Farewell to Three Sac Teachers (And a Primer on Why We’re Losing Them)
By now, news is spreading that Sac has been allocated two fewer homeroom teachers next year. We will all miss Nat Dahl and Erica Cox, along with our music teacher, Chelsea Toledo (“Ms. T”). I wish them all the best and the happiest of new beginnings.
The losses of Ms. Dahl and Ms. T have been known since March, when initial enrollment projections for next year were made public via the “Purple Book”.
In March, Sac was allocated one fewer homeroom teacher and one fewer specialist based on a projected enrollment of 184 students. Ms. Dahl stepped up for what’s called “voluntary displacement” which means she will have a position elsewhere within SPS in the fall.
This year’s June adjustment—the first in recent SPS history, but something that used to be standard—predicts Sacajawea to have only 171 students next fall. That projected decrease triggers the loss of a second homeroom teacher.
The displaced teacher is Ms. Cox.¹ Teachers union rules govern displacements and they are based on full-time tenure with SPS. Whoever has the shortest tenure is displaced unless another teacher volunteers for displacement instead.
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Sac’s June adjustment is disappointing and the timing of its execution was cruel (news broke to staff the evening before the last day of instruction). That said, the idea of a June adjustment itself is one that advocates have pushed for. In theory, adjusting staffing plans in June prevents the disruptive fall adjustments known as the “October shuffle.”
Longtime Sac families will remember the chaos of the 2022 October shuffle, in which a large number of Sac students had to shift classrooms and/or teachers when enrollment surpassed projections, leading to the creation of new homerooms and addition of new staff.
Of course, whether June adjustments actually prevent October disruptions has everything to do with how accurate the June projections are. We’ll find out in the fall. Even if the low projections are incorrect and Sac gets its teacher allocations back, though, the likelihood that those slots will be filled by the specific teachers we are losing is low.²
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Sacajawea’s June update reflects a 13-student loss from the February estimates, and a 30-student loss from where we just closed the 2025-26 school year.
Why is Sac losing so many students?
The short answer is that the new expansion of SPS choice programs for next year has drawn many families elsewhere. SPS dramatically increased its choice program this year. In the past the district has artificially limited enrollment in choice schools. This year, they filled them up to 85%-95% capacity. I wrote about this here, in December, when I also predicted that this policy would have exactly this outcome for Sac.
The real answer to the student flight from Sac, though, includes the fact that Sac has been neglected, and our stability threatened, for years. The neglect and uncertainty has created a downward spiral. I understand the families who have opted out. We are increasingly being asked to choose between a neighborhood school and a stable, functional one, but I lay the blame for that narrowing of choices at the district’s feet. These didn’t have to be the only two choices.
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Next year, Sac will have only seven gen ed classrooms. For context, we had nine this year. Seven is by far the lowest in my eight years as a parent here, and it’s likely an all-time low. We’re breaking records, baby!
As Principal Fisk shared earlier today, Sac will have the following gen ed classroom configuration in the fall, along with our two distinct classrooms:
Kindergarten (Chrissy Jackson)
First grade (Yumee Chi-Park)
Second grade (Kit Norman)³
Third grade (Faosiyah Madres)
Fourth grade (Megan Walker)
Fourth/fifth split (Katy Maynard)
Fifth grade (Aaron Reddecliffe)
A handful of these folks are going to be teaching a grade level that they haven’t historically taught at Sac. I have full faith in them, but I don’t envy them the task of prepping anew.
Student classroom assignments are released in the fall, usually in the week before school begins.
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Because the news of Ms. Cox’s displacement came so late—for her and for the rest of us, there was no time for proper farewells. Staff chose not to tell the students about the upcoming change, having just learned about it themselves.
Stay tuned for details of a casual, PTA-hosted farewell for Erica and the rest of the departing staff. We’ll announce it as soon as the details are settled. And we’ll make sure to let everyone know how to send well-wishes for those who can’t be there themselves.
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1. Displacement is not the same as termination. If she chooses, Ms. Cox can join the pool of displaced teachers who get preferential placement at the schools where June adjustments led to an increase in teacher count, or schools where positions open up over the summer.
2. To be eligible for the right of first return to a new Sac position, a homeroom teacher has to be employed full time as a teacher elsewhere at SPS (substitute teaching does not qualify). Assuming teachers choose this path, their return to Sac would then require them to abandon their new classroom one month into the school year. Many teachers decline to do this because of the disruption it causes. I have no judgment on either choice, and will note only that this policy puts teachers in an uncomfortable position no matter what they choose.
3. Next year’s second-grade cohort is large. I’m not 100% sure, but I believe this cohort contains over 30 students! While a handful of them are also supported in distinct classrooms and will spend minimal time in the gen ed room, that’s still a lot of kids in one primary class. Not to mention the huge disservice this does to the distinct students by increasing the barriers to their spending time with their gen ed peers in such a populated setting.