Class-Size Reduction Poses Quandary

As the Los Angeles Board of Education met Tuesday to discuss the progress of reducing primary class size to 20 students, a troubling undercurrent interrupted the flow of the superlatives.

Yes, the Los Angeles Unified School District already has put 117,023 first- and second-grade pupils in smaller classes, moving faster than anyone ever thought the massive system could.

“It’s just incredible,” said board member Victoria Castro.

But continued pressure from parents and politicians to spread the state-funded reform into other grades will force the school board to make some politically uncomfortable decisions in the coming weeks.

Cutting two classes from 30 to 20 means finding a third classroom for the extra students. Those schools that have the extra classrooms are agitating for the school board to extend the class-size reduction program to kindergarten and third grades, as the state now encourages.

But beneath that simple demand lies a political quandary: Expanding the program would benefit the district’s “haves” more quickly than the “have-nots.”

Campuses with space tend to be in wealthier areas, where public school population growth has been slower. Schools in poorer, denser areas have no free rooms and playgrounds are already crowded with portable classrooms.

“If there are schools that are able to do more and are told ‘no,’ we’ll have an open revolt on our hands,” said board member Mark Slavkin, whose district stretches from the Westside to the west San Fernando Valley. “It would be an untenable situation in a district talking about local control.”

Of 420 elementary schools in the district, two-thirds have room in existing classrooms to add kindergarten because it meets for just half the day, according to preliminary district estimates. However, only half of the elementary schools could cut the size of their third-grade classes, and only 40% could cut both kindergarten and third-grade class size.

Of those that could manage third grade, the majority are in middle-class neighborhoods on the Westside, in the west San Fernando Valley and in the harbor area.

Of those that couldn’t cut third-grade class size, a majority are downtown or to the south, on the Eastside and in Southeast Los Angeles.

None of the cluster of elementary schools around Bell High School could reduce class size without more portable classrooms, for instance, and only one in four near downtown’s Belmont High would be capable of doing so.

Beyond merely squeezing more portables onto already packed campuses, at least four major options lie ahead: finding alternatives to compensate schools that cannot add grades, forcing more schools to operate on a year-round schedule, focusing on ways to reduce kindergarten class size for part of the day, and evaluating the possibility of building new “primary centers,” serving kindergarten through third grade, in crowded areas.

The district must submit its tentative plans to the state by June 30 and could vote on alternatives at its June 16 meeting.

School board President Jeff Horton emphasized Tuesday that parent demands must be weighed with equity concerns, particularly because the school district must meet requirements of a court-approved consent decree aimed at equalizing spending across the district.

“It’s not a student’s fault that they attend a school that does not have space,” he said.

Increasing the number of year-round schools would ensure “everybody sort of pulled the load equally,” Horton said, noting that the district’s uneven growth patterns mean that a crowded year-round school can stand just blocks from one operating on a traditional calendar.

Horton has previously talked of perhaps lessening the sting for the have-nots by offering them other educational enhancements, such as a roving science teacher or a full-time music teacher. If test scores are the ultimate measure of the reform’s success, Horton said, there’s no proof that simply making classes smaller would work better than adding such enrichments.

But whether such compensation would be viewed as adequate in the inner city remains to be seen. Castro, whose district stretches across the Eastside and into downtown, begged for understanding that “we’re one district” and it would not be fair for students to “have opportunities in one area of the district and not in another.”

Funding also is uncertain because none of those enrichments could be reimbursed out of the $800 per pupil the state provides to schools in the coming budget year to reduce class size to a 20-1 ratio.

Gov. Pete Wilson last year launched an initiative to reduce first- and second-grade class size from roughly 30-1 to 20-1 with a subsidy of $666 per child. Bolstered by unanticipated tax revenues, Wilson earlier this month proposed boosting spending on the program to $1.5 billion in the coming school year and raising the per-pupil subsidy.

One Los Angeles district option that would qualify for state reimbursement is reducing the teacher-student ratio for half of the kindergarten day by increasing team teaching. Currently, morning kindergarten teachers team up with their afternoon counterparts for a minimum of an hour a day, and vice versa. If that partnership is increased by 40 minutes, the district could gain half-funding--$400 per child. The change could be made districtwide without any additional classrooms, officials say.

When the idea came up late last year, the teachers union polled its members and found they disliked it on two fronts: Kindergarten teachers thought they already carried a heavy load and teachers in other grades resented the suggestion that there might be a bonus associated with the extra work. They pointed out that even with the 40 additional minutes, the kindergarten teachers would work a slightly shorter day than other elementary school teachers. But union President Day Higuchi said the union is ready to talk about that and other kindergarten alternatives.

Another solution that could be reinvigorated by the additional state funding is building small primary schools in the district’s most crowded regions. Such centers typically require little space and can be built quickly and cheaply.

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By the Numbers

Here is a look at some of statistics so far related to L.A. Unified’s effort to shrink class size as part of a statewide education reform:

* First-and second-graders in smaller classes: 117, 023

* Total smaller classes: 6,251 (98% of first and second grades)

* Teachers hired to achieve 20:1 ratio: 2,226

* Portable classrooms: 950 ordered, 510 delivered, 404 ready

* Cost of changes: $119.5 million

* State reimbursement: $92.5 million