Class size on the rise

The wall above third-grade teacher Kimberly Blake's desk is covered in class photos dating back to 1989, creating a timeline of her teaching career.

In the early 1990s her classes at Monte Vista Elementary School in Rohnert Park were so large, kids sat perched and hanging on the jungle gym for their class picture.

In 1996, the picture changed.

The children's faces are larger in the frame because there are fewer in the photo. They sit in school chairs with hands on knees. Blake is smiling.

“Class-size reduction — I saw great improvement in the 13 years we had it,” she said.

On Thursday, as school opened in the cash-strapped Cotati-Rohnert Park school district, class-size reduction became a memory.

After the state suspended financial penalties for exceeding the 20-student limit, districts across Sonoma County lifted that cap as a money-saving measure.

In Cotati-Rohnert Park, class sizes soared to 28 and 29 students in kindergarten through third grades this week.

The district also cut middle school sports, cut 10 days from the classified staff schedule and managers will work five fewer days.

Last spring the district issued notices for the elimination of nearly 55 full-time jobs, 32 of which were elementary school teachers. Of those, officials have reinstated six positions at the elementary level, two of three middle school counselors and two high school teachers.

The impact of larger class sizes at Monte Vista and other schools was immediate — rooms had to be restructured, cubby cabinets were removed and furniture was added.

The long-term impact on student learning is less obvious, but teachers and administrators expressed a mixture of upbeat determination and unease as classes got underway.

“I can't get to 28 as easily as I can 19,” Blake, who has been teaching at Monte Vista for nearly 20 years, said. “With 50 percent more kids, roughly, they do need to be more independent.”

“I'm going to be relying more on smaller groups, on parent volunteers,” she said. “We are going to make it work. This is the blessing of this staff. It's a gift.”

At Monte Vista, a 2008 California Distinguished School, six classrooms stand vacant because fewer teachers are needed when class sizes grow.

Two planning days typically used to prepare classrooms and curriculum for the new school year were cut, but teachers showed up at the Magnolia Avenue campus on their own time, said Jane Wheeler, in her 25th year at the helm of Monte Vista and the only principal the school has ever known.

“It's part of the culture here,” she said, of teachers meeting to discuss same-grade strategies.

Staff will be instructed to hone in on the essentials, on what works for student learning, because the margin for error in misuse of time and energy will be smaller with larger classes, said Wheeler.

“That's good teaching and should happen whatever the enrollment is,” Wheeler said.

One strategy the school will implement to lessen the impact on the youngest students is to split the kindergarten schedule.

Beginning next month, half of the students in each kindergarten class will arrive at 8:15 a.m. and stay until 1 p.m. The other half will arrive at 9:15 a.m. and stay until 2 p.m.

That will give teachers a one hour block with 15 students for more targeted lessons, Wheeler said.

The Parent Teacher Association is already girding itself to make up for budget losses, said parent president Karen Rasmussen.

“People are concerned about the budget, about the money, about more ways of fundraising and being creative,” she said. “I think it's going to make a huge impact down the line.”

Teachers and staffers were resolute Thursday, using words like teamwork and cooperation. Nobody wanted to say that learning or children will suffer in larger classes.

“It'll work. It's just that we are going to be more organized and we are going to have to work together,” said veteran second-grade teacher Betsy Smith as her 29 students cut out paper figures of themselves.

Teachers on Thursday wouldn't say this crop of primary grade students are getting shortchanged, but a twinge of frustration was evident.

“I'm not going to be able to modify homework for every single kid who maybe doesn't like homework. I'm not going to be able to do all the bells and whistles that I used to,” Smith said.

Both Smith and Blake taught before California's class size reduction went into effect and Smith said while difficult, the pressures were different then. There was not the emphasis on standardized testing.

“It was different way back when. We had standards but we didn't have sticks hanging over our heads,” Smith said.