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QUESTION

How does the DOE calculate the teacher need for class size compliance, and why does it differ from the IBO's estimate?

1:47:06

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The Department of Education (DOE) explains their methodology in calculating the need for 10,000 to 12,000 teachers for class size law compliance, which differs from the Independent Budget Office's (IBO) estimate due to differences in policy choices, enrollment assumptions, and funding focus.

DOE's calculation is based on major and minor policy choices regarding class sizes and funding.
Current enrollment and school data are key factors in determining the number of classes and teachers needed.
Assumptions include some level of self-funding by schools, reallocating resources towards hiring teachers.
The variation in numbers partly results from the focus on equity in funding as opposed to solely on reducing class sizes.

Rita C. Joseph

1:47:06

So how did DOE calculate the need of 10,000 to 12,000,000 teachers to comply with the class size law?

1:47:13

And why does the number differ from IBO's assessment 17,700.

Emma Vadehra

1:47:21

I actually cannot speak to IBO's assessments.

1:47:24

I'm sure they could.

1:47:25

They could speak to that and do it for the costs, although they're all in the same range.

1:47:29

So we basically, you know, any cost assumptions, Anita, talked about this in a more nuanced way on the capital side.

1:47:34

What do you need to do?

1:47:35

What are the major policy choices you could make?

1:47:38

What are the minor policy choices you could make, and what are you looking at?

1:47:41

So when we looked at our assumptions, some of the bigger policy choices we looked at to get to those numbers, where do we want to look at the numbers that will come out of this if we kept enrollment in a number of schools because that is one of the big cost drivers on both sides.

1:47:57

We determined we wanted to come up with a cost without including that in there.

1:48:01

We then, on the more minor side, we we our numbers do assume some self funding within our schools.

1:48:08

Not entirely, not every single dollar, but they do assumes our schools are going to have to repurpose some money towards teachers away from other things.

1:48:17

And that is a sort of more minor decision we made in that.

1:48:20

We looked at how many classes we think we need with our current enrollment, at our current schools, figured out how many teachers assumed some self funding, and that's where those numbers come from.

1:48:29

The range actually has to do with how much we focus on equity when we fund this as opposed to just directly funding class size reduction.

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