As Class Size Shrinks, Timing Is Everything

As the first day of school approaches, full-time homemaker Beverly O’Rourke is feeling more like a cabby and less like a mother of four.

“Let’s see,” she begins. “I have one who arrives at 7:45, then [two] at 8:25, then one at 9 o’clock--9:05, really. Then pickups are at 11:30, 1:45, 2:35 and 3:10.”

Translation: Each of O’Rourke’s children--a 4-year-old in preschool, a 7-year-old in second grade, a 9-year-old in fourth grade and a 13-year-old in eighth grade--is on a different class schedule, even though the three youngest all attend Madrona Elementary School.

Like all 18 of the Conejo Valley’s public elementary schools, Thousand Oaks’ Madrona and Ladera this fall will shrink class size for first-, second- and third-graders to 20 or fewer students for each teacher. But unlike the other elementaries, Madrona and Ladera will rely heavily on staggered schedules to fit the extra classes into the same number of classrooms.

At Ladera, classes will start at 8:10 or 8:25 a.m. and end at 2:20 or 2:35 p.m., depending on the grade level. For reading and mathematics, Ladera will ensure the 20-1 ratio with special morning breakaway sessions in the cafeteria and the library.

Madrona’s situation is more complex. Faced with too few rooms for too many classes, school administrators either had to stagger students’ daily schedules dramatically or cram 40 rambunctious youngsters and two teachers into one classroom all day.

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So when school starts Sept. 5, students will arrive in waves. All the first-graders and half of the second- and third-graders, a total of 176 youngsters, will arrive at 7:45 a.m. Then come the morning kindergartners and 271 children in fourth through sixth grades at 8:25. At 9:20, the remaining 94 second- and third-graders will show up. The end of the school day is similarly spaced. The students’ total instruction time will remain the same as on a traditional schedule.

Siblings in first through third grades are all but guaranteed the same schedule, but a second-grade brother and a sixth-grade sister would automatically have different schedules.

Madrona’s unorthodox timetable means that a dozen primary-grade teachers will share classrooms for part of the day. By juggling the times when classes begin, when recess is taken and when students leave, the youngsters will have the 20-1 ratio for reading and language arts. That is one of the primary goals of the new state law that provides $771 million to lower class sizes in primary grades.

Principal Pat Adams estimates that first-, second- and third-graders will spend half the school day in a class of 20 with a lone teacher and the remainder in a classroom shared by 40 students and two teachers.

“We could have stayed on the same schedule and had 40 kids with two teachers all day,” Adams said. “But we all felt that this was the better option.”

O’Rourke does not quibble with that analysis. And she is not angry that the better part of her day will be spent ferrying children to and fro. After all, O’Rourke’s second-grader will belong to the first generation of California schoolchildren to benefit from class-size reduction. She is just a mite frustrated.

“I’ve been joking with my husband that what I should do is get a motor home and camp out at school,” she said. “It can screw up your schedule, there’s no question about it.”

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But she realizes that the schools have no better choice.

“Unfortunately, Madrona is not in a position to have enough empty classrooms to give everyone their ultimate first choice: 20 students in one classroom with one teacher,” said Barbara Zieger, president of the school’s Parent Teacher Assn.

But parents are willing to sacrifice to have their children receive more one-on-one attention in a pared-down class, she said.

The father of three youngsters under the age of 10, Chuck Bucher will soon deal with staggered Madrona schedules too. With creative car-pooling and flexible job schedules, Bucher and his wife will get by.

“I don’t want to whine,” he said. “But it’s unrealistic for me to pick one kid up at 1:45 and wait 45 minutes to pick another one up.”

He predicted that parents will hover around the school waiting for all their children to leave.

Nursing student and mother Michele Kitka said she knows how to use the 45-minute interlude between her first- and third-graders’ exit and her fifth-grader’s. She and her two younger children will practice reading in the parking lot. “We can review vocabulary together,” she said. “It will be good reinforcement time.”

With any luck, parents and administrators said, the staggering of schedules and sharing of classrooms will only be stopgap measures until Madrona’s $2-million six-classroom expansion is completed in the fall of ’97.

School board members are already reviewing options on how to permanently meet the space demands of smaller classes and growing enrollment.

It’s a good thing, said parent Bucher. “If it is only going to be a one-year deal, that’s OK,” he said. “If it goes more than two years, I’m going to be angry.”

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FYI

At 7 p.m. Thursday, both Ladera and Madrona elementary schools are hosting open houses to discuss staggered scheduling.