so we may move them there, creating an open PE position. It’s kind of a domino effect in a way, and that’s good.” 

By lightening the teachers’ workloads, Sherman’s goal is to reduce a majority of teachers’ schedules to five hours per day as opposed to the six that most currently teach. Although this won’t be the case for every teacher this upcoming school year, the new hires will allow teachers to slowly move into the five-hour schedule, creating a new standard for effective teaching and reduced schedules in the future of East. 

“Just to take the load off because we’re one of the few districts around that teachers are teaching six,” Sherman said. “Where at Olathe and Blue Valley, the teachers are teaching five per day. So to equalize that, and that plays into a lot of different things.”

For some teachers like East psychology teacher Brett Kramer, the extra planning period is appreciated, but seems unnecessary due to his passion for what he teaches.

“If I had the choice between teaching five [hours] and having the risk that may be something that’s not psychology, I would teach six absolutely,” Kramer said. “I’d teach seven as long as I get to continue to teach only psychology.” 

For others such as East math teacher Hannah Pence, the extra planning period is deemed a life saver, taking significant stress off teachers and improving student to teacher relations, resulting in stronger understanding of content for students. 

“It’s gonna take a load of stress off every teacher that is going down from six to five just because, not only are you teaching more, which exhausts you more, you have more students so you’re grading more papers,” Pence said. “The thinking is that if we have smaller classes, you can do more individual attention and help…if you have a smaller class, it still may be hard, but you have larger chances of being able to give some individual attention and everybody needs that some.” 

Aside from the hires, there currently aren’t any improvements planned for East due to the lack of urgent needs in the school compared to other SMSD buildings. The ESSER II funding won’t be split equally among SMSD schools, but will be allocated based on the needs of individual SMSD buildings. Regardless of whether or not there will be structural building improvements, the funding for 11 new hires are set in stone for East.