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Schools struggle to keep up with class-size rules

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN

sackerman@tampatrib.com

Published: November 7, 2009

Updated: 11/07/2009 12:33 am

TAMPA - The Hillsborough County school district has spent nearly $1 billion on teachers, schools, and classroom additions since Florida passed a law forcing more of each.

Yet, like every district in the state, Hillsborough is still scrambling to meet an August deadline established in the law, the class-size amendment, which was approved by voters in 2002.

The amendment restricts class size to 18 for kindergarten through third grade, 22 for core classes - such as English and math - in middle school, and 25 for the core classes in high school.

What happens when No. 19, or 23 or 26 tries to get in?

Hillsborough is working to avoid its option of last resort - moving attendance boundaries, a prospect that already has parents up in arms.

Among preliminary recommendations:

•Reassign extra students to the nearest school with an available seat and have the district pay to transport them.

•Offer middle and high school students the option of taking courses online.

•Combine class space where elementary and middle schools share the same campus.

If none of this works, the district might have to take more drastic measures, such as requiring honors students whose classes are full to take regular courses.

Or move school boundaries, the absolutely last resort.

"We want to exhaust all the other options first," said Bill Person, chairman of a task force developing the recommendations. "But there are some schools where we have reached that point."

The task force, organized by Superintendent MaryEllen Elia, includes school officials, parents, real estate agents, city leaders and others. The group has been working for a year and will meet Dec. 1 before presenting a plan to Elia in January.

"It's our last attempt to pull this whole thing together," said Person, a former East Bay High teacher who recalls having 42 students in his English class.

Last year, legislators allowed school districts to meet the class-size mandate on a schoolwide basis by multiplying the number of classes by 19, 22 or 25 and coming up with an average class size. But, by next year, each class must adhere to the standards.

Monitoring close calls

The task force is monitoring 12 schools in danger of failing to comply by August, Person said. At the top of the list is Bryant Elementary near Westchase, which has 1,008 students and a year-old wing that still can't keep the school from inching beyond capacity.

The district has already moved the school's boundaries once, sending students to the new Deer Park Elementary. That was three years ago and not something Principal Karen Bass wants to put students and parents through again.

"People get used to a school," she said. "They get into the traditions of a school. It's a huge upheaval."

More kindergarteners than expected enrolled at Bryant this year - enough to fill a 10th class. Bass combined four classes into two and added an extra teacher to each class.

Next year, the principal will be faced with doing something similar for the first-grade class, with no guarantees more children won't move into the school's boundary.

Bass plans to meet with Person and parents to consider other options, including another boundary change.

"There will be a lot of opposition," said Bryant's PTA president, Sandra Benko, who has two children at the school. "This is really poor planning on the school board's part."

The problem is that school population is a moving target, Person said. Once August rolls around, "we could be doing this every day."

Looking to Tallahassee for help

Statewide, school officials are counting on lawmakers next spring to offer some slack in how the amendment is implemented. Perhaps they'll let districts comply at certain times instead of the whole school year or remove some classes, such as foreign languages.

But because class-size reduction is a constitutional amendment, Florida voters are the only ones who can change it.
School officials blame unforeseen complications of an amendment intended to benefit children.

Voters wanted school districts to stop balancing their budgets by increasing class sizes year after year, said Ron Steiger, assistant chief financial officer of Florida's largest school district, Miami-Dade County.

"The spirit behind the amendment has been met," he said.

Miami-Dade will comply with the schoolwide reduction, Steiger said, but when the mandate shifts to individual classes the county will spend an estimated $96.6 million a year to remain in compliance.

"I don't know how we'll do it," he said. "It's almost logistically impossible to do it."

In Pasco County, where the state allocated $72 million toward class-size reduction this fiscal year, the district hired 1,217 teachers to help meet the mandate, spokeswoman Summer Romagnoli said.

Pasco is no where near complying with the more restrictive mandate in August, she said.

"It's a long, complicated process that we're just now beginning to look at," she said.

The Pinellas district is building 195 classrooms at an estimated cost of $90.5 million, said spokeswoman Andrea Zahn. The cost of the additional 969 teachers hired from the time of the amendment's passage to date is $227.6 million.

"The impact on the general fund because of class size is staggering," Zahn said.

Researcher Buddy Jaudon contributed to this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144.

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