Teachers moved to ease overcrowding

Former North Aiken Elementary School teacher Erica McGlocklin, right, moves her supplies to Oakwood-Windsor Elementary School Tuesday, assisted by her mother, Marie Burkett, and head custodian Carlos Nunuz. McGlocklin was reassigned because of overcrowded second-grade classes.

Barely a month after moving her instructional materials into her new first-grade classroom at North Aiken Elementary School, Erica McGlocklin was moving again Tuesday - this time to a second-grade class at Oakwood-Windsor Elementary School.

She's among approximately six teachers in the Aiken County School District assigned to another school to address an overcrowded grade level. Other teachers throughout the district have been assigned similarly within their own schools, said Associate Superintendent Dr. Kevin O'Gorman.

McGlocklin will be welcomed warmly, especially by the three other second-grade teachers, who currently have 24, 27 and 28 students. She unloaded a truck full of supplies with the help of her mother, Marie Burkett, and head custodian Carlos Nunuz with still another load to retrieve from her previous classroom. McGlocklin taught at Ridge Spring-Monetta Elementary/Middle School last year and was among the teachers displaced districtwide and reassigned in the district's budget-cutting moves last spring.

It's been a stressful few weeks for McGlocklin. Her husband is at home recuperating from heart surgery, but she says he's doing well and she's looking forward to her new school and classroom. When she heard about the latest transfer Friday, friends asked her what she was going to do.

"What was I going to say?" McGlocklin said, laughing and shaking her head. "I'm still just glad to have a job. I've heard good things about this school, and everybody said I will love it here. God has a plan for everything, and I just go with the flow."

With the 11-day, class-by-class enrollment results in hand last week, district administrators determined which schools had insufficient teacher allocations or too much, said O'Gorman.

"We have a cutoff score for each class, some based on state regulations and some by district policy," said O'Gorman. "Sometimes schools are growing just because of transient population, such as Byrd Elementary School. That's the tough part in trying to figure out where students are going to be from year to year, but (comptroller) Tray Traxler was pretty accurate in figuring out how many students we would have in the district."

The budget cuts and the School Board decision to increase class size have left many classrooms throughout the district with larger classes. Oakwood-Windsor's Gordon Gaskill has 26 fourth-graders. In the past, he's had a range of 14 to 20 students, but the big change came a year ago when he had 24 after the school lost one of four teaches in that grade level.

"We're kind of tightly packed," Gaskill said. "But we've got a good group of kids, and they're on the right track of learning. You have to be creative with the classroom placement, and we're doing small groups so the kids are not so close together."

Principal Janice Kitchings said she and Assistant Principal Kim Stokes will look at the second-grade classroom rolls and divide the children equitably. The faculty members will support McGlocklin in every way they can, she said.

Second-grade teacher Charlotte Ferguson had a maximum of 16 students last year and now has 24.

"It's very difficult in that we can't work with the kids as much on an individual basis and there's a lot more paperwork," she said. "We're thrilled to have another teacher. She'll find we have very good children and good people to work with."

Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com.