Class size swells as budget sees cuts

Robbin Harrison cried when she found out how many students would be crammed into her son's fifth-grade Chesterfield County Public Schools classroom this year.

"A teacher can't physically teach 32 kids ... and do a good job," Harrison said. "I don't think having 32 kids in one class is giving my son the best education he can get."

Jordan, 11, is a disciplined student who gets frustrated with how much time his Matoaca Elementary School teacher spends keeping other students in line. Every time the teacher turns her back to write on the board, the children act up, he said.

"There's so many of them that they can get away with it," he said. "It wastes a lot of our time. It really distracts us. It makes school really not fun at all."

Classes of 30 students or more are "the new norm" for the Chesterfield district, said School Board member U. Omarh Rajah. Some core classes are even pushing 35.

According to district statistics, 470, or 9 percent, of high school classes have 30 or more students. Six hundred, or 12 percent, of the district's middle school classes are that big. District spokesman Tim Bullis said that 15 of the district's 38 elementary schools have an average class size of 30 or more students at either the fourth- or fifth-grade level.

The district raised its teacher-to-pupil staffing standard by one student in 2010 after two straight years of severe budget cuts, which included the elimination of nearly $80 million and close to 500 teaching positions. While no classroom cuts are proposed in the fiscal 2011 budget, nothing is being proposed to ease the crowding.

Rajah, looking at a 2012 budget shortfall, said the problem is "not going to go away."

As a former teacher, he understands the enormous impacts of ballooning class sizes: Classes are so crammed that teachers can't walk down the aisles. Teachers have trouble maintaining order. Most important, children simply don't get the attention they need and deserve.

Stella Edwards, president of the Chesterfield County Council of PTAs, said complaints from parents have been "deafening" this year. Although the PTAs warned parents last year that budget cuts would increase class sizes, "they didn't really know what that looked like until this year, until there were more kids in the class."

The district's staffing standard is one teacher per 25 students for elementary school, one per 27 in middle school and one per 26 in high school — at least four students per teacher higher than in Henrico County, Hanover County and Richmond.

But those numbers are an average, not a classroom mandate. A high school could keep its 1-26 ratio, for example, by balancing an Advanced Placement physics class of 10 students with a 42-student gym class.

The state imposes standards that cap class size for elementary school classes, as well as middle school and high school English classes, and Chesterfield must meet those requirements to be funded.

One of School Board member David Wyman's daughters, a sophomore at Matoaca High School, is enrolled in a math class with 35 students. He said prohibiting classes that large would be unfair because principals need the flexibility to manage class size to make the schoolwide numbers work. But he doesn't like how high some class sizes have climbed.

"We're ... exceeding anything a wise academician would assume would be good for a classroom," he said.

Joe Tylus, director of high schools for Chesterfield, said schools have long considered 30 "that magic number" — a class size they don't want to exceed. "Ideally, you'd like classes to be more in the 24 to 25 range," he said.

But he also pointed out the difficulties of creating classes of the perfect size. If 30 students sign up for German, for example, the class would be large, but not big enough to break into two sections, he said. "It's a juggling act," he said.

Frank Cardella, head of the Chesterfield Education Association, which has more than 2,000 educator members, said the problems created by growing class sizes depend on the course. He said that as the level of the class increases, discipline problems typically decrease.

For example, putting 36 students in an Advanced Placement English class does not create discipline problems, he said. But it does result in other issues for teachers. "It's the amount of work generated by 36 kids," he said. "Grading essays for that number of students becomes a challenge."

Midlothian High School teacher James Wilson said bigger class size directly affects student performance. "You have less time to find out why a student is struggling," he said.

Wilson said the district is suggesting that "kids will bounce back, that kids are resilient, this won't hurt them that bad, they will be all right."

"We're stealing from our kids," Wilson said. "They're losing the chance to receive instruction and reinforcement, to master fundamental skills at every level. When they don't master those skills, there's very little chance of them being able to master them later. They probably won't."

kgreen@timesdispatch.com

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