Fullerton School District Board Decides to Cut More Class Sizes
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FULLERTON — Kindergarten and second-grade classes in the Fullerton School District will be reduced to 20 pupils per class in the 1997-98 school year, the school board decided Tuesday.
“This is one chance in a million to have smaller classes,” said school board member Marjorie Pogue, a retired elementary school teacher. “When I was a teacher, I always asked, ‘Why can’t we have smaller classes?’ This is our once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
The district currently has no more than 20 students in each of its first-grade classrooms. Over the past several months, trustees of the elementary school district have held a number of workshops and public hearings as they considered expanding the state-initiated class-size reduction program into kindergarten and second grade.
The plan approved Tuesday calls for the purchase of portable buildings and some classroom construction to convert two rooms to three. In addition, day-care programs will be eliminated at two schools to free those rooms, and a social services program will be dropped at one school.
The lost programs may be brought back, officials said, if the district can find ways to save them while maintaining the smaller classes.
For now, however, trustee Kim Ann Guth said, “Education has to come first. We can’t make everybody happy, but we can sure make responsible decisions.”
The action included a provision that the district study implementing year-round schooling, opening the old Beechwood School site and teaching sixth-grade at the junior high schools instead of at the elementary schools to free more classroom space and possibly save the day-care programs that a number of parents want to keep.
Funding for the program will come from the state. How much the district will get still is being debated. If the amount is $666 per pupil as anticipated, the district still would need to spend an additional $400,000 to implement the program.
If the state allotment is $750 or $800 per pupil, the district’s cost would be reduced by about half.
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