From New York Times - 3-16-12 - Click Here
Jennifer Whitney for The Texas Tribune
By MORGAN SMITH
One gym period combining two classes gives Raul Orozco about 50 children at Wanke Elementary in north San Antonio.
Published: March 16, 2012
SAN ANTONIO — Ask Phyllis Causey what time she goes to lunch, and the third-grade teacher will give a very specific answer: 11:55 a.m.
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“I live on a timer,” she said.
Every minute is accounted for in her meticulously planned workdays. To
some extent, that is true every school year. But last fall, for the
first time in her 12 years of teaching, 23 students were enrolled in her
San Antonio elementary school class — making those minutes even more
precious.
“As a teacher, when you know you are planning the day out for 23 kids,
every single minute counts,” she said. “It’s an art and a science to
balance out everybody.”
Many Texas teachers have found themselves in a similar predicament.
Texas Education Agency data for the 2011-12 school year show that the
number of elementary classes exceeding the 22-1 student-teacher ratio
has soared to 8,479 from 2,238 last school year.
Texas has had the 22-student cap for kindergarten through fourth-grade
classes since 1984, and districts can apply for exemptions for financial
reasons. But during the 2011 legislative session, to ease the pain of a
roughly $5.4 billion reduction in state financing that did not account
for the estimated influx of 170,000 new students over the next two years
— and after an attempt to do away with the cap failed — lawmakers made
those exemptions easier to obtain. Texas schools, which have shed
approximately 25,000 employees this school year, including more than
10,000 teachers, have jumped at the chance to trim costs.
Research is mixed on the effect of class size on learning, but many
educators agree that adding just two students to an already full
classroom can intensify the challenge for teachers. Some worry that
increasing class sizes hurts the neediest students most.
Budget cuts have affected all of the state’s 1,200-plus school districts
and charters, but the 102 fastest-growing districts, which have
absorbed 92 percent of the growth in student population since 2007, have
been hit the hardest by increasing class sizes. About 46 percent of
these fast-growth districts have campuses with waivers, compared with 28
percent of non-fast-growth districts, according to an analysis of
T.E.A. data by the Fast Growth School Coalition.
The coalition advocates for districts that have an enrollment of at
least 2,500 and have grown by at least 10 percent or have added 3,500
students over the past five years. Those districts educate about 40
percent of the state’s students.
In the past, these schools have been able to add staff members and build
facilities as the number of students increases. But now, even as the
student body continues to grow, the schools have had to drop employees
and delay building projects to cut costs, said David Vroonland, the
chairman of the coalition and superintendent of the Frenship Independent
School District, outside Lubbock.
His district has avoided requesting class-size exemptions for now, but
h“We’re anticipating we’ll be at 24
or above,” he said. “And there’s very little we can do about it.” e expects that to change next year.
Some fast-growth districts may be better prepared to take on larger
classes, because they have had to plan for ever-increasing student
populations, and they are already familiar with methods like dividing
students into smaller groups for instruction.
In Northside I.S.D., where Ms. Causey teaches, 64 campuses had requested
class-size waivers as of early February. Brian Woods, the district’s
deputy superintendent for administration, said the district is used to
dealing with more students, who enroll throughout the year. What is
different this year, he said, is that the budget has made it more
difficult to hire a new teacher when a class hits 23 students.
The district has an internal policy to keep class enrollment in
kindergarten through second grade at 23 students or fewer, he said.
Third and fourth grades, he said, allow for 24 students. If all of the
classes at an elementary school have hit those numbers, he said, as a
last resort the district transfers students to a different school, which
is usually farther from their homes.
“We just flat don’t do that,” Mr. Woods said of exceeding the 24-student
limit. “Our classrooms aren’t built to hold that number of students.”
His district, the state’s fourth largest, eliminated 973 positions this
school year. Mr. Woods said that many of those were support positions —
staff members who helped teachers reach children who need extra
attention or who struggle with language.
“Students struggling at 22 to 1 who are now sitting in a class of 23,
that’s not a dramatic difference,” he said, “But the person that was
there last year to help them with their math and help them with their
reading who may not be there now, there is a dramatic impact for that
child.”
About 90 minutes north on Interstate 35, Leander I.S.D. has designed
classrooms in its newer buildings to handle larger classes in
anticipation of rapid growth — they are shaped like an L to create
strategic pockets of space for small group work and to reduce potential
distractions.
Faubion Elementary was not built for such growth. Many of the rooms in
the school, which was converted from an open-classroom concept building,
are small and windowless.
Patti Mosser, who teaches at Faubion, has 24 students in her third-grade
class, 6 more than she had last school year. As her students filed in
one Friday after recess, they pushed the desks — which are carefully
arranged in the one configuration Ms. Mosser has found that they all fit
— to clear space on the carpet in the center of the room. With Ms.
Mosser and a student teacher, there was barely enough room for all to
sit cross-legged for their weekly class meeting.
“It is what it is,” she said. “We just have to do a lot of creative grouping.”
Things have improved since the beginning of the year, Ms. Mosser said,
when she felt like she was “being pulled in all directions from nurse to
counselor to referee.” With almost 28 years of teaching experience, she
knew to establish firm expectations about behavior and classroom
procedures from the start, and her students have become more
self-sufficient. However, if she were a first-year teacher, she said,
her perspective would be different. Still, her students did not seem to
notice the crowded classroom. In fact, when her class recently added its
24th student, she said, they were excited to have a new face.
Ms. Causey also said she thought many of her students were doing fine
with the extra bodies in the classroom. But she worried about the
children for whom school is a “safe place” — the only place where an
adult listens to them, where they get warm meals and feel secure.
“If you get a lot of children like that in the classroom, it’s really
going to hurt them because you can’t spend as much time with them as
they need,” she said. “It will change the way instruction looks.”
