How many kids per class in the NW elementary schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Murch 1st grade 28. Not happy about it.

With an aide, or the teacher is solo?

No aide. Solo teacher.

[Anonymous]

Agree you want to be EOTP for small class sizes. Often with an aide. Find a school with a good administration and you’ll have excellent teachers who stay for years and years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:having experienced small class sizes EOTP and big class sizes WOTP I would take wotp any day. I found the quality if the teachers and having a less challenging student body more important to a good school experience.

The best teachers my children had were at a title 1 elementary school. They dealt with trauma, food insecurity, behavior and taught. The easy jobs are WOTP elementary schools. You just need to show up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They strive to keep close to 20 but since they can’t control who enrolls, it is going to be different grade by grade. They aren’t going to hire a new teacher because they have class sizes of 22 for example. But if a big school like Janney has 25 kids in 4 classes, they might hire another teacher to make that 5 classes of 20. But there are a lot of ifs there including teacher availability which is low at the moment. I don’t think you are going to find any dcps aiming to have class sizes under 20 but it might happen in some years due to numbers. Hope this helps. Fwiw the big affluent schools WTOP hire lots of helper teachers which mitigate large class sizes.

My kid was in a "bubble" grade at Janney a few years ago, there were 26-28 kids in each of the five classes. There was a lot of discussion regarding adding an extra class but it never materialized, mostly due to space availability. So just because a school is larger does not mean it has the ability or space to just add classes to a grade. Now, enrollment has gone down in the last couple of years so his grade is currently 21-23 kids per class. But frankly I don't know if you can predict a grade size until the enrollment is final...I remember for my kid's K class the principal said something like 15-20 kids enrolled in the month before school started.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree you want to be EOTP for small class sizes. Often with an aide. Find a school with a good administration and you’ll have excellent teachers who stay for years and years.

I don’t think op wants to be EOTP, she wants Deal or Hardy feeders. Maybe Shepherd?

[Anonymous]

Yeah we’ve always been fortunate to have 21-22 kids/class in our Janney years but I know some years have been very large. Hard to predict.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree you want to be EOTP for small class sizes. Often with an aide. Find a school with a good administration and you’ll have excellent teachers who stay for years and years.

I don’t think op wants to be EOTP, she wants Deal or Hardy feeders. Maybe Shepherd?

I’d be curious what the class sizes are like at Shepherd and Bancroft. EOTP Deal feeders. I would guess larger like WOTP schools.

[Anonymous]

Title 1 schools tend to have less kids per class. The trick is to find one on the cusp of flipping to non-title 1 status.
My kid is at one, now in 4th grade, never had more than 18 kids per class since PK 3. But lots of UMC families filling out the lower grades, so test score and fundraising going up every year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Title 1 schools tend to have less kids per class. The trick is to find one on the cusp of flipping to non-title 1 status.
My kid is at one, now in 4th grade, never had more than 18 kids per class since PK 3. But lots of UMC families filling out the lower grades, so test score and fundraising going up every year.

Ew “the trick”

[Anonymous]

The general formula is:

Pk3 and PK4: 15-20 depending on model
K-2: 20
3-12: 25
remedial 12
career and tech 18

Depending on by-right enrollment for a grade, principals need to allocate across the budgeted teachers until the grade is big enough to allow for another teacher in the budget (assuming classroom space), at which point the classes split and become smaller again. Usually if one classroom hits 28 the next year will be a split unless it is a year when many kids typically transfer out and so the grade "right sizes" itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:having experienced small class sizes EOTP and big class sizes WOTP I would take wotp any day. I found the quality if the teachers and having a less challenging student body more important to a good school experience.

The best teachers my children had were at a title 1 elementary school. They dealt with trauma, food insecurity, behavior and taught. The easy jobs are WOTP elementary schools. You just need to show up.

😂 You are misinformed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:having experienced small class sizes EOTP and big class sizes WOTP I would take wotp any day. I found the quality if the teachers and having a less challenging student body more important to a good school experience.

The best teachers my children had were at a title 1 elementary school. They dealt with trauma, food insecurity, behavior and taught. The easy jobs are WOTP elementary schools. You just need to show up.

😂 You are misinformed.

Sure, it’s equally challenging to teach at Murch and Raymond.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:having experienced small class sizes EOTP and big class sizes WOTP I would take wotp any day. I found the quality if the teachers and having a less challenging student body more important to a good school experience.

The best teachers my children had were at a title 1 elementary school. They dealt with trauma, food insecurity, behavior and taught. The easy jobs are WOTP elementary schools. You just need to show up.

I’ve taught at both. In a WOTP school you need to have great customer service skills and be at the whims of obnoxious parents and poor administration. EOTP I had to be much better at differentiating my instruction, more empathetic and trauma informed in my practices, and come up with such different and unique ways to engage my students.

I loved my WOTP kids, but a robot or a computer could’ve taught 95% of them. I feel like I have to use much more of my brain and skill set EOTP.

In both areas, I found my colleagues very qualified, but I think WOTP teachers skills are more likely to atrophy bc they have no urgent need to sharpen their abilities. So much focus on satisfying parents

[Anonymous]

Eaton seems to aim for 25 or so in a class. They tolerate larger class sizes than the WOTP ES we moved to.

[Anonymous]

Eaton 1st grade has 18; well one of the classes. There are three and the highest has 19