Many Districts Cut Class Sizes

When pint-sized Southern California students return to school during the next two weeks, thousands of them will experience the eerie feeling that a third of their classmates have vanished.

And indeed they have, moved not only to other classrooms, but to makeshift spaces in auditoriums, libraries and even onto campus lawns as part of a sweeping effort to bring test scores up by bringing class sizes down.

Prodded by the chance to share a $971-million pot of state funds, school districts throughout the region have moved faster than expected to embrace what may be the most popular educational reform in state history.

Less than two months ago, the state Legislature approved a plan to give school districts at least $19,500 per class that is shrunk to 20 students, starting with first grade. They have until February to qualify for the grants, but most shifted into high gear this summer and many will begin school this month with at least some of their classes smaller than they have ever been.

To do so, educators have had to beat the bushes for qualified teachers, set new priorities for using every inch of campus space, rejigger schedules to stagger class sessions, redistribute students into new classes and decide how to use the new intimacy to achieve the initiative’s goal of improving reading and math instruction.

At Anatola Elementary School in Van Nuys, school officials found space on the already cramped campus by turning the school’s newly completed computer center back into a classroom and eliminating rooms for parent meetings and the school reading specialist.

“I feel like I couldn’t have graduated at a better time. Having 20 students in the class is definitely an incentive,” said Kelly Beardsley, 22, who in early August was hired to teach second grade at Harding Elementary School in Sylmar.

“This just seemed to be the right time for work as a teacher,” Beardsley said, as she covered her classroom’s white walls with brightly colored construction paper to welcome her new students this week.

In mid-July, when Gov. Pete Wilson signed the class-size legislation, educators experienced momentary panic, envisioning the work ahead. But many returned early from their summer vacations and buckled down, spending long days and weekends at work through the hottest month of the year.

The activity peaked last week, with furniture being moved, newly built walls painted and teachers signing employment contracts. As a result, in Orange County 23 of 24 districts serving primary grades will offer smaller classes in at least the first grade on the first day of school. In Ventura County, every school district serving those grades has cut some classes. In Los Angeles County, seven of the 10 largest school districts--and many others, as well--will start the fall semester with at least some of their classes scaled back to 20 students.

“Everybody’s fingers are crossed, but it should work,” said Myrna Fujimoto, deputy superintendent of the Long Beach Unified School District, where all elementary schools expect to have smaller classes in first grade starting Thursday.

“The excitement, the thoroughness and the commitment has been incredible,” she said. “We’ll do just about anything” to make it work.

In Manhattan Beach, officials had been tracking the class size legislation since last spring, and in May they began establishing a pool of eligible teacher recruits.

By last week, the 3,800-student district had all its new teachers in place. And when school starts, all first- and second-grade students will be in classrooms of 20 students or less.

“We’ve hired all 17 teachers, we’ve got the rooms ready to go . . . and we don’t start school until Sept. 11, so we feel real, real good,” said Supt. Gerald F. Davis.

And even in the giant Los Angeles Unified School District--the target of critics who say it should be broken up to make its lumbering bureaucracy more nimble--response to the new plan was remarkably swift. Within days of the legislation’s passage, officials were ordering portable classrooms and planning informational workshops for principals.

Several year-round campuses in the 650,000-student system got going with smaller classes last week and, by next week, more than 200 of the 442 elementary schools are expected to be ready to join them.

“If I were to have guessed at the beginning, I would not have thought this could happen this quickly here,” said Assistant Supt. Gordon Wohlers. “But after . . . seeing the level of enthusiasm and energy, I am not surprised.”

Response was not always swift, however, disappointing parents and teachers at some schools.

“Teachers were thinking that it was an automatically done deal,” said Joyce Brooks, executive director of the teachers union in Compton, where planning for class-size reduction has barely begun, though school resumes next week. “The worst part,” she said, “is that the kids get hurt.”

Even for those districts that have moved ahead, many questions remain as they search for the money, space and teachers to staff each new classroom created when two are reduced.

The Castaic Union School District will reduce first-grade classes at the cost of making room for a library, which has been set up on the auditorium’s stage for the past eight years. The stacks of library books will remain on the stage for another year or more, until district officials can find another spot.

“We were finally hoping to use the stage for what it was intended for, but that’s just not going to happen,” said Supt. Alan Nishino. “We’ve always been crunched for space and it’s going to continue for a while.”

The $650 the state will pay this year for each student in the smaller classes is not enough to cover all the costs involved, so local officials will have to cut expenses elsewhere.

“By the time you hire a teacher and include all of the health benefits and supplies, the estimated cost per teacher is about $48,000,” said Robert Nolet, superintendent of Sulphur Springs Union School District in the Santa Clarita Valley. But money from the state will not cover those costs. “I just think funding all of this is going to be an ongoing issue for all districts,” Nolet said.

So far, hiring enough teachers to make the move has been the most difficult challenge school districts faced. Statewide, at least 19,500 teachers would be needed to staff the new classes if all schools reduce class sizes in first and second grades, but only about 5,000 newcomers are certified annually.

“Staffing is just going to be a constant challenge for us to pull this thing off well,” said Joseph Fazio, superintendent of the Saugus Union School District.

The district’s 11 elementary schools have been operating with 20 students enrolled in first-grade classes for the past two weeks. The district hired 18 new teachers to get started, but Fazio said he’s concerned that he won’t be able to find more instructors to implement the program in the second grade.

Suburban and more affluent districts such as Las Virgenes, Manhattan Beach and San Marino have had little trouble recruiting enough veteran teachers, but districts in urban areas and those that need bilingual teachers have had a difficult time scooping up even enough neophytes.

“We’ve hired people from private schools, some who were teaching in foreign schools, some brand-new people, some who just finished their student teaching, some who will be interns and some veterans,” said Chris Chavez, assistant superintendent for human resources in the ABC Unified School District, based in Cerritos.

The Montebello Unified School District, where 48% of the students do not speak English fluently, will still be hiring today, the day before school starts.

And though an aggressive recruitment effort has allowed Los Angeles Unified to fill more than 1,100 openings, it still needs to fill up to 1,500 more.

As a result, last week the district’s personnel office had last-minute applicants filling every chair, sitting on hallway floors and leaning on waiting-room walls.

Inside one office stood an exasperated Tara Lee, an Oregon native recruited by district officials on a trip last month to Portland, where layoffs have created a ready supply of would-be teachers.

“I can’t believe I’m here,” said Lee, who flew to Los Angeles with her father, then spent all day traveling from one district office to another. “Now if I could just get them to call my name, everything would be fine.”

The massive class-size plan has become the equivalent of a teacher full-employment act, making it possible for thousands of eager first-timers to get a foot in the door of a classroom.

At Logan Elementary in Echo Park, June college graduate Tim Kusserow had nearly bare walls too until his former third-grade teacher surprised him with a carload of her teaching supplies.

“I remember learning from this stuff,” Kusserow said excitedly, sorting through piles of wall charts and equipment. “Now I just have to put it all up.”

Many were not so lucky, however. The aisles of teacher supply stores were jammed last week, as newly hired teachers tried to stock up on back-to-school essentials, spending hundreds of dollars from their own pockets.

“I went to five different stores yesterday to get just the right supplies,” said Karen van Antwerp, 25, who will begin teaching first grade this week at Harding Street School in Sylmar.

Many of the new teachers will wind up sharing space. At the nation’s largest grammar school, the 2,500-student Miles Avenue Elementary in Huntington Park, 40 students and two teachers squeezed into each of five classrooms last week.

Such arrangements will be common in Los Angeles and other districts this fall, but administrators hope they are a temporary fix until portable classrooms arrive. Even the state Department of Education, in its printed advice to districts, has cautioned that such compromises, although sometimes necessary, are inadvisable.

Up and down the state, districts are counting on the arrival of the bungalows to enable them to move classes out of libraries that had been kept alive by PTA volunteers and computer rooms that showcased the school’s commitment to cutting-edge technology.

Auditoriums, special education resource rooms, parent rooms, teacher lounges and other spaces also have been consumed by the hunger for what the state terms “teaching stations.”

“None of them are unsafe,” said Bill Bibbiani, who is honchoing class-size reduction in the Pasadena Unified School District. “We’re putting them in reasonable spaces but some of them are more or less unsatisfactory for the long term.”

Yet the facts offer little reason to think things will change quickly. Los Angeles Unified initially ordered 500 portable classrooms, the largest such order in the state, but many may not be in place until next summer, and far more are needed. Other districts are on months-long waiting lists with the swamped companies that build such classrooms. Rumors are circulating of price hikes and bidding wars.

More creative alternatives popped up here and there--some improvised on the first day, others meticulously crafted over weeks.

At Ventura County’s Larsen Elementary, a teacher who showed up last week to find her portable classroom had not arrived wound up holding class on the school lawn.

Students at Thousand Oaks’ Madrona Elementary will arrive for school this week on a staggered schedule--one group at 7:45, the next at 8:25, then at 9:20--so each can be in a smaller class for at least half the day.

Some parents are already grumbling about the multiple pickup and drop-off times.

“I’ve been joking with my husband that what I should do is get a motor home and camp out at school,” said Beverly O’Rourke, whose three youngest children all have different schedules. “It can screw up your schedule, there’s no question about it.”

Despite scattered complaints, the push to reduce class size has fostered an in-the-trenches camaraderie among parents, teachers, principals and district officials.

Not all schools and districts have joined the stampede.

At Cantara Street Elementary School in Reseda, Principal Sandra McGuern said she needs portable classrooms moved to her campus before she can implement the new state mandate.

“I can hire new teachers for the start of school, but I’ll have nowhere to put them,” she said.

In Granada Hills, Van Gogh Street Elementary School has been operating out of portable classrooms located at Frost Middle School after Van Gogh was closed following the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

“Even if we wanted to bring portables on to do this, there’s just no space here,” said Principal Maureen Diekmann.

Next June, Diekmann said, administrators hope to begin hiring teachers to implement the reduced classes when the school moves back to its own building the following September.

Many other Valley schools will need several months to implement the class reductions.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity and we need it, but we want to do it right and effectively rather than do it too fast just to get it done,” said Burton Elementary School Principal Norman Bernstein.

Some districts have held back because they hope to make the class-size reduction effort the cornerstone of a broader districtwide make over.

Pomona, for example, plans to shrink class rolls in all kindergarten through second-grade classrooms by February. It already has hired half of the 160 teachers it will need, and is searching for the rest.

Until February, each of those new teachers will work alongside a pair of veterans, and receive extensive training in how to teach reading and work with small classes.

“I feel better having 32 students with an experienced teacher than I do with 20 and a totally inexperienced teacher,” said Rebecca Ryan, president of the Pomona district’s governing board. So the district plans to move slowly to add the new classes and focus on preparing its teachers, she said.

The state is also eager to see results from one of the largest-ever infusions of cash for a single educational purpose. Although a statewide testing program is unlikely to be ready for use until the turn of the century, some districts are devising their own ways to measure the impact of smaller class sizes.

Capistrano Unified will test first- to third-graders this month in reading and math, then again in the spring to gauge progress.

Opinions vary on how quickly results might be seen.

Claudio Enriquez, a first-grade teacher at the 1,220-student Eucalyptus School in Hawthorne, said state policymakers should not expect an immediate return on their investment.

“If the results aren’t there yesterday, they’ll think it’s not working, but it may take 10 years to see results,” he said. “You just don’t know.”

Contributing to this story were staff writers Lucille Renwick, Tina Nguyen and Martin Miller and correspondents Kate Folmar, Marilyn Martinez, Sylvia Oliande and John Gonzales.

* TIME CRUNCH: Valley schools scramble to implement order. B1