1st grade classes are 30 kids and it's a mess

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

If there were four on the spectrum in a single class that would be highly unusual unless it is with a highly experienced teacher but even then I’ve never heard of this, ever.

Former FCPS teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

If there were four on the spectrum in a single class that would be highly unusual unless it is with a highly experienced teacher but even then I’ve never heard of this, ever.

Former FCPS teacher

It was the case. It was not a good situation. At that time, and perhaps now, the most experienced first grade teacher had about 5 years experience. This was all before Covid. So even the “experienced” teacher was relatively new. The thing is, everyone knew it was crazy. But nothing was done. And that is part of the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is insane. Why doesn’t FCPS reduce class sizes?

Pass a meals tax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That is insane. Why doesn’t FCPS reduce class sizes?

Because parents refuse to go through the boundary process to readjust populations. An adjustment is desperately needed to balance numbers. The full spectrum is Chantilly at over 2900 and Lewis at under 1700 students. It's a significant difference in range at many schools across the county. Parents want both a very high-SES school and small class size, which is a ridiculous demand for a public school system.

LOL, it's not parents, it's the school board.

It is parents. Parents throw loud fits, loudly and en masse, when boundary adjustments stand to affect *their* child and no one wants to deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

And your kid is fine now, right?

OP: what do you think will happen if your kid goes thru the year with a class this size?

It's very difficult for the teacher to manage the class. I've heard of at least two instances where she's had to call for backup. She's doing the best she can, but her class was 20 kids last year.

THIS is the issue. The number of kids isn't, on its own, bad. I had 30 in my elementary classes back in the 80s. BUT these days, kids with significant issues are mainstreamed which is really hard when the classes are huge. So 26 kids without issues plus 4 with issues and aides following them around and a classroom designed for 24 kids suddenly has 30 kids, and 5 adults. It is too many people--literally our kids had to climb around each other to get their seats. Now, toss in age appropriate antics and teachers who have no authority to punish (Can't send to principal, cant put outside in hall, can't deny recess--literally no arrows in the discipline quiver) and the teachers are just overwhelmed. And so NO learning happens. My son practically had PTSD from his first grade at Wolftrap it was such a crap show. And that Principal had authority to hire a teacher to have smaller classes and she "decided" not to. She did it year after year and she was recently promoted. That is FCPS.

🙄 you throw this in and your whole argument becomes ineffective

It wasn't an argument. It was my experience.

I think your response is telling. This entire issue isn't about whose arguments are right or wrong. Its about whether FCPS, with its enormous resources, is doing the best it can for the people it is intended to serve and that is the students. In my opinion, it is not. My personal experience was that the teachers were being set up for failure by decisions made above them by people who had actual authority and money to make the teacher's jobs more pleasant and the student's academic environment more conducive to learning. That is my actual experience and yours may be entirely different and that is fine. But I am not wrong. And I am not exaggerating. When the School's solution was to tell my son (without my permission) to have a play date with a kid who was relentlessly touching him (unaddressed impulse control issues) or writing on his paper or destroying his artwork, and my son had to come home in tears and say he didn't want to play with that kid, and when my son still talks about that years later, I think PTSD isn't too much of a stretch. But go ahead and pick lint. It doesn't help your position. FCPS has some very serious and systemic issues and that is what this entire forum makes plain.

This likely had nothing to do with class sizes, FCPS or school or board decisions. I have 3 friends who left 3 different private schools because one kid was a nuisance. And they all had small class sizes, so it’s not just bc Fcps’ teachers have too many others to contend with. Kids like that can be annoying. But that’s not likely bc of class size.

Wrong. There were 31 kids in the class, 4 were on the spectrum. One teacher. First year teaching. Other two classes had 31 and 32. Principal had authority and funding to get another teacher--she actually told us so at back to school night in the cafeteria and explained that she chose not to. The room was silent. And it was a mess in large part due to the number of kids. It wasn't one kid. It was the whole situation. Why is there such resistance to this? Every study on education ever has said that the ideal class size is about 18-20. And significantly smaller or significantly larger impact the education. This has been documented over and over. So please--stop. Class size was a huge factor and made the other issues so much worse. Public schools cannot just push out tough children and if those children have issues that require support, public schools are legally obligated to provide it. None of this was going well for anyone so your "just so" comparisons are inapposite.

How do you know 4 were on the spectrum?

Because I live in the neighborhood and know the families via church, the nearby pool, and just overlapping with them over the years. The parents weren't in denial for the most part. Public school can be the best avenue for children on the spectrum or with other support needs to gain access to diagnostic tests and services--as I am sure you know. They knew and yet what were their options? It wasn't their fault or their children's fault.

By law, it was the school's issue to deal with and the principals to deal with and by extension the county. With large classes to boot, it was a mess. Large classes make all the other things that happen in public school harder. So when schools have a much larger number of non-English speakers, the entire teaching approach has to change. I am not saying don't teach but I am saying that if you have a class of 20 kids with 2 non-English speakers, the approach will be very different than a class of 30 with 15 non-English speakers. It should be different because logically those are entirely different situations and those are situations that FCPS has to deal with frequently. SO ... the School Board and the Supervisor need to start looking at what they actually have in front of them. A diverse county, a significant learning loss, overstretched teachers... Those things are the new normal. They need to stop focusing on luxurious things like the environment or SEL or whatever and focus on how to move FCPS back to where it had been-- a solid school district that gave children an solid start in life. To be frank--teaching diverse kids with various language and cultural norms, including poverty is much harder than teaching a mostly middle class county of mostly English speakers. That was FCPS of 1985. That is not the FCPS student body today and the time is well past for the school to adjust. How about starting to hire more bi-lingual teachers? How about special programs to accelerate English learning for new students so they can get fluent faster. How about school therapy programs staffed big enough to really support the number of kids there (instead of rationing it). How about eliminating AAP so that the resources devoted to it can be made available to the other children in the county. I could go on and on but you aren't really interested.

Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Not happening. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder where all the teachers have gone? Could it be they had enough of being accused, blamed, disparaged, criticized, called lazy people who don't want to work, etc etc during the last two years? Is it possible they are leaving the profession in droves?

They would stay if they got more pay and more support. Lots of jobs suck and are maligned (lawyers!) but people still do the job because it pays well. Teachers wouldn't quit if they had the support they need. Parents do not get to make those decisions and parents first line of communication is to teachers. It has probably been a deafening roar from parents for the last couple of years. But how did the school board react to the concerns about parents regarding remote learning or any number of other issues. Well, rather than support the teachers with resources, the Board (and some of the teachers) went to war with parents. See, for example, FCPS's School Board's communications over the last few years as well as its near complete adoption of the Agenda of Randi Weingarten. How does that activity help the teacher who has a huge number of kids or a hard time finding child care? Again, these are not issues parents could solve. Parents raised issues, the schools and the Board vilified them and teachers who were caught in the middle opted out.

Are you always this melodramatic or just on DCUM?

[Anonymous]

We had 30 in kindergarten, including 3 children with significant behavior issues including physical aggression, then Covid hit so last 3 months were virtual. That was followed by 30 in virtual 1st. It was all horrible. I know there is no good solution. But it’s really bad for early learning. This was in the Vienna area, not wolftrap though.

I know classes were this big in the past when I was a kid too, but in the past many of the behavior issues were not mainstreamed. Im not saying mainstreaming is wrong at all just that I don’t know how teachers are supposed to teach while moderating constant behavior challenges if the classes are SO large. And I feel so bad for the kids struggling in typical classroom environment constantly getting in trouble, that can’t be good for this confidence and education either. In smaller classes things could work much better.

It seems like no one is getting what is needed. Not the teachers. Not the students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems like no one is getting what is needed. Not the teachers. Not the students.

That probably should be repeated 10,000 times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems like no one is getting what is needed. Not the teachers. Not the students.

That probably should be repeated 10,000 times.

YES!!!!!!!!! This!!!!!!!
~FCPS teacher

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had 30 in kindergarten, including 3 children with significant behavior issues including physical aggression, then Covid hit so last 3 months were virtual. That was followed by 30 in virtual 1st. It was all horrible. I know there is no good solution. But it’s really bad for early learning. This was in the Vienna area, not wolftrap though.

It seems like no one is getting what is needed. Not the teachers. Not the students.

Do you know who is getting what they want? Parents who extinguish the idea of boundary adjustments that could be implemented to take advantage of available capacity in schools across the county. Their stubbornness and outcry is in part to blame for why we are in this situation with large class sizes.

[Anonymous]

I have two kids- the older is in FCPS and the youngest is at a Catholic school. My Catholic school first grader is in a class of 27 students!!!! (Making it 3 kids passed the cap.) Apparently they increase the cap due to a long waitlist. Anyway, I was annoyed by this at first, but my son said the class is “calm and fun”. My FCPS kid is in class with 20 students, I think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

Go over the principal's head. It's hard to hire teachers right now, but sounds like the principal is especially incompetent if they have sacrificed the first grade teachers. I bet there are a bunch of useless "coaches" walking around the school making more work for those poor teachers but not actually teaching any kids themselves. Bad principals love that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

Go over the principal's head. It's hard to hire teachers right now, but sounds like the principal is especially incompetent if they have sacrificed the first grade teachers. I bet there are a bunch of useless "coaches" walking around the school making more work for those poor teachers but not actually teaching any kids themselves. Bad principals love that.

Go over their head to do what? Complain about how they are complying with county regulations, which you don’t like? Please…try this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my child's school, the first grade classes (6 and 7 year olds) are a mess! This is the grade that includes all the kids whose parents didn't want them in virtual kindergarten and weren't able to do private the virtual year, so on top of the huge class sizes, there's a broad range of ages in this class - from the kids who are still 5 with birthdays next week to those that turned 7 halfway through Kindergarten last year. Our principal refused to hire an extra teacher despite the fact that last year's class sizes were also huge (but kindergarteners had an IA to help). It's awful, it's out of control, and there is no support for the poor first grade teachers. Is there anything we can do to petition the principal to hire a new teacher for next year? 30 kids in a first grade class is TOO MANY.

DS's first grade class had 32 kids in it 4 years ago. This is not a new thing.

+1 Not new at all. My oldest is a senior. This isn't going to change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Start supplementing with outside resources (AoPS is great) or make sure you are working with your child each day.

Class sizes, especially in high-performing schools, will not change. I'm so sorry.

What is AoPS?