Anchorage band teacher tells school board he now teaches 330 students a day

Dan Whitfield teaches 330 students a day at Goldenview Middle School. His classes run between 45 and 83 kids. The district cut the school's part-time band director position last spring and moved it elsewhere in the building.

Whitfield told the Anchorage School Board on Tuesday that his daily load is "330 students every single day, an average of over 50 students per class." Jazz band is gone, along with lunchtime practice sessions and the extra help he used to give before and after school. He is in his 22nd year with the district and his 16th at Goldenview. The latest state funding increase restored staffing elsewhere in the district but brought his program nothing, he said, despite repeated requests.

Former Goldenview PTA president Tammy Hoag laid out the comparison. Whitfield carries six classes with one planning period while other teachers have five classes and two, which she calculated puts him at "3.3 times a larger capacity of kids than those teachers."

Harper Kushner, a special education teacher in the intensive behavior support program at Tyson Elementary, told the board the district cut the substitutes assigned to individual buildings, and that paraprofessionals may no longer cover teacher absences. The substitutes who do come are often untrained to work with her students. A new paraprofessional in her classroom has not had nonviolent crisis intervention training, which she said is a district problem rather than a school one. "It is day 10 of school and we are burnt out," Kushner said.

Bruce Schultz, a substitute since 2019 who worked as a building substitute last year, asked the board to reconsider eliminating those positions.

The proposed district budget raised the K-12 pupil-teacher ratio by four and cut roughly 160 teaching positions. Administrators have said that meeting state class size targets would take 341 more teachers and about $46.5 million. Superintendent Jharrett Bryantt said the board's restoration of 100 positions helped the start of the year, though filling all of them on that timeline was not possible. The state confirmed Monday that about $32 million in one-time money is coming. His proposal would put part of it toward positions, tutoring, transportation and activities, and hold back a share against a projected $26 million deficit in fiscal year 2028.

Both teachers invited board members to spend a full day in their classrooms. Member Paul McDonough said he would come if principals could arrange it, and would take what he saw to the municipality, which is weighing next year's school funding, and to lawmakers in Juneau in January.