The Monmouth Roseville School Board voted on a controversial
topic last night to keep the presence of RTI aides in the classroom despite the
Superintendent’s recommendation to cut the program.
RTI or “Response to Intervention” aides are a recent
implementation to the district’s three year old proactive RTI program which
focuses on helping below average students before the need arises to place them
in a special education program. Despite a year’s worth of data from the program
that showed literacy improvement, it was Superintendent Paul Woehlke’s
recommended motion to cut the $100,000 program in an effort to make up for the
estimated one million dollar budget deficit for the next school year.
Prior to the vote, an informational presentation by Monmouth
Roseville High School math teacher and RTI coordinator Sarah Hall was given
describing the significant improvement the program has made in the past year.
Hall explained that the students are now consistently meeting the 25th
percentile which is composed of the average score of students throughout
Illinois. However, while their scores
are improving compared to the average, they are not improving as fast as they
could be.
There are seven RTI aides in the district working with 215 students
in grades K-6. Hall explained that this equates to be the equivalent of 10
classrooms yet the aides are one third the cost of a first year teacher. The
Monmouth Roseville district is not the only district implementing an RTI
program but according to Hall it is the only district in the area that uses
aides as a significant part of the program itself. Superintendent Woehlke
commented on the presentation by saying that this program “is another example
of Monmouth as a district needing to walk before it can run.”
Superintendent Woehlke also expressed that while he is in
support of the RTI program he recognizes the controversial burden that the
district’s needs to make cuts. Secretary Kevin Killey recognized that the program
does appear to be valuable but that only a year’s worth of data is not a
sufficient amount to base the program off of, and that ultimately the issue is
a “financial decision and not a value decision.”
Several alternatives to cutting the program were also
discussed and included only having one aide per building, or giving the aides a
30 day notice and then hiring them back at a later date once the funds were
figured out.
Ultimately, the board decided that it is not fair to start a
program one year and cut it the next.
However, the failure to pass the motion to dismiss the aide program has
now introduced a new debate over “where will those cuts take place?” The
possibility of increasing classroom sizes seemed a likely choice of the board,
yet the concern was issued throughout of whether it is acceptable to keep
un-certified teachers or “aides” in place of certified
teachers. The board will continue to research where those cuts might occur.
