Anonymous wrote:Wow, what a terrible student to teacher ratio. Class size really matters in the early grades. Personally, I would not accept this. If the school doesn't open another class, I would go private or homeschool. I am totally not the homeschooling type, but I would do it in this situation while I packed and looked for a house in Montgomery (green zone) or Fairfax County. Are there any policies or regulations about class size in PG County? Do most school districts have an official policy in regard to this matter?

Montgomery has some serious overcrowding issues in some schools, so I wouldn't assume this is a problem unique to PG County.

In fact, I believe there are some highly rated Howard County schools with overcrowding issues.

The question is, are there teaching assistants? If so, it isn't as big an issue. They likely break the class down into groups.

OP, thanks for posting this thread. This is a real eye-opener about the issues that I will have to look for in less than two years. I am formulating a list of questions/concerns for my district representative?

Keep us updated. Hopefully it is just that they had unexpected last minute enrollment and they can hire or move a teacher accordingly.

OP here
Thanks for the information. I have a phone call scheduled with the Principal today. I've worked with her before and she is completely reasonable and approachable. I guess I just want to know what it going on and how they are going to address it.
I did a bit of research and the State Rated Capacity for Kindergarten is 22 but that value is only used to determine if a school is at capacity, it's not a maximum number of kids per class (from what I can parse out from the Department of Ed site).
Technically, our school is not at capacity because a lot of kids get placed in magnet schools before the reach the higher grades, so those are under enrolled. I think that you are right about the late enrollment issue. The first day of school there were only 25 kids on the official roster and the other names were penciled in at the bottom. My issue is that for the last 3 years enrollment in K has been about the same but this year they have one less teacher. I'm curious to hear what the rational is.
I am going to ask her if moving one of the 2nd or 3rd grade teachers to K is an option. It looks like there are around 20-22 kids per class there so taking away one of the teachers would make those classes close to 28...which I'm sure won't be too popular with those parents.
I'm a big proponent of public schools and am willing to deal with the system....I just was hoping I wouldn't have to do it so soon.

Also if class size in the other grades is closer to 20, what will most likely happen is that one of the teachers from a higher grade goes to kindergarten if the principal has used up all of their allotted funds in school based budgeting.

State rated capacity for kindergarten is not 30 kids per class. I'm not sure of the exact formula but it should be something like 24 with 5% error depending on the number of classes in each grade. If a school has three or four classes with 30 kids there is enough kids for an additional class. Schools get a certain amount of money per child and more for Title 1, high performing and ESOL to hire additional teachers. Unfortunately what happens at a lot of schools is that when parents don't register until just before the start of school, the school administration just has an estimate of the number of expected children. When that reaches more than the allowed number schools have to hire a teacher the first or second week of school. It happens the other way around too where schools have less kids than estimated ands they have to let a teacher go. Of course this means that kids will get shuffled until hiring gets sorted out. Union contract rules provide until Sept. 30th to move around teachers. Your school should be at least hiring a long term sub and splitting the classes into more manageable numbers until they hire a full time teacher for the new class.

OP please ignore 14:37. We used to have teachers assistants for K before budget cuts a few years back, so clearly it was not meant to have such huge classes for one teacher. If you have concerns about the ratio bring it up to the principal. I would also go back to the PG County website. When Baker was implementing the takeover, there were a couple of email addresses where residents could provide suggestions and voice concerns. Send an email constantly until you get a response. Also cc: your board representative. I would also start attending some board meetings and get on the agenda. People have to start speaking up if we want changes to be made. The attitude of 14:27 is why we continue to have a school system that doesn't work for many of the residents.