Once upon a time, CASD went beyond in gifted services.

While there are many programs other Chester County districts can boast about, few of them have provided the quality of gifted services offered historically at CASD. But in recent years, the gifted services offered by our district have changed yearly and the changes have not been consistent across all grade levels. 

When the budget had to be approved for the 2018-2019 school year there was a massive tax hike paired with the loss of teaching positions. This hit gifted hard. In 2017-2018 there were six full-time gifted teachers. This past year saw movement of most of them and a loss of two positions. 

Losing two gifted teachers may not sound so bad, but keep in mind that is a reduction of 33.3%. In addition, consider that we have two teachers in grades 9-12 and two others covering grades K-8. That leaves one teacher covering the five elementary buildings and another covering the three middle school buildings. Also, there has been at least one gifted teacher working with a caseload well above state limits for the past three years.

Across the state, districts are slowly changing how they service gifted students. There is more of a push to accommodate for student needs in the general education classroom and less of a pull-out program, but this is often paired with acceleration. The philosophy is that gifted kids are gifted all day, not just certain times of the day or certain days of the week. However, only having a gifted teacher in the building on certain days of the cycle leaves them stressed and spread thin. They are trying to reach students in multiple grades and multiple subjects. They are also trying to provide resources to general education teachers so that students can receive enrichment in the classroom. Our gifted teachers covering K-8 work with close to 30 teachers and up to 70 students each. It's simply impossible for one individual to meet the needs of all of these students and provide acceleration for all of these classrooms, especially when they spend much of their time co-teaching in a classroom! 

When the state audited gifted several years ago they told us that we were going above and beyond what many schools offered. They recognized the strong program that existed. Instead of nurturing this positive aspect of the district, the response instead was to scale back annually. Now, we have four teachers who feel ineffective or overwhelmed whether they are servicing students in one, two, three, or five buildings. That’s just the stress on the teachers without considering the stress on the students who are trying to adjust to changes every single year for the past five years. Most have lost teachers to transfers or resignations and all have been impacted in some way by the changes.

It does feel like some of the current admins are trying to build services back up that were cut over the past few years. Lisa Hauswirth, the Director of Special Education, also supervises gifted. This year we actually had a gifted in-service with the CCIU and we were all allowed to attend the gifted network meetings. She is trying, really trying, to work on caseloads and services for the kids.  The biggest obstacle is that there really isn’t anyone around who was here when we had those things except for some of the teachers.

Even as the debate about how to best serve gifted students occurs across the state, the simple reality is that we are not doing the best we can by our gifted students by making constant changes. We need to provide appropriate enrichment, acceleration where appropriate, and consistency in support. These students are desperate to learn and to be challenged. Their potential is sitting untapped or walking away when they either attend gifted magnet charter schools or earn academic scholarships to elite private schools. 

Written by: A Gifted Teacher