Schools Go for the Gold

Throughout Southern California, once-jammed first-grade classes are shrinking to 20 pupils or fewer as educators scramble aggressively and creatively to take advantage of state bonuses for reducing classroom size. The reductions, intended to improve reading and other skills, cannot guarantee higher test scores (California’s have been abysmal), but they will assure greater individualized attention by the teacher, which is precisely what students need.

Low reading and math scores have put most California school districts on notice. The recent decline continues a discouraging trend, but now, for the first time in several years, higher-than-expected tax revenues have given state officials the money to try to apply the brakes. Proposition 98, approved in 1988, guarantees that a percentage of that money will be spent on education, so Gov. Pete Wilson is investing $971 million to reduce class size in primary grades, a proper and welcome decision.

When the Legislature approved the ambitious program less than two months ago, doubters said school districts would not have enough time to hire the additional teachers, buy portable classrooms or figure out how to make space on crowded campuses for more classes before the start of the school year or the state’s mid-February deadline. Proving that where there is a bonus there is a way, many educators have risen to the challenge.

In Southern California, Times staff writers Richard Lee Colvin and Amy Pyle have found districts converting auditoriums, libraries, computer labs and other available spaces into classrooms suitable for primary grades. Principals and teachers have worked overtime and on weekends during August--the one month that most educators take off for vacation--to recruit teachers and scare up even more room. Districts that achieve a ratio of 20 students to each teacher in the first or second grade by mid-February will receive $650 per pupil.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the nation, will see nearly half its schools offering smaller first- and second-grade classes this month. The LAUSD has hired in excess of 1,000 new teachers and is looking for more.

In Orange County, most of the two dozen elementary school districts have cut class size to take advantage of the state money. Every district except Anaheim’s has at least committed to getting class size down, and even the Anaheim district will try to shrink class size by doubling sessions.

Educators agree that first grade is the critical stop for students because that is where the emphasis is placed on reading skills. A bonus like this may not come around again for some time. California’s public schools should jump at the opportunity.