By James Lomuscio
While not yet official, Westport school board members say they will make class size across the system a strategic objective for the coming school year.
The comments today followed Monday night’s Board of Education 6 to 1 vote defeating a motion by Michael Gordon and seconded by Jim Marpe, board vice chairman, to return to a pre-2009 “break point” policy requiring the opening up of new elementary school classes when enrollment hits certain numbers.
For more than a decade, class sizes have been limited to 22 for kindergarten through first grade and 25 for second through fifth grade.
“The break point is when we decide to add a section, and before the recession hit, if any second grade class had more than 25, we would add another section,” Marpe explained.
So if there were three second grade classes at one school, and one had 21 students, another 22 students and a third hit 25 students, another section would open, and all of the students, 68, would be divided into four classes, each with 17 students.
Under the new policy adopted in 2009, two sections instead of one would have to hit 25 before another section opened. The end result is that class sizes have increased.
That has caused concern among parents. More than 50 showed up at Monday night’s meeting and in support of Gordon’s motion. The motion failed after Donald O’Day, board chairman, pointed out that enrollment figures would make it cost prohibitive.
If implemented during the 2012-13 school year, for which the $100.2 million town approved budget was accepted by the board at the same meeting, the change would necessitate hiring as many as seven or eight teachers, O’Day said, a $500,000 increase.
“With the challenge of finding another $500,000, we would have to go back through the whole budget process,” Marpe said.
He said he had seconded Gordon’s motion “so we could at least have a discussion on it,” considering board members had received more than 100 emails from concerned parents and that one parent present had a petition signed by 450 parents.
Neither Gordon nor Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon was available for comment.
“For me, it was the fact that it was cost prohibitive, and that there are multiple issues we need to look at,” said board member Elaine Whitney.
She added that the board has been discussing class size not only during the recent budget process, “but ever since we made the break point change when the financial crisis hit.”
“We are in line with our peer performing districts,” Whitney said about the break point process, “but I would like our board to look at them and see if there should be some adjustments.”
Though not yet official, Marpe said,“we as a board will take a review of our class size as one of the objectives for the coming school year.”
Smaller class sizes, he said, would be in keeping with the school system’s 2025 program aimed at making students globally competitive. The program, Marpe said, would benefit from “an environment that would require more individual attention” via smaller class sizes.
“That is our intention,” said Whitney. “We will review it our our next meeting.”
The school board is scheduled to meet again June 4.
Yes, ” board members had received more than 100 emails from concerned parents and that one parent present had a petition signed by 450 parents”—requesting that the break-points at the elementary level be changed back to pre 2009 levels.” Mr O’Day personally responded to the e-mails over the weekend, with a spread-sheet, stating that changing the break-point would have “limited impact.” Then, on Monday night, right before the discussion on break-points, he presented a new spread-sheet showing “worse case scenario” projections, stating the challenge to find another “$500,00.00” These numbers were not actuals. The enrollment could go up or down While I understand why the board would not want to vote on something “cost prohibitive,”—what I don’t understand is why, when presented with new numbers and projections, they did not delay the vote and examine the numbers and their implications more thoroughly,—Before voting?
Speaking as the parent of a 2010 Staples grad and a professional working with various organizations on educational best practices (mainly for elementary schools), I find the current focus on class sizes somewhat misplaced, or at least incomplete. Teacher quality, teacher-student fit and class mix are tremendously important.
After having sent our child to kindergarten at Coleytown, where the mentioned factors were great, we moved to a well-known private school mainly because its maximum class size was 12. We moved him back after 3 months, although the town class max was just slightly higher than it is now,. The educational philosophy, teacher quality, and group of students in the new class more than compensated for class size.
The next year, those factors were all wrong, and it was an awful year for our child and for us. This was the pattern for us, for many parents who shared information with us, and in many communities like Westport, as per studies.
I suggest concerned parents investigate these factors and advocate for their children over them rather than focusing so closely on class sizes.
You are 100% correct. However, if you have a grade with many children with many complex needs—who can’t be placed together (chemistry) or above average the number with special needs—and only 3 teachers to chose from—- then the school has few choices by which to place kids regarding teacher-fit, class mix etc. I know how much effort goes into the qualities you talk about—-The schools do their best. The teachers are fantastic. This is a great school system. Also, the curriculum is changing—there is more independent study happening in the elementary school. Curriculum changes requires more one on one attention.