Schools

Centennial Forming Ad Hoc Committee on Classroom Sizes

Parents, teachers and administrators are invited to discuss the district's class size policy at two meetings in November. Any conclusions will be presented to the Education Committee on Nov. 28.

The Centennial Education Committee announced at its meeting Monday night that an ad hoc committee will convene Nov. 10 and 17 at 7 p.m. at the administration building to discuss the issue of elementary classroom sizes in the school district. 

The idea is to have all the community stakeholders represented to discuss the research that supports smaller classrooms and balance it against the fiscal realities of the district, the board said.

A report prepared in 1999 for the U.S. Department of Education prepared by Ivor Pritchard, formerly a senior research analyst for the department, pulls together data from several studies throughout the country that shows improved student performance in classroooms with reduced sizes.

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The study says that Tennessee's Project STAR showed, "Smaller class students substantially outperformed larger class students on both standardized (Stanford Achievement Tests) and curriculum-based tests (Basic Skills First). This was true for both white and minority students in smaller classes, and for smaller class students from inner city, urban, suburban, and rural schools."

The report also suggests that classroom sizes could be reduced without taking students out of the actual room. Instructional aides or suport staff could be added to meet the threshold necessary to improve student performance.

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The challenge for the district is creating smaller classrooms in light of what Superintendant Dr. Jenny Cressman predicts as a decrease of 45-54 staffmembers once the mergers are completed.

"We want to look at the data together, see what other school districts are doing in this fiscal environment," said Assistant Superintendant Joyce Mundy. "We want to have an open dialogue and come back with conclusions."

The committee wants to ensure that when the elementary school construction project is complete and the six neighborhood schools have been condensed to the three larger facilities, that there is equity across the district.

"We don't want to have one school where the third grade class has 20 students in each room, and another school where there are 27," said committee member and school board president Dr. Andrew Pollack.

Parents such as Brad LeCorte, who was present at Monday's meeting, is pleased to see the district including everybody's voices in the discussions. He got involved with the issue in August when he learned that his daughter's second grade class at had 27 students. LeCorte and a number of other parents lobbied the district to add another classroom, but the bid failed.

"I think we need to properly arrange the importance of the environment," said LeCorte. "It's important for the district to have these larger schools, but I think class size trumps school size, especially in elementary school. The child's experience is mostly in the individual classroom, not the entire building."

Committee and school board member Cynthia Mueller stressed that the district's class size policy is the same one enacted in 1990. Teacher assignments are determined on a tiered system, where the number of total students in each grade dictates the number of teachers and aides. In second grade, 55 to 81 students translates to three teachers.

"My daughter is enjoying the second grade, her teacher is doing a great job," said LeCorte. "I just want to look at ways we can maintain those smaller class sizes in the future. My hope is as parents, teachers and administrators, we can do this together."


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