At the end of November, Superintendent Dr. Ann-Marie Foucault gave some information about increasing class sizes in various grade levels in the St. Michael-Albertville school district.
Foucault said kindergarten, first, third and fourth grades have higher numbers than the district’s target class sizes. The target for a kindergarten classroom in STMA is 20 students, but there are currently 20-22 students per section this year at Albertville Primary, despite hiring two additional kindergarten teachers over the summer. Even with these additional teachers, Albertville Primary still has one less teacher than they did for the 2012-13 school year, when they had 14 fewer students. At that point there were 23 kindergarten sections compared with 22 currently.
At the elementary level, the district aims for 21 students per first grade class but numbers now are sometimes at 22 or 23 at Fieldstone and Big Woods Elementary schools. St. Michael Elementary has 19-22 per section.
The difference in class sizes between St. Michael Elementary and the other two elementary schools becomes stark at the upper elementary level. In third grade the district has a target of 24 students per classroom. STME is under target at 22-23 students per class, but Big Woods and Fieldstone have 28-29 students per class, which is as many as seven more students per class than STME. It is a similar story in fourth grade, where the target is 26 students per class. STME is under target at 24-25 per class, whereas Big Woods fourth graders have 27-28 per class and Fieldstone has 28-30 per class.
To counteract these high numbers at Big Woods and Fieldstone, Foucault said the school district has approved part-time teachers to pull students from their home classrooms during reading and/or reading and math instruction, which has been deemed most critical. Starting with the new trimester that began Dec. 6, Big Woods third grade gained a .5 teacher who teaches reading to a group of 22 students. A few students per class are being pulled from their original classroom, which brings down class sizes for all sections during reading instruction.
At Fieldstone, third and fourth grade were approved for an additional .75 teacher who will pull students from their original classrooms during both reading and math. However, Foucault said Fieldstone has not yet found a teacher to fill this position.
Foucault said they prefer hiring full-time teachers to pulling students out of their classrooms to work with part-time teachers, but said the students enrolled too late in the summer to make classroom changes.
Foucault responds to class size discrepancies among elementary schools
Foucault said the school district strives to keep class sizes comparable in each grade level across the district. She said the numbers were remaining close through July and even early August, but in late August she said Big Woods and Fieldstone received an influx of late enrollees that caused their class sizes to jump.
Despite the current class size discrepancies, Foucault said the district is not looking to change its school boundaries or open enrollment boundaries. She said the majority of new housing development in STMA is taking place in the St. Michael Elementary boundary area, and she said she preferred the method of adding teachers if class sizes become too large rather than changing boundaries.
“Next year, what happened at Big Woods and Fieldstone [with the late enrollees] could easily happen at STME, too,” she said.
Middle and High School
At the middle school level, Foucault said Middle School East class sizes are similar to previous years in all grades except eighth grade, which got 29 new students this school year and thus pushed up the number of sections with over 30 students. Middle School West has 48 more students this year than last year and it only got a .7 additional instructor, which Foucault said resulted in a significant increase of sections over 30 students. That number increased from 11 sections last school year to 48 this school year. At Middle School East there are currently 23 sections of core classes that have over 30 students.
At the high school, Principal Bob Driver had to increase class caps on many classes this year because there is not enough classroom space to hire more teachers, Foucault said. There are currently 367 sections of high school classes over 30 students. She said the high school could absorb the extra students that will come into the high school next year, but beginning in 2018-19 Foucault said they would need to use portable classrooms at the high school if the February bond referendum does not pass.
Foucault stressed that these class size crunches cannot be solely attributed to open enrollment.
“Open enrollment accounts for approximately 29.5 students per grade level,” she said. “When you spread that out among grade levels across the district it is easy to see that our class sizes are due to plain old growth in student enrollment.”
Clarification: This article has been updated to correct an error, clarifying that the rise in class sizes can NOT be solely attributed to open enrollment.