Decreasing Classroom Sizes

As a physician, I realize just how crowded our clinics and ERs can be.  Access to see a physician is very difficult on a same day basis, and so many patients resort to Urgent Care facilities or to the ER at their local/regional hospitals.  This is just not optimal care.  Patients and physicians begin the important health care encounter often as strangers.  Many times previous records are unavailable, and so each encounter literally starts from scratch.  This adds increased expenses as redundant or unnecessary tests are done, it adds risk to the encounter as patients are treated by someone who is unknown to them and important parts of their history may not be known, etc.  Quality of care suffers.

To address this problem, many clinics are adding mid-level providers such as physician assistants and Nurse Practitioners to their health care team.  This effectively expands the number of patients who can be seen each day and improves access and quality of care, as it reduces delays in being seen.

Today, our public school classroom sizes are growing and often overcrowded.  I often hear reports from teachers that their students are literally seated on the floor due to lack of space. Furthermore, we know that each year there are thousands of additional students added to the growing ranks of those currently enrolled.  An additional challenge is the increasing number of students for whom English is a second language.  As a result of the overcrowded classes and increasingly diverse student population, excellence in teaching and quality can suffer. Teachers, no matter how hard-working or dedicated, cannot care for these many students as they would like.  Such frustrating conditions lead to lower scores, teacher burnout and attrition of our best teachers.

One remedy would be to use “mid-level providers” in the classes as well.  We should explore using more teacher’s aides, who could assist the teacher and create a team approach.  The teacher’s aides (TAs) could be specialized in math, reading, art etc.  The TAs could then “functionally” decrease the class size and allow the teacher to focus on those who need particular mentoring.  Quality would improve.  Furthermore, teacher’s aides, both part-time and full-time, could be hired at lower cost than full time teachers and allow education budgets to be stretched more effectively. I have heard many reports that aides are also able to foster a better general atmosphere in the class with better communication, less disruptive behavior and in general a more organized and effective experience for the students and the teachers.

Education quality and funding and large classroom sizes remain at the forefront of our challenges as a State.  It is a challenge that we will need to address this upcoming Legislative session.  This is a realistic, practical solution that we can and should implement soon.

Thoughts on Public Education

Tonight we enjoyed a nice VoteShiozawa cottage meeting hosted by Gloria Johnson, in Cottonwood Heights.  We had an engaging discussion with many of her neighbors about a number of topics including last night's Presidential debate.  We also discussed public education and some current concerns. These include large classroom sizes and methods to remedy this.  One obvious solution is to hire more teachers.  However, the cost of implementing this fix would be up to tens of millions of dollars and could be cost prohibitive.  Another concept would be to use a "mid-level provider" much like we do in clinics and hospitals.  For example, many physician practices which are very crowded are using physician assistants (PAs) and Nurse practitioners to increase the number of providers and to increase the accessibility of the clinics to patients.  Patients under this plan have a much better chance of being seen on a timely, even same-day basis.  This has the other advantage of keeping many of them out of the very expensive ER setting.

So, consider doing a similar staffing model in the classroom using teachers aides.  Teachers aides could assist the classroom teacher, who could then both teach and supervise.  The individual students would get valuable and personal interaction, despite the large numbers in the classroom.  This concept would effectively reduce the classroom size and increase the face-to-face interaction with the teacher and the aides. Teachers aides would also be much less expensive to hire and could be specialized to teach important topics like reading, math, language, music and the arts, for example. 

We all recognize the importance of good, quality education. We also know that each year, the number of new students in Utah schools increases by 8,000-12,000.  This is both a blessing and a challenge. How can we handle the increase in students, maintain quality and achieve reasonable classroom size?  This concept of aides is one that we can and should pursue more.

Shout out to Mary Jo Naylor

I'd like to give a big shout out to Mary Jo Naylor for her excellence in teaching. It's because of great teachers like Mary that Utah's children have been given such a great start in life. Our education system depends upon and thrives because of people who do what she does. It's always satisfying when teachers get the recognition they deserve.

 Her frustration with class sizes that are too large is valid. This is something that lawmakers in Utah need to make a priority. The key to making this happen is definitely going to be funding. This is one of my campaign's highest priorities and I expect this will be one of the biggest priorities on Capitol Hill.

Women's State Legislative Council of Utah

I had a great time at the Canyons District PTA event on Tuesday night at Jordan High School.  It was great to share my passion for public education with others who are concerned about our state's public education system.

UEA Endorsement

I was pleased to receive the official endorsement of the Utah Education Association and the Canyons Education Association recently.  These influential organizations support our teachers and education system and I am grateful for their support in my campaign to strengthen our education system.

This fall as we embark on a new school year, with an ever-increasing student population, it is a huge challenge to keep our class sizes reasonable and provide adequate funding to maintain excellence in our teachers and their curricula.  We need strong education to launch our students into their careers or higher education.  We are blessed to have a hard-working, young population which attracts business to the state of Utah and which fuels our own economy.  However, in order to maintain this excellence we need to provide the adequate funds and oversight to continue our tradition of strong public education.

This will be one of the big priorities of our legislature in the upcoming legislative session.