Have classes grown this year in your Georgia district?
What are class sizes like in your school? (AJC file)
I have been getting comments and emails about larger class sizes this year, including an Atlanta parent whose middle school students had 43 students in her French class in a portable classroom.
(The parent wanted to know if it was legal to shoehorn that many adolescents, some of whom had to sit on the floor, in a portable classroom, and I am still waiting to hear about that. I am assuming that the French class has fallen in size by this point.)
DeKalb school board member Nancy Jester has also been getting complaints from her constituents about rising class sizes and sent out this note to some of them:
I’ve received a number of emails about the class size limits for this school year.
I received a terrific question about my thoughts on our class size limits. Specifically, I was asked to reconcile why I voted against both the class size increases and a millage rate increase. The question assumes that in order to keep class size at last year’s limits, one would need to increase the millage rate.
I disagree. According to data submitted to the Georgia Department of Education by the school districts, Henry County, Cherokee County, Cobb County, Decatur City, Forsyth County, Clayton County, Marietta City and Fulton County, all spend less per student on general administration than DeKalb and have lower millage rates. (Here is her documentation.)
Interesting to note from the DOE data that Jester posted that APS and DeKalb outspend other districts on administration costs. DeKalb spends $618 per pupil; Atlanta spends $681. In comparison, Fulton spends $570 and Gwinnett spends $602. It would seem that DeKalb and Fulton would align in their admin costs, given their size similarity.)
What are you seeing in your districts in terms of class size?
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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103 comments Add your comment
Pride and Joy
August 18th, 2012
10:34 pm
Teacher Gal, you complain that you have 35 students but the lab has only 30 computers and you say “yet I can’t take any of my classes to a computer lab for said instruction. How am I supposed to do my job?”
Ever heard of taking turns?
Really, it’s a lack of common sense on your part and on the part of teachers like you who make me frustrated.
You mean you really couldn’t wrap your mind around taking turns at the computer lab?
*sigh*
CCMST
August 19th, 2012
11:32 am
“You mean you really couldn’t wrap your mind around taking turns at the computer lab?” Yeah, P & J – and then Teacher Gal gets a complaint from a parent about how her child couldn’t finish her computer lab assignment because she had to share a computer. Clearly your bias against teachers caused you to miss her real point, which was that class are too big, and classrooms and resources have not been adjusted to reflect that. *sigh* indeed.
I have some gifted classes, and those numbers are over thirty – big adjustment for the parents who were used to the gifted kids being in mandated class sizes of 21. All of my classes are science classes, and are over thirty. NSTA recommends no more than 24 in a lab setting. I am really concerned about safety – middle school students don’t always make common sense choices. I currently don’t have enough individual seats, but have put in a request for additional chairs and tables. You get what you pay for, and if parents are okay with this, then it is what it is.
Claudia Stucke
August 19th, 2012
1:38 pm
Class sizes are out of control. I quit teaching two years ago, when I had a class of 38 students in a classroom specifically designed for 28. Ten of these were special-needs students with Individual Education Plans (IEPs), including a student who was autistic, another who was severely vision-impaired and had to have special equipment brought into the room, as well as a number of ADHD students and about a half-dozen English Language Learners (ELLs). Blessedly, I had a parapro (thanks to Obama’s stimulus–when it ran out, her job was eliminated), who helped with individual students; but we were still overwhelmed (and out of compliance). There were no places to create “small-group instruction,” as mandated. I had to borrow chairs from other teachers–chairs, not desks. (No more desks would fit.) Even using the four computer stations for seating, I had six students without desks, every day, in a brand-new classroom. Mine was not an unusual situation. This story is being repeated all over the state and, I suspect, all over the country.