School classes grow as funding shrinks
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Clark High School teacher Nat Player has 39 students crowded into one
of his Advanced Placement psychology courses.
Photo: Helen L. Montoya, San Antonio Express-News /
©SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
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The psychology teacher has one of the largest classes in Northside Independent School District, with 39 students taking one of his Advanced Placement courses. He has more work to grade and he can't use all the whiteboard — their desks block access to it.
But what worries him most is losing the ability to focus on each of them.
“It's just easier for kids to fall through the cracks, I think,” Player said. “I enjoy being able to get to know the students and better keep an eye on (them) if they need help or some attention, either with homework or just needing someone to talk to.”
In his 16 years at Clark, he has seen class sizes balloon, and the trend is accelerating. Students regularly haul desks from down the hallway into a French II class so they all can fit in, then take them back out for a smaller subsequent class.
Northside's predicament mirrors that of several other local districts with expanding enrollments. It's part of the argument hundreds of Texas districts are making in an ongoing school finance lawsuit against the state, blaming lawmakers for a funding scheme that doesn't keep up with growth.
Administrators say larger classes are cheaper than hiring more teachers. There's no state limit on class size for grades 5-12. In kindergarten through fourth grade, school districts must seek permission to go above 22 students per teacher — and the number of requests for such waivers from several local districts has skyrocketed in the past two years.
School boards, lawmakers and even presidential candidates this year debated whether larger classes hurt education.
“I would say that the majority of those people who say class size doesn't matter haven't been in a classroom in a long time,” Southwest ISD Superintendent Lloyd Verstuyft said. “To think we can take a college format with larger sizes and bring it down to lower grade levels, where students still are developing socially as well as academically, is a farce. These kids need attention and interventions.”
A class size boom
The state's education agency routinely grants school districts' requests for class size waivers with few questions asked.
In 2010, before the Legislature slashed $5.4 billion in funding to public education for the current biennial budget, only two local school districts asked for a total of 15 such waivers.
This year, 11 local districts asked for waivers for a record-breaking total of 1,119 classrooms in Bexar County, according to a San Antonio Express-News analysis.
Northside sought no waivers in fall 2010, but in fall 2012 its board authorized asking for 597 of them. The state's two-year education cuts cost the district $61.5 million.
The other districts that filed the most requests this year also are rapidly growing: North East, Judson, Harlandale and Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City.
One local district not on that list, Southwest ISD, has found a way around the waiver requirement by using a “multi-grade” setup, placing some students overflowing from a lower grade into a higher grade classroom and having the teacher instruct the appropriate curriculum.Verstuyft said the district might need to end that experiment and opt for waivers — enrollment is swelling with population attracted by nearby manufacturing plants and the Eagle Ford Shale energy drilling boom.
Now at 13,024 students, Southwest added about 600 in each of the past two years since the Legislature cut its funding by almost $12 million.
Some area school boards have chafed at the steady stream of requests for class size waivers. Trustees in Harlandale and South San ISD said they wanted to vote against them but it would have just forced district staff to cut budgets elsewhere.
When South San trustees pushed back on the issue last month, Superintendent Rebecca Robinson told them she'd have to hire 11 more teachers and said the district couldn't afford it after cutting $5 million to make ends meet in the wake of the state funding reductions.The norm for class sizes in grades 5-12 is around 30 students, local officials say. At Southwest, classes in grades 5-12 with more than 30 students almost doubled in the past two years — from 166 to 324.
Districts have common methods to squeeze in more students. They tend to pack them into electives such as dance — around 50 at some Northside classes — or Advanced Placement courses, whose students are considered more motivated and therefore not in need of as much individual attention.
Districts try to keep core classes such as math or English smaller in size as students face increasingly rigorous state standardized tests. Usually, special education classes are smaller as students need more supervision and assistance.
But what worries him most is losing the ability to focus on each of them.
“It's just easier for kids to fall through the cracks, I think,” Player said. “I enjoy being able to get to know the students and better keep an eye on (them) if they need help or some attention, either with homework or just needing someone to talk to.”
In his 16 years at Clark, he has seen class sizes balloon, and the trend is accelerating. Students regularly haul desks from down the hallway into a French II class so they all can fit in, then take them back out for a smaller subsequent class.
Northside's predicament mirrors that of several other local districts with expanding enrollments. It's part of the argument hundreds of Texas districts are making in an ongoing school finance lawsuit against the state, blaming lawmakers for a funding scheme that doesn't keep up with growth.
School boards, lawmakers and even presidential candidates this year debated whether larger classes hurt education.
“I would say that the majority of those people who say class size doesn't matter haven't been in a classroom in a long time,” Southwest ISD Superintendent Lloyd Verstuyft said. “To think we can take a college format with larger sizes and bring it down to lower grade levels, where students still are developing socially as well as academically, is a farce. These kids need attention and interventions.”
A class size boom
The state's education agency routinely grants school districts' requests for class size waivers with few questions asked.
In 2010, before the Legislature slashed $5.4 billion in funding to public education for the current biennial budget, only two local school districts asked for a total of 15 such waivers.
This year, 11 local districts asked for waivers for a record-breaking total of 1,119 classrooms in Bexar County, according to a San Antonio Express-News analysis.
Northside sought no waivers in fall 2010, but in fall 2012 its board authorized asking for 597 of them. The state's two-year education cuts cost the district $61.5 million.
The other districts that filed the most requests this year also are rapidly growing: North East, Judson, Harlandale and Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City.
One local district not on that list, Southwest ISD, has found a way around the waiver requirement by using a “multi-grade” setup, placing some students overflowing from a lower grade into a higher grade classroom and having the teacher instruct the appropriate curriculum.Verstuyft said the district might need to end that experiment and opt for waivers — enrollment is swelling with population attracted by nearby manufacturing plants and the Eagle Ford Shale energy drilling boom.
Now at 13,024 students, Southwest added about 600 in each of the past two years since the Legislature cut its funding by almost $12 million.
Some area school boards have chafed at the steady stream of requests for class size waivers. Trustees in Harlandale and South San ISD said they wanted to vote against them but it would have just forced district staff to cut budgets elsewhere.
When South San trustees pushed back on the issue last month, Superintendent Rebecca Robinson told them she'd have to hire 11 more teachers and said the district couldn't afford it after cutting $5 million to make ends meet in the wake of the state funding reductions.The norm for class sizes in grades 5-12 is around 30 students, local officials say. At Southwest, classes in grades 5-12 with more than 30 students almost doubled in the past two years — from 166 to 324.
Districts have common methods to squeeze in more students. They tend to pack them into electives such as dance — around 50 at some Northside classes — or Advanced Placement courses, whose students are considered more motivated and therefore not in need of as much individual attention.
Districts try to keep core classes such as math or English smaller in size as students face increasingly rigorous state standardized tests. Usually, special education classes are smaller as students need more supervision and assistance.
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