Word went out that at tonight’s BOE budget workshop someone would be posing the question: What if we reduced one class section from each grade from each elementary school?
The seats were packed until past 9:00 PM as we listened and waited through more mundane answers and questions, through current class-by-class numbers at each of the schools. We heard about <ITLs, ECSx2, Spanish -0.4, and tubas (I’m actually pulling for the tubas! Currently 2 patched together tubas and 6 tuba players.). Then as they pulled up the spreadsheet on the screen, too far away and too small to read, they glossed over and said, “So these are the impacts you asked about for any of the down ladder adjustments.” And also, “It’s getting late and we still have to hear comments, maybe we should wrap this up.”
Neither of which sounded like, “This would be devastating to our children! Warning- STOP!” Neither of which painted a picture of what would become…
So here are the impacts, by the numbers:
6 The number of grades in each elementary
5 The highest grade we teach
4 The number of elementary schools
3 The number of teachers per grade
2 Hours to ask the question: What if…?
1 The number of classes to cut…from each grade…from each school
24 The number of classes lost
32 The number of children in each kindergarten
33 Percent fewer classroom teachers
50 The percent increase in class size
100 The percent of students harmed
Next week, same time, more numbers.
ureadiread 
Wow, Class sizes are getting higher and higher and so are the needs of our students. Do they have any idea?
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Well, since they glossed over the numbers…maybe not yet.
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Oh Katie, this is not good. This is the road that my district in Oregon headed down years ago, the road that led to 36 kids in our middle school classes, 34 kids in third grade classes, dozens of teachers laid off, etc. I can tell you from experience (and you see it already), the effect this course of action will have on kids, not to mention teachers, will be devastating. I’m so sad to see our district and state go this way when it comes to education. I can understand why the powers that be don’t want to devote too much time to discussing this! The results are unlikely to be a happy topic of discussion. Bummer. Thanks for sharing this creative but heartbreaking slice.
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These numbers are so disheartening. 32 kids in K? Yikes! I’m more thankful than ever that for now, my district is keeping class sizes low. I’m so sorry this is going on in your district.
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Thanks. For now, it’s just a conversation and not a recommendation. Do you think we could invite board members to guest teach one and a half kindergarten classes before they decide?
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Our district is busy crunching #’s right now because most of our funding comes from oil, gas and coal and we’re losing that revenue. It’s a constant question of what do we cut? BTW I vote for the Tuba’s too.
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How can they even think of 34 Ks per class. State regulations require 1 adult worker per 15 school age children at care centers (1 to 10 in home care) (quoting OR ratio). And this is primarily based on safety issues. I think board members should be required to actually be responsible for a class of 34 K students for at least 1/2 day.
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