School administrators elected to keep the first grade class at Welches
Elementary School at 34 students this year, after considering options and
parent input following a school board meeting on Monday, Sept. 12.

The plan of attack includes using additional educational assistants, Title 1 aids
and parent volunteers to help with the large class size.

Principal Alex Leaver noted two other options were considered: creating two
classes with both first and second grade students with one third grade class,
or having one first grade class, one class with both first and second grade
students and one third grade class.

“In working through those, we found none of them were glorious solutions,”
Leaver said,

noting that a general education aid will help the students with reading in the
morning, math in the afternoon and will be available for one-on-one work in
the middle of the day.

“We’re off and running with this,” he added. “We know we don’t have as an
option some sort of district money.”

Leaver noted that the school expected 28 or 29 students in the first grade this
year.

Local parents spoke out about the class size at the board meeting, held at
Welches Elementary School, including Kelli Ewing, mother of twins in the first
grade.

“I’ve helped in the classroom ... unless you have someone on staff, there’s still
going to be a gap there,” said Ewing, a Mountain resident for four years. “The
classrooms are small; they’re not made for that many children. They can
barely fit on the carpet (and) it’s kind of hard for the kids to move around in
there.”

Camille Shibley has used parent volunteers at the preschool she runs, and has
mixed thoughts on how they can fill the gaps in the first grade classroom.

“I don’t think it does the trick,” said Shibley, a Mountain resident for 35 years
who had two children go all the way through the school system. “It’s good to
have parent volunteers, but you’re going to get different kinds and it’s not
going to be consistent.”

The school was able to deal with a large kindergarten class earlier in the year,
when the 34 kindergarten students were split into two classes of 17 each.
Leaver used Title 1 funding (given to schools based on the number of students
receiving free or reduced lunches) to facilitate that reduction, but no money
was left over.

“I didn’t have another bag of tricks to dip into,” Leaver said about the first
grade class size, adding that there was a “real sense of satisfaction” about the
kindergarten class solution. “I didn’t have another budget to redesign to help
first grade.”

Those kindergarten students could provide similar difficulties next year when
they become first graders, but Leaver said they can’t be sure what the
enrollment will be at this point.

For the 2012-13 school year, they are already anticipating one morning
kindergarten class, one afternoon kindergarten class, two classrooms with
mixed first and second graders, one classroom of mixed second and third
graders, one classroom of mixed third and fourth graders and two classrooms
of mixed fourth and fifth graders.

Leaver added that the hope is to keep class sizes down to approximately 28
students.

Ewing would like to see the school district set a limit on class sizes, saying
that the state has laws governing the number of children allowed in daycare,
but nothing that sets student-to-teacher ratios.

“I wish the district would come up with a standard and stick to it,” Ewing said.
“That would make me feel better if they would say they wouldn’t go over a
certain number.

“They can just keep increasing it if they’re not going to spend the money to
hire additional staff. It sounds like it’s going to be an ongoing issue. I think
that’s why a lot of the parents are going to be upset.”

Kurt McKnight, the Zone 3 (Welches) member of the Oregon Trail School
Board, sees the larger issue as a lack of priorities at the state level.

“We do not do an adequate job of funding our education system,” said
McKnight, adding that district administrators have done a good job with the
available funding. “I think the only way that’s going to change is all of us; we
need to put pressure on our elected officials to make education a priority.
“None of us, as board members, like what’s going on.”

Welches teacher Denise Emmerling-Baker added, “In these difficult financial
times, (English Language Learners), Title 1 and (Special Education staff) are
working together to support classroom teachers. Oregon legislators need to
allocate more funding toward education and reduce authorization of bills that
take money away from public schools. Educational reform must be lead by
teachers and other staff working in schools.

“Legislators need to spend time in classrooms of 34 first graders to truly
experience why our children deserve smaller classes through more
educational funding.”