Many Districts Manage to Meet Class-Size Goals

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.

“Sometimes you have to just step up to the plate,” said Principal Roberta Benjamin, who spent the past month hiring teachers and freeing up classroom space on the campus of Middleton School in Huntington Park.

By turning the school’s computer center into a classroom and merging a child-care center and parent room, Benjamin was able to begin the new semester Friday with all Middleton’s first- and second-grade classes at the 20-student level.

Parents at the school were surprised and thrilled. Luz Orozco, mother of 7-year-old Estephania, learned of the change from other parents as she waited on the playground for the first day of school to begin.

“Oh, it’s so great! I heard on the news it was happening, but I didn’t know if it would happen here,” Orozco said in Spanish, explaining that she voluntarily held her daughter back a year because she did not learn to read last year in first grade. “Maybe the teacher will have more time to spend with her, to help her” with fewer students this year.

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 $650 the state will pay this year for each student in the smaller classes is not enough to cover all the costs involved, meaning 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.

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 on Tuesday, 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 Middleton Elementary, which pulled in one substitute teacher and hired five more without credentials, novice Frank Iniguez showed up for his first day of work in Room 47 wearing a dark suit, white shirt and tie.

The room was sparsely decorated and two computers in the corner were not even plugged in, but Iniguez had set each second-grader’s desk with a box of crayons, a pencil and a chocolate bar.

“Who is nervous?” he asked his students in Spanish, as a few giggled and raised their hands. “I’m very nervous.”

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.”

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

Don Benito Fundamental School in Pasadena will put four classrooms in its auditorium, divided by office partitions. That means the school will have to move its traditional back-to-school night, its Halloween carnival and its spring international potluck--attended by as many as 700 people--to other quarters.

Veteran teachers have volunteered to move their classes to the cramped and noisy auditorium spaces, giving over their full-size classrooms to the new teachers.

“I’ve been teaching over 30 years and I have always seen the value of small class size, and I’m just thrilled,” said second-grade teacher Donna Orr.

Not all schools and districts have joined the stampede.

Even though the Compton district is under control of a state administrator because of its poor performance, officials there are only now considering how they might implement class size reduction.

“Principals just came back to work the day before yesterday and we are now digging in,” George McKenna, the district’s top instructional administrator, said Thursday.

He said the district may have to reopen a closed school or even turn away kindergartners to create enough space to reduce the size of its first-grade classes.

Other 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 last thing we want to do is to do something just to do it,” said Assistant Supt. Jerry Livesey. “We want to show results for people.”

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, Martin Miller and correspondents Kate Folmar, Marilyn Martinez, Sylvia Oliande and John Gonzales.

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Reducing Class Sizes

With classes resuming on most campuses this week and next, schools throughout the state are scrambling to cut their first- and second-grade classes back to 20 students, to take advantage of a new state funding program. Here is the status of class-size reduction efforts in Los Angeles County’s 10 largest school districts:

District: 1. Los Angeles

No. of Students: 650,000

Grades being reduced: 48% of schools will start school with some 20-1 first- and second-grade classes. Still hiring teachers for remaining classes.

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District: 2. Long Beach

No. of Students: 78,000

Grades being reduced: 100% of first-grade classes expected to be 20-1. Some schools also will have smaller kindergarten, second and third grades.

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District: 3. Montebello

No. of Students: 32,000

Grades being reduced: Eleven of the district’s 18 schools will open with first-grade classes of 20-1. Hiring teachers to reduce others by February.

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District: 4. Pomona

No. of Students: 30,000

Grades being reduced: All kindergarten, first- and second-grade classes to be at 20-1 by February. Hiring teachers now.

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District: 5. Glendale

No. of Students: 29,000

Grades being reduced: Will begin reducing first-grade classes to 20-1 by Sept. 23, with all first grades reduced by February.

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District: 6. Compton

No. of Students: 28,000

Grades being reduced: Still planning for first-grade reductions. Recruiting and hiring teachers now.

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District: 7. Pasadena

No. of Students: 22,000

Grades being reduced: All first- and second-grade classes will be 20-1 when school starts. Still hiring teachers.

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District: 8. Hacienda-La Puente

No. of Students: 22,000

Grades being reduced: All first-grade classes will be 20-1 when school starts. Still hiring teachers.

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District: 9. ABC Unified

No. of Students: 21,000

Grades being reduced: All first- and second-grade classes will be 20-1 when school starts. Hired 55 new teachers.

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District: 10. Torrance

No. of Students: 21,000

Grades being reduced: All schools will open with first-grade classes of 20-1. Will reduce second grade by February.