How to handle when schools add/subtract whole classes?

Now that the kids have settled into their classes for two weeks comes the inevitable note from schools:

“We have over/under estimated the number of kids in your child’s grade and we will need to add/subtract an entire class from the grade. We are looking for volunteers to switch teachers. If we don’t get enough volunteers we will take care of it for you.”

I know schools do their very best trying to estimate how many sections they need in a grade, and yes kids are resilient, but it still really stinks to have your child’s teacher ripped from them after just establishing a trust and rapport.

When Rose was in kindergarten the school thought they were going to have more kids than they ended up with so they had to collapse a class down – of course it was the last teacher hired. (There’s a lesson moms, always ask when your teacher was hired. Be aware last one hired often the first one collapsed.) I showed up to beg them not to move my kid. My 5-year-old had put so much trust into me telling her “Don’t worry. You’re going to be with this wonderful teacher.” She had learned the teacher’s classroom procedures and had gotten comfortable with the teacher and her classmates.

It had to be done. The die was cast and my child’s entire class was dispersed into the rest of the kindergarten. (The school did make an effort to send each child with one or two friends, which was appreciated.) However, Rose did not adjust well to the change and had a pretty tough year. I do think had she stayed with the other teacher the bad stuff would have been minimized.

Schools can handle the addition/subtraction in a couple of ways:

1. They can be fairly open about the process and encourage you to write to the principal to express if you have a particular reason not to have your child moved. (Ie we’ve just moved to this state or my child really does not deal well with change.)
2. Or they can say we’re making this change, not encourage parents to write in and be fairly closed-door about the process.

So have you gotten the letter home this year, or in the past? How did your school handle it? Did they want to hear from you pro or con? Did they just want to do the deed that had to be done? How did the change go? How can the pain of these changes be limited?