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

[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.

Your coalition of parents needs to make noise and lodge complaints with Gatehouse. Most principals are politicians and spin doctors and care only about their image and their career. “Caring about the kids” is just a line. While you are at it, lobby for these measures:

1. There needs to be a national mass purging of Ed.D. programs (if you don’t agree with me, go read your school principal’s dissertation on-line)

2. Public school systems need to figure out policies that prevent administrators from abusing their power for self-gain, and that stop rewarding them for manipulating policies that hurt education but inflate their statistics.

[Anonymous]

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.

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.

County regulations require packed classrooms? Interesting.

[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.

+1000

[Anonymous]

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?

THIS

[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.

Does anyone else feel like they are shouting at a wall....there are very few people who want to teach!!!!!. It's a huge part of the problem. Teachers, therapists, specialists are DONE! You can say "by law" all you want but you can not just "think" people into these positions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

Our local Catholic school is the same way - so many people moved there that the class sizes are huge, but because of the self selected group of people (white, catholic, wealthy), it's obviously calmer than a typical FCPS classroom.

[Anonymous]

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.

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.

County regulations require packed classrooms? Interesting.

Grow up. County regulations set the number of kids in the fall, which require another class to be opened. By not opening a class when the enrollment is lower than the requirement to open a new class is complying with County regulations.

[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.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

[Anonymous]

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.

I appreciate your honesty because Wolftrap is one of those wealthy schools where there is a lot of peer pressure to close ranks and put on a smiling face to keep up appearances and pretend everything is great, which a lot of people will insist upon to defend their real estate values. But the neglect and poor decision-making there is just one example of what’s been happening across FCPS for years, as this school system continues to decline with leadership and a School Board that can always make time to change school names, upend TJ admissions, or devote an entire work session to a silly initiative like the “social justice” academy at Lewis HS, but rarely focuses on overcrowded classrooms or schools. And, as you point out, the people who could do something about it and choose not to - like the former Wolftrap principal now at Thoreau - end up promoted rather than held accountable. It’s a shame a school system that was once well run has declined so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I suggest people look at the budget and look for things that can be cut to fund more teaching positions and increase teacher salaries.

+1

You only get smaller class sizes if you pay for them.

[Anonymous]

Just because kids get an aide on their IEP doesn't mean they can actually find an aide. One of my students required a nurse due to her newly diagnosed diabetes. Every day they couldn't find a nurse to come in (this was an outside contracted service), the little girl had to go home. It pissed me off that because she didn't have an IEP, they could get away with not making sure she had someone at school every day. I know students who do have IEPs who aren't getting their one-on-ones. They can barely find any teacher, let alone a certified special ed teacher. Aides are very hard to come by. They are paid peanuts but the students they have to deal with are often violent. It's a hard sell.

[Anonymous]

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.

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.

County sets an upper limit, not a lower limit. Very few schools meet the upper limit - it's basically a last resort. That has always been the way it's done. Although it's true that going over their head will accomplish little, but still....too many complaints and a principal gets some pressure from above, so it's still worth it to write to the Gatehouse paper pushers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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?

The Art of Problem Solving, it is a math enrichment program that is good for kids who enjoy math and are ahead. The other one commonly mentioned is the Russia School of Math.

[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.

The parents could have gotten their kids tested and diagnosed prior to going to school and could have avoided all this “mess”. They are responsible, not the school. Children that are on the spectrum get an IA assigned to them. Diagnosed children with proper paperwork done. Kids coming from head start have this ready to go and get IAs right in kindergarten. Wish parents parents in private preschools got their homework done instead of complaining about schools

Not all

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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

This is exactly what you should expect when you keep voting for the same crowd, so don’t act surprised when you get what you voted for. They funnel the money to the schools that serve the undocumented kids and assume others will pay for enrichment on the side.

Yawn. Get a new song instead of spewing Right Wing propaganda talking points.

He’s not wrong. I’m at a school with a very high farms rate (new immigrants and migrants). My dds first grade class is 18. I’m actually surprised that other schools in the county are 30 for first grade! We had 13 in her K class last year. It doesn’t help much though. We’re a failing school.

In what way? How are you defining this? Is your child failing and if not, why?

Pp here. The average of school is behind in both reading and math. It’s a 1 on great schools. Kids aren’t learning what they should learn. No my kid isn’t behind but that’s due to parent and grandparent tutoring. I think the school’s issue is that kids don’t know English when they arrive and then it’s downhill from there. Should be an immersion school in my opinion.