Schools in Irvine Start Reducing Class Sizes

Swiftly taking advantage of new state grants intended to decrease class sizes, the Irvine Unified School District has become perhaps the first in the state to launch a plan limiting classes to 20 in all first grades by next week.

“I have not heard of any school district that has schools ready to go next week,” said Dan Edward, the governor’s spokesman in the education office. “I would say with certainty that they are among the first to get this into action. . . . That’s very quick.”

School employees are scrambling to create classrooms after trustees voted for the $1.6-million plan on Tuesday limiting class size to 20 in first grades districtwide and in time for three year-round elementary schools opening Wednesday.

Irvine schools are sliding in classroom dividers and clearing out miscellaneous space to meet the deadline. Administrators also are rushing to hire the 33 teachers that will be needed, school officials said.

Starting next week, all first-grade classes throughout the Irvine district will be limited to 20. (Irvine’s other 18 elementary schools open in the fall.)

“We have been preparing for this eventuality,” Irvine Supt. Dennis Smith said. “But this really is a situation where we’ll be working round the clock.”

At El Camino Elementary School, a year-round school that begins sessions Wednesday, two new classrooms will be created by installing movable walls to divide three large classrooms into five smaller ones. Because those new classes will be under construction when school starts, Principal Jeff Herdman said, some first-grade teachers will have to share classrooms. But the student-teacher ratio of 20 to 1 will be met, he said.

Science laboratories, which are sometimes vacant, are being converted into temporary teaching rooms at El Camino, and open areas such as the school assembly stage will be furnished with round tables and chairs for instructional space.

Although the transition will be bumpy in the first several weeks of school, educators said that is a small trade-off for shrinking classes from their usual 32 to 20 students per classroom.

“I’m thrilled,” said Bruce Terry, principal of Vista Verde Elementary School, which also opens on Wednesday. “The notion of having 20 students in the classroom is wonderful. I’ve been apologizing for years for having 32. We won’t have to do that anymore.”

Anna Joslin, 28, one of the first-grade teachers hired by El Camino administrators last Friday, said her new job will be an adventure. Although getting hired at the last minute is not unusual, Joslin said she has never in her six years of teaching worked at a year-round school.

“I’ve been hired in a week in advance at another school,” she said. “But I’ve never had a class of 20. This is a wonderful opportunity.”

Irvine school administrators said they began developing class reduction plans in May after Gov. Pete Wilson proposed offering money to schools that would decrease class sizes to 20. The recently signed $971 million funding initiative will reimburse any school that has reduced class sizes in kindergarten to third grade by Feb. 16, 1997. Irvine officials said they expect the state grant will cover about 70%, or $1.1 million, of the total costs.

This district has the good fortune of having adequate space to expand, which is not true for many other school districts trying to draft class-size reduction plans.

Irvine administrators said they aim to reduce class sizes in second and third grades in the next year by buying portable classrooms and carving out additional space for students.

“That will be the tougher challenge,” Smith said.