One Student Too Many May Be $105,000 Error

The Palmdale School District has too many students and not enough classrooms. One of the extra pupils may cost the district $105,758.

That’s the penalty officials face because of a violation of a complicated state Education Code formula triggered by one pupil too many in a single first-grade classroom.

State officials say it’s not an unusual occurrence, given California’s exploding population, its budget crunch and too many classrooms bursting with too many pupils. Nor is it unusual, they said Wednesday, that Palmdale’s school board voted unanimously Tuesday night to seek a waiver of the penalty.

If the waiver is denied, $105,758 will be deducted from the state’s next revenue payment to the district in February. If it is approved, the district, which has a $57-million yearly budget, will be spared the penalty.

Such waivers are usually granted if school districts can show that unavoidable factors, such as classroom availability and travel distance for students, led to the violation, said Nina Johnson, a field representative for the Local Assistance Bureau of California’s Department of Education.

“I can recall only one instance that the State Board of Education denied a waiver,” said Johnson, who recommends to the state board how it should respond to each waiver request. “In that case, the district involved didn’t give us all the information we required.”

Meanwhile, Palmdale school Supt. Forrest McElroy said he is “confident we can get the waiver, although I’m not pleased we have to seek it. I don’t make excuses when we have these kind of errors. But we do our very best to stay on top of things here. We’ve got principals trying to balance classroom size all over the place. Our district--especially this particular school at Joshua Hills--is growing like gangbusters.”

Part of the problem, McElroy said, was moving enough portable classrooms onto the campuses to keep pace with a skyrocketing enrollment, expected to reach 16,000 students by fall.

Actually, Palmdale’s problem didn’t occur just because one first-grade class at Joshua Hills Elementary School last spring contained 33 pupils--one more than the state maximum. That’s merely what prompted the state to take a closer look.

When the Palmdale district routinely submitted its enrollment figures, state officials said, the paperwork showed 25 first- through third-grade classrooms in excess of the state’s preferred size of 30 pupils each. They included: 12 classrooms with 32 pupils each, 12 more classrooms with 31 pupils each and the one classroom with 33 pupils.

Having 30, 31 or even 32 students in a class is legal but discouraged. That 33rd student at Joshua Hills prompted the penalty aimed at reducing class size across the district, officials said.

“Thirty-two pupils in one classroom is a number we can live with, if we have to,” said Lynn Piccoli, a state education analyst on class-size regulations. “We can’t allow 33, which, in this case, is what called our attention to the other classrooms that had more than 30 pupils each.”

McElroy said the district, which has built eight new schools since 1983, hopes to solve the problem by adding new classrooms on its campuses as soon as possible.