Santa Rosa classes may be getting bigger

<p>After more than a decade of extolling the virtues of smaller class sizes, especially among the youngest students, Santa Rosa City Schools is considering enlarging most kindergarten-through-third-grade classes.</p><p>The move, being contemplated by school districts throughout the state, would save the county’s largest school district about $600,000 a year by eliminating 11 teaching positions and pushing the staffing ratio from 20-to-1 to 22-to-1.</p><p>The district is facing a $10 million revenue loss over two years as a result of the state’s $42 billion budget deficit package agreed upon last month.</p><p>“The energy level in kindergarten is tremendous,” said Barry Kelly, the principal at Steele Lane Elementary School. “When you add two more children, you have an energy level in the classroom — well, it’s another 10 percent.”</p><p>Kelly and other educators expressed concern that with the culture of testing and the expanding needs of many students, putting just two more children into a classroom will make it harder for teachers to connect and teach.</p><p>“Certainly, there is going to be an impact over time,” Kelly said.</p><p>Also being considered by the school board is increasing class size for freshman English and math courses from 20 students to 24 — a move that would eliminate three teaching positions and save $180,000 a year.</p><p>“Lower is always better, be it ninth-grade English or math, or 11th-grade science,” said Maria Carrillo High School Principal Mark Klick. “Just like it is important at K-3, we all wish it could be K-12.”</p><p>But Klick dismissed the notion that learning would be appreciably different under the current slate of proposals. “Is it going to dramatically change the quality of education at Maria Carrillo High School? I don’t think so,” he said.</p><p>The school board meets at 6 tonight to begin debating cuts and restructuring — specifically addressing what for months had been only rumors as state lawmakers argued over how to bridge the largest deficit in California’s history.</p><p>Among the other items on the table: shifting more than $500,000 earmarked for maintenance to nonspecific general fund purposes, early retirement incentives to save $390,000, cutting funding for school resource officers by $100,000, and diverting to the general fund more than $2 million previously specified for school and library improvements and arts and music grants.</p><p>The district also plans to draw $2.5 million from its $11 million general fund reserve account.</p><p>Some decisions, such as adjusting class size and moving arts and music block grant money to the general fund, require a public hearing. The school board is expected to set priorities today and make a formal decision next WednesdayMarch 11.</p><p>On the Steele Lane campus, the school has for three years used about $9,000 of its School and Library Improvement Program funds to leverage other money to pay for a counselor to work with students four days a week. That program is at risk if those once-protected funds are diverted to the general fund. The school also uses those funds to pay teachers to stay an hour after school operating specific tutoring programs, Kelly said.</p><p>“I have already expressed my concern,” Kelly said of district officials. “I believe they are taking it into account. But they are limited. It’s ‘where do you cut?’”</p><p>The proposal for larger class sizes is not made lightly, said Associate Superintendent Doug Bower. Small class sizes are “crucial to our overall performance capacity in testing and program improvement issues,” he said. “The folks who understand all the different variables didn’t want to see these go up to the 28-to-1 range.”</p><p>But some teachers and administrators expressed concern that unlocking what had been fairly rigid adherence to small classes would begin a slide toward 30-pupil classrooms.</p><p>and every year students come to her classroom needing a little bit more, she said. Adding more students to the mix leaves teachers less time connect with both those who struggle and those who need greater academic challenges.</p><p>“Children are coming with more and more diverse needs,” said Kristen Ott, who has spent a decade as a kindergarten teacher. “I do worry that we’ll never get (class size reduction) back.</p><p>“It took so long for the state to adopt it. If we let it go, it’s ‘What’s a few more children here? What’s a few more children there?’”</p><p>Staff Writer Kerry Benefield writes an education blog at extracredit.pressdemocrat.com. She can be reached at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat</p><p>.com</p>