VENTURA : District Penalized for Overcrowded Classes

As a penalty for putting more elementary school students in classes than California law allows, the Ventura Unified School District has lost nearly $200,000 in state funding for the next school year.

But school officials expect to get all of the money back in February after they petition state officials to waive the penalty.

The school district board will hold a public hearing at 7:45 p.m. Tuesday to formally consider applying for the waiver.

The California Department of Education reduced its June payment to the Ventura district by $197,291, or nearly 20%, as a penalty for the district’s exceeding the state maximum of 32 students per elementary school class.

Although Ventura has a policy of limiting classes at its 13 elementary schools to 30 students per teacher, a round of budget-cutting over the past four years has left the district so tightly staffed that it sometimes has too few teachers for the number of students, officials said.

The district began last school year with all of its elementary school classes having 30 or fewer children. But mid-year changes in enrollment caused classes at some schools to exceed even the legal limit of 32.

Will Rogers School had one primary grade class of 33 students, a situation that school officials said was unavoidable. The overcrowded class was for bilingual education and all of the students had limited English skills.

Poinsettia School also had one class of 33 students. There, officials said it was impossible to transfer children out of the crowded class because all classes at that particular grade level were at the maximum size.

The state discovered that overcrowded classes when Ventura sent the Department of Education its annual report on enrollment in April.

Ventura was penalized once before about two years ago for exceeding the state’s class size limit, Assistant Supt. Gerald Dannenberg said. That penalty was waived.

State education officials said Friday that they will probably also waive the district’s penalty this year if they agree with Ventura’s contention that the overcrowding was temporary and unavoidable.

Statewide, 64 school districts were penalized last school year for exceeding the maximum allowed class size.