Anonymous wrote:Wait, I followed PP's link from page 2 and it looks like the planning factors did go down for 2023. Last year they WERE 26/26/28/28/30/30. But for 2023 they apparently went down to 24/24/26/26/28/28. That's still higher than they were (for 5th grade) in 2015, but it's better than last year.

Link: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/FY-2023-Adopted-Planning-Factors_as-of-Sep-21-2022.pdf

Anonymous wrote:Wow. The county planning factor for 4th and 5th grades is now 30 kids per class, and for 2nd and 3rd grades is now 28 kids per class? (Kindergarten and 1st grade are also pretty high at 26 kids each.) From 3rd page of previously posted link: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-22-Class-Size-Report.pdf

Holy moly. This is not the Arlington of 10 or 20 years ago.

Anonymous wrote:Property taxes at an all time high and we have school budget concerns. Unbelievable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Property taxes at an all time high and we have school budget concerns. Unbelievable.

I'm the PP who noted Mary Kadera's suggestion to increase class sizes to deal with budget concerns, but given the above comment wanted to add that the school budget concerns are not crazy or made up. Arlington spends more per child on schools than most other areas of Virginia, and has hundreds of thousands of dollars in school debt that it needs to get bonds for to pay off every year or two. Meanwhile construction costs went up so the buildings and other construction APS has planned over the last decade or two keep coming in over budget (and some of the buildings have just been prettier/fancier etc. than the district really needed). And we can't build a comprehensive 4th high school, but we keep hiring more people to work as staff at Syphax and I think only recently increased teacher pay consistent with what other school districts were doing? So the budget concerns are real, and class sizes had been slowly increasing even before Kadera, but I think she sped things up in that direction where previously the board had found other ways to deal besides increasing class sizes.

Also, a huge portion of the budget mess was created by previous superintendent Patrick Murphy.

Where did Mary call for increased class sizes? I must have missed that.

Anyways, she hasn't been on the board that long, so your focus on her is kind of odd. Class sizes went up many times before she got on the board.

I remember reading the same materials when she was running. She did some sort of recommendation about a slight increase of classes (but increase nonetheless) and it was a knock against her when she was going up against the other candidate. But most people did not vote in that primary / caucus /etc. She seems way better than the other SB members, but she did recommend increases

citation please

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Property taxes at an all time high and we have school budget concerns. Unbelievable.

I'm the PP who noted Mary Kadera's suggestion to increase class sizes to deal with budget concerns, but given the above comment wanted to add that the school budget concerns are not crazy or made up. Arlington spends more per child on schools than most other areas of Virginia, and has hundreds of thousands of dollars in school debt that it needs to get bonds for to pay off every year or two. Meanwhile construction costs went up so the buildings and other construction APS has planned over the last decade or two keep coming in over budget (and some of the buildings have just been prettier/fancier etc. than the district really needed). And we can't build a comprehensive 4th high school, but we keep hiring more people to work as staff at Syphax and I think only recently increased teacher pay consistent with what other school districts were doing? So the budget concerns are real, and class sizes had been slowly increasing even before Kadera, but I think she sped things up in that direction where previously the board had found other ways to deal besides increasing class sizes.

Also, a huge portion of the budget mess was created by previous superintendent Patrick Murphy.

Where did Mary call for increased class sizes? I must have missed that.

Anyways, she hasn't been on the board that long, so your focus on her is kind of odd. Class sizes went up many times before she got on the board.

I remember reading the same materials when she was running. She did some sort of recommendation about a slight increase of classes (but increase nonetheless) and it was a knock against her when she was going up against the other candidate. But most people did not vote in that primary / caucus /etc. She seems way better than the other SB members, but she did recommend increases

Anonymous wrote:Where is this years class size report? The year is almost OVER????

Anonymous wrote:Wow. The county planning factor for 4th and 5th grades is now 30 kids per class, and for 2nd and 3rd grades is now 28 kids per class? (Kindergarten and 1st grade are also pretty high at 26 kids each.) From 3rd page of previously posted link: https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-22-Class-Size-Report.pdf

Holy moly. This is not the Arlington of 10 or 20 years ago.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey, I am the PP who was blaming Mary Kadera above for the increased class sizes, and I need to sincerely apologize. I thought I remembered reading materials from her suggesting that class sizes should be increased when she was running for school board, as an obvious starting point for budget cuts. I must have been wrong, and I'm sorry for that!

She has said in debates and her newsletter indicating that she thinks increasing class sizes is fair game for reigning in budgets and cited research about how research on class sizes is mixed (which is correct).