Fairfax County: McLean Citizens Association demands smaller class sizes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 1st-3rd grade classes with 10 students in them and others with over 30. It's gotten completely out of whack and I don't blame parents for being upset. There should not be that much discrepancy. I haven't read the demand, but most parents just think things need to be shifted a bit so that all class sizes are a bit more manageable and the difference between the largest and smallest class size in FCPS for the same grade is a little smaller than 20 plus students.

Where are there 1st - 3rd grade classes with 10 students in them? That's BS unless you are talking about classes of students with significant disabilities.

Not the PP, and I don't recall seeing information about classes with 10 kids. There are classes in some parts of the county with fewer than 15 kids and less than 1/2 the number of students that are in classes elsewhere in the county.

http://classsizecounts.com/?page_id=7

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ok, but to get class sizes down, we need more teachers, which means more money.

Do you have a money tree somewhere?

We need more revenue streams.

The request is not to reduce class sizes across the board. The request is to reduce the disparities in class sizes, which would mean that class sizes would go down in some areas and up in others. Why does that require a money tree?

Sounds like people in Mclean don't understand the difference between "fair" and "equal".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The title of your thread is kind of misleading. The MCA didn't "demand" smaller class sizes. It adopted a resolution urging FCPS to narrow - but not eliminate - the current differences in class sizes.

The issue has been percolating for years, but the School Board has continued to let classes in McLean, Vienna and Great Falls get larger. Test scores remain very high, of course, but the parents see how much smaller the classes are elsewhere in FCPS, as well as in APS and FCCPS, and they feel short-changed and taken for granted.

Since the entire School Board is up for re-election this fall, it shouldn't surprise anyone that residents are trying to find out where School Board members and their challengers stand on the issue. I have no idea if Janie Strauss plans to run as the Dranesville representative for School Board again, but there's a good chance that a Republican-endorsed candidate will win her seat campaigning heavily on this issue.

OP here - I didn't mean demand in a derogatory way, but I can't edit the title now.

[Anonymous]

I think the Title I kids should get a leg up--but some common sense needs to rule. Young children in classes of 30 plus is ridiculous when FCPS is giving additional money to Title I schools.

[Anonymous]

19:33 HERE: I should add that I taught Title I and they very much need the additional resources--but it is not right to have ginormous classes in other schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The title of your thread is kind of misleading. The MCA didn't "demand" smaller class sizes. It adopted a resolution urging FCPS to narrow - but not eliminate - the current differences in class sizes.

The issue has been percolating for years, but the School Board has continued to let classes in McLean, Vienna and Great Falls get larger. Test scores remain very high, of course, but the parents see how much smaller the classes are elsewhere in FCPS, as well as in APS and FCCPS, and they feel short-changed and taken for granted.

Since the entire School Board is up for re-election this fall, it shouldn't surprise anyone that residents are trying to find out where School Board members and their challengers stand on the issue. I have no idea if Janie Strauss plans to run as the Dranesville representative for School Board again, but there's a good chance that a Republican-endorsed candidate will win her seat campaigning heavily on this issue.

Then how about moving to a neighborhood with a Title I school? Oh yeah. I'm sure that wouldn't do at all.

Or, perhaps people will move instead to non-Title I schools in other school districts, and then there won't be as much tax revenue available to FCPS to subsidize the smaller classes in Title I schools.

If this becomes an overtly hostile debate, I think the districts with the most Title I schools (Lee, Mason and Mount Vernon) probably lose to the districts that tend to have more of the schools with large classes. Hopefully people will temper their rhetoric and work out an acceptable compromise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 1st-3rd grade classes with 10 students in them and others with over 30. It's gotten completely out of whack and I don't blame parents for being upset. There should not be that much discrepancy. I haven't read the demand, but most parents just think things need to be shifted a bit so that all class sizes are a bit more manageable and the difference between the largest and smallest class size in FCPS for the same grade is a little smaller than 20 plus students.

Where are there 1st - 3rd grade classes with 10 students in them? That's BS unless you are talking about classes of students with significant disabilities.

Not the PP, and I don't recall seeing information about classes with 10 kids. There are classes in some parts of the county with fewer than 15 kids and less than 1/2 the number of students that are in classes elsewhere in the county.

http://classsizecounts.com/?page_id=7

That spreadsheet was probably based on projected numbers for this year. Scrolling through that list I see places where they are missing the names of the teacher, or are missing entire classes. Many Title I schools have populations that move around frequently so the number if kids projected vs. the number who are actually there now is often very different.

[Anonymous]

How to fix:
Eliminate the magnet schools.
Eliminate AAP centers.

This would make it easier to divvy up the teachers in the schools that currently have centers.

[Anonymous]

Who doesn't want smaller class sizes?
My son had 37 kids in his fifth grade class in Great Falls a few years back. I think they had a hard time squeezing them in a classroom the next year in sixth grade when they were in a trailer. I guess it's just how does FCPS make that happen across the county given the budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:19:33 HERE: I should add that I taught Title I and they very much need the additional resources--but it is not right to have ginormous classes in other schools.

No one will teach at Title I schools if the classes get much larger. It's hard enough with small classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How to fix:
Eliminate the magnet schools.
Eliminate AAP centers.

This would make it easier to divvy up the teachers in the schools that currently have centers.

Absolutely eliminate the AAP Centers in all districts except for Mount Vernon, Lee and Mason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ok, but to get class sizes down, we need more teachers, which means more money.

Do you have a money tree somewhere?

We need more revenue streams.

The request is not to reduce class sizes across the board. The request is to reduce the disparities in class sizes, which would mean that class sizes would go down in some areas and up in others. Why does that require a money tree?

Sounds like people in Mclean don't understand the difference between "fair" and "equal".

Since the resolution acknowledges the concept of needs-based staffing, and does not request class-size parity, I'd say they do. In the last election, they also re-elected a School Board member who favors spending extra resources on schools with higher concentrations of low-income kids (Janie Strauss), and rejected a challenge from a candidate who made reducing the class sizes in Dranesville schools a central focus of her campaign (Louise Epstein).

But, with the imbalances in class sizes having grown even larger, more people now feel that changes are needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:19:33 HERE: I should add that I taught Title I and they very much need the additional resources--but it is not right to have ginormous classes in other schools.

No one will teach at Title I schools if the classes get much larger. It's hard enough with small classes.

This is what I'm thinking. A friend of mine teaches 2nd grade at one of the poorly ranked title 1 schools in the county, and she has 18 students - I'm thinking that adding 3 students for 21 students total in her class wouldn't be a huge extra burden, but 25 might be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How to fix:
Eliminate the magnet schools.
Eliminate AAP centers.

This would make it easier to divvy up the teachers in the schools that currently have centers.

Absolutely eliminate the AAP Centers in all districts except for Mount Vernon, Lee and Mason.

The five current school regions don't really correspond to the nine magisterial districts, so good luck with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The title of your thread is kind of misleading. The MCA didn't "demand" smaller class sizes. It adopted a resolution urging FCPS to narrow - but not eliminate - the current differences in class sizes.

The issue has been percolating for years, but the School Board has continued to let classes in McLean, Vienna and Great Falls get larger. Test scores remain very high, of course, but the parents see how much smaller the classes are elsewhere in FCPS, as well as in APS and FCCPS, and they feel short-changed and taken for granted.

Since the entire School Board is up for re-election this fall, it shouldn't surprise anyone that residents are trying to find out where School Board members and their challengers stand on the issue. I have no idea if Janie Strauss plans to run as the Dranesville representative for School Board again, but there's a good chance that a Republican-endorsed candidate will win her seat campaigning heavily on this issue.

Isn't Janie a McLean resident?