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

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

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

County regulations require packed classrooms?  Interesting.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

+1,000. So sick of supposed adults like PP being willfully ignorant and pretending it’s cute. [/quote]

Not the PP, but an FCPS teacher and this is a case of parents reading a regulation somewhere and thinking they understand the real workings of a school.  The county requirement to open a new class is literal - it means you cannot have a larger class than that.  It does NOT mean you cannot have a smaller class.  Funding is complicated in schools, and there is quite a bit of discretion involved in how the funds are used.  Also a lot of county procedures and deadlines that make it either harder or easier at times to get more teachers and lower class sizes.  The end result is that the number of kids in the actual class at the start of the year is very likely not even the number of kids that the staffing formula was based on.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics