Smaller Classes, Big Improvement

When Saddleback Valley Unified School District’s schools open in September, our K-2 students will have an educational experience unique to the last two decades. Their student-to-teacher ratio, which has been approximately 28 students to 1 teacher, will have been reduced to 20 students or fewer to 1 teacher.

As a parent, trustee and community member, I am excited by this long-awaited change, which allows us to create the best possible learning environment for our K-2 students. Class-size reduction has been a major concern and goal of mine for many years.

When Gov. Pete Wilson began talking about appropriating money to reduce primary class size, my first thought was that this was an opportunity we did not want to miss. Based on my previous experiences, I also knew that preliminary information about new funding might be quite different from the final legislation. As our district continues to research this opportunity, we have learned that we are faced with several challenges that we are determined to meet.

We are hiring more than 115 new K-2 teachers who are qualified and certified to meet the district’s high standards. We will need to spend additional district funds for materials and in-services for them.

Where we are going to house these teachers and their students is the first question asked by most people when they hear of this proposal. Our goal is to create separate classroom space for each group of 20 students as soon as possible. This will require more time and funding for most of our schools.

Our district will apply for these needed funds as soon as applications are available, probably in early August. Principals are investigating additional portable facilities. In the meantime, schools will create 20-to-1 student-to-teacher ratios within the confines of existing school facilities.

So, you may ask, why is reducing class size by eight to 10 students such an important issue? We, as parents, have long known the benefits that personalized attention has on student learning. As a classroom volunteer, I often saw children having to compete with the waving hands of 30 other students who were vying for the teacher’s attention.

We have tried as classroom volunteers to assist teachers so that they could give as much personalized and professional attention to our children as possible. Our reduction in class size will enhance our teachers’ abilities to respond to our children’s individual needs.

California has established an ambitious and necessary goal through this legislation. For too many years, the state’s children have been challenged by an educational system with some of the largest class sizes in the nation.

As a parent, I wish that my children could have received the benefits of this primary class size reduction.

As a trustee, I am thrilled that primary children in SVUSD will immediately benefit from the years of parental outcry over class size. And I say, it’s about time.