Class sizes in specific schools ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/woodacreses/staff/directory.aspx#Kindergarten

Four K classes. Count all the teachers k thru five and you can come up with an average class size based on last years numbers.

Or simply ask a neighbor how many kids are in the class.

Anecdotally, the class sizes in the W school pyramids are much larger than other parts of the county.

We are in Churchill with 20 kids in K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you find out class sizes? I've looked at MCPS website info for the school, it has # of students for each grade, but does not list # of teachers by grade - only totals. PTA doesn't have that info either.

Basically, I am trying to find out how overcrowded are Wood Acres/Pyle/Whitman are at the moment.

They are deemed overcrowded by parents who want 15 kids per class. In actual fact they are not overcrowded. Wood acres has just had a rebuild. Pyle and Whitman are due for the same in the next few years.

So how many in actual fact are there? 20? 30?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This won't get you very useful information. MCPS has countywide class size caps. So each year, you divide the number of students into classes as close to the caps as possible. Class sizes will vary from year to year depending on how many kids there are.

OP here and at the risk of sounding like an idiot - what happens if they are over the class size cap? For example, enrollment for 2nd grade is 132, there are 4 2nd grade teachers in the directory so works out to 32 students per class. Official cap for a non-focus 2nd grade is 28. What do they do with surplus? Are they allowed to carry on as is?

Btw, hats off to everybody who took the time to comment "it's simple math" without pointing out where to get the missing data points. Utterly unhelpful. Obviously, I didn't know about separate school site with a detailed directory (and thanks to the PP who mentioned it, although that comment didn't really need to be mean spirited either. I don't have children yet, I am just trying to sort out where to buy a house).

[Anonymous]

They can opt to do a mixed class: half 1st graders and half 2nd graders. It's not ideal, but that's what usually happens when the numbers don't justify another class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This won't get you very useful information. MCPS has countywide class size caps. So each year, you divide the number of students into classes as close to the caps as possible. Class sizes will vary from year to year depending on how many kids there are.

OP here and at the risk of sounding like an idiot - what happens if they are over the class size cap? For example, enrollment for 2nd grade is 132, there are 4 2nd grade teachers in the directory so works out to 32 students per class. Official cap for a non-focus 2nd grade is 28. What do they do with surplus? Are they allowed to carry on as is?

Btw, hats off to everybody who took the time to comment "it's simple math" without pointing out where to get the missing data points. Utterly unhelpful. Obviously, I didn't know about separate school site with a detailed directory (and thanks to the PP who mentioned it, although that comment didn't really need to be mean spirited either. I don't have children yet, I am just trying to sort out where to buy a house).

10:41 told you where to get the info, op. No clue why it never occurred to you to check the school's actual site to see the teacher directory. Life must be hard for you.

[Anonymous]

It is simple math if you have the max class sizes. You don't even need the number of teachers per grade, just look at the total kids per grade.

Here they are for this year.

Kindergarten 1 2 3 4 5
Non-Focus 25 27 27 27 29 29

Also this is heavily dependent by year and the number of kids enrolled rather than the school. My DD's 3rd grade class has 27 students but her friend's 2nd grade class has 19 at the same school. For 2nd grade there were 2-3 extra students that triggered the creation of a fourth "extra" class this year making all the classes very small.

If Wood Acres has 93 Kers this year and the max class size is 25 then they would have 4 classes of 93/4 students = 23 or 24 students per class.

[Anonymous]

PP here.
Adding that sometimes schools do combined grade classes as someone previously pointed out and sometimes if additional students are added in the middle of the year they may not get an extra teacher or may not want to pull classes apart at that late stage.

Class size is a huge deal at the Bethesda schools and most principals are happy to share that information as they already prepare it for their own school communities. Have you tried emailing Wood Acres and asking?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This won't get you very useful information. MCPS has countywide class size caps. So each year, you divide the number of students into classes as close to the caps as possible. Class sizes will vary from year to year depending on how many kids there are.

OP here and at the risk of sounding like an idiot - what happens if they are over the class size cap? For example, enrollment for 2nd grade is 132, there are 4 2nd grade teachers in the directory so works out to 32 students per class. Official cap for a non-focus 2nd grade is 28. What do they do with surplus? Are they allowed to carry on as is?

Btw, hats off to everybody who took the time to comment "it's simple math" without pointing out where to get the missing data points. Utterly unhelpful. Obviously, I didn't know about separate school site with a detailed directory (and thanks to the PP who mentioned it, although that comment didn't really need to be mean spirited either. I don't have children yet, I am just trying to sort out where to buy a house).

I believe a few years ago it went from a cap to a guideline. It is quite unlikely they will add a new teacher mid-year if there are a bunch a new comers. My DD first grade ended up at 30 (then went down to 29). They carried on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This won't get you very useful information. MCPS has countywide class size caps. So each year, you divide the number of students into classes as close to the caps as possible. Class sizes will vary from year to year depending on how many kids there are.

OP here and at the risk of sounding like an idiot - what happens if they are over the class size cap? For example, enrollment for 2nd grade is 132, there are 4 2nd grade teachers in the directory so works out to 32 students per class. Official cap for a non-focus 2nd grade is 28. What do they do with surplus? Are they allowed to carry on as is?

Btw, hats off to everybody who took the time to comment "it's simple math" without pointing out where to get the missing data points. Utterly unhelpful. Obviously, I didn't know about separate school site with a detailed directory (and thanks to the PP who mentioned it, although that comment didn't really need to be mean spirited either. I don't have children yet, I am just trying to sort out where to buy a house).

If you don't have kids yet, it isn't really helpful to try to do this math, because class sizes will vary from year to year. The county caps may also change, depending on budgets. The only way to really get smaller class sizes is to move to a neighborhood with a Title 1 or Focus school, where the caps are lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear clueless OP:

Go to the school's actual website---not the mcps at a glance report---and click on the staff link. Then put on your thinking cap and count how many K teachers they have, etc.

NP.. but that doesn't tell you how many kids there are in each class for the current year. You'd need to call the front office to find that out.

My kid's MCPS elementary school posted class size for each grade in the first monthly newsletter of the year. Wood Acres doesn't seem to have such a thing, so I would just call the office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This won't get you very useful information. MCPS has countywide class size caps. So each year, you divide the number of students into classes as close to the caps as possible. Class sizes will vary from year to year depending on how many kids there are.

OP here and at the risk of sounding like an idiot - what happens if they are over the class size cap? For example, enrollment for 2nd grade is 132, there are 4 2nd grade teachers in the directory so works out to 32 students per class. Official cap for a non-focus 2nd grade is 28. What do they do with surplus? Are they allowed to carry on as is?

Btw, hats off to everybody who took the time to comment "it's simple math" without pointing out where to get the missing data points. Utterly unhelpful. Obviously, I didn't know about separate school site with a detailed directory (and thanks to the PP who mentioned it, although that comment didn't really need to be mean spirited either. I don't have children yet, I am just trying to sort out where to buy a house).

You need to be careful looking at schools based on class sizes. We are at a school smaller than Wood Acres, but had 27 children in my child's class last year. This year, they got enough enrollment for an additional class, and now we only have 20 in a class! They hired an additional teacher (because they had sufficient enrollment by the end of these summer) and formed an extra class. However, there are other grades at our school that have 28 in each class, and did not meet the threshold to add another class. This has nothing to do with the size of the school, but only depends on the number of kids in each grade, divided by the max capacities for that grade. The same can happen at Wood Acres. Each year the classes can be completely different sizes. Once it is the middle of the year, it is hard for schools to get approved to add a teacher, and if kids move in, you can end up with classes that are beyond the "cap."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This won't get you very useful information. MCPS has countywide class size caps. So each year, you divide the number of students into classes as close to the caps as possible. Class sizes will vary from year to year depending on how many kids there are.

OP here and at the risk of sounding like an idiot - what happens if they are over the class size cap? For example, enrollment for 2nd grade is 132, there are 4 2nd grade teachers in the directory so works out to 32 students per class. Official cap for a non-focus 2nd grade is 28. What do they do with surplus? Are they allowed to carry on as is?

Btw, hats off to everybody who took the time to comment "it's simple math" without pointing out where to get the missing data points. Utterly unhelpful. Obviously, I didn't know about separate school site with a detailed directory (and thanks to the PP who mentioned it, although that comment didn't really need to be mean spirited either. I don't have children yet, I am just trying to sort out where to buy a house).

10:41 told you where to get the info, op. No clue why it never occurred to you to check the school's actual site to see the teacher directory. Life must be hard for you.

I don't have children. I didn't know each school has a separate site. Life must be a breeze for you with your level of snarkiness, everybody must really love you to pieces.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This won't get you very useful information. MCPS has countywide class size caps. So each year, you divide the number of students into classes as close to the caps as possible. Class sizes will vary from year to year depending on how many kids there are.

Ha, ha, ha. They don't enforce them if you're not in a Focus school. And all of the "official" numbers are wrong. Call the office or principal of the school you want to know about. Seriously. It's outrageous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is simple math if you have the max class sizes. You don't even need the number of teachers per grade, just look at the total kids per grade.

Here they are for this year.

Kindergarten 1 2 3 4 5
Non-Focus 25 27 27 27 29 29

Also this is heavily dependent by year and the number of kids enrolled rather than the school. My DD's 3rd grade class has 27 students but her friend's 2nd grade class has 19 at the same school. For 2nd grade there were 2-3 extra students that triggered the creation of a fourth "extra" class this year making all the classes very small.

If Wood Acres has 93 Kers this year and the max class size is 25 then they would have 4 classes of 93/4 students = 23 or 24 students per class.

Ha, ha, ha. In your dreams. MCPS loves to screw with the W schools.

[Anonymous]

As others have pointed out, class size is a function of the MCPS cap (look it up) and the number of students per grade. Its a waste of time to assess a school based on class size.

Up until 4th grade my son's grade had just enough kids to have 6 classes so they had 6 small classes. The cap goes up for 4th grade so then they had 5 huge classes. The grade behind and 6 huge classes the whole way through.