95% of Eligible School Districts to Cut Class Sizes

By February, nearly 1 million California primary grade students will be enjoying the time and space that come with sharing a classroom and teacher with only 19 others--thanks to the state’s $1-billion class-size reduction program.

When it was being drafted last summer, the state’s effort to improve reading and math achievement by shrinking the number of students in early grades prompted doubts that schools would have enough time to rejigger campuses and hire enough teachers to reduce class size from 30 or more students to 20.

But on Monday, state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin announced that not only have 95% of the state’s eligible school districts chosen to take part, there is money left over from the amount allocated to pay for staffing, furnishing and stocking the new classrooms.

“What was once considered an impossibility is now a wonderful reality,” Eastin said. “I think it took a lot of imagination and a lot of risk-taking.”

Gov. Pete Wilson, who signed legislation creating the program in July, said in a statement that the enthusiastic response was gratifying.

School districts “from Sacramento to San Diego . . . have come together to make class-size reduction not only a priority, but a reality,” Wilson said. “And they’re doing so to help give teachers a chance to give each student the individual attention necessary for them to learn the gateway skills of reading and math--a laudable goal indeed.”

Under the program, the state made $771 million available to pay school districts $650 for each student enrolled in smaller classes all day. Half that amount would be paid for students in smaller classes part of the day.

On Monday, Eastin announced that schools have applied for only $630 million under that formula, leaving a surplus of $141 million. School districts had until Nov. 1 to join the program, and they have until February to put the smaller class sizes into effect.

The Los Angeles Unified School District will get $80 million to pay for the 2,145 smaller classes it will create in the first and second grades. The highest figure in Orange County goes to the Capistrano Unified School District, which will receive just over $6 million for the first through third grades.

News of the surplus represented a stark contrast to Eastin’s announcement in October that school districts were facing the likelihood of having to pick up a larger-than-expected share of the cost of building or purchasing the structures in which to house the additional classes.

The class-size reduction legislation included only $200 million for those capital expenses, which was $151 million less than districts said they needed--or, roughly the same amount as the surplus Eastin announced Monday.

Eastin said she will ask the Legislature to shift the surplus operating funds to help cover that deficit but she also is pushing for the Legislature to put before the voters a $3-billion statewide bond measure.

Under a plan backed by state Sen. Leroy Greene (D-Carmichael), about a third of the bond money would be set aside for creating new classrooms for class-size reduction purposes. That would be enough money to cover the cost of classrooms for kindergarten through third grade statewide.

Earlier in the fall, the Legislature declined to put a bond measure on the November ballot, because of a split between Republicans and Democrats over how communities could raise their local share of school construction costs.

Now, with Democrats in the majority in both houses, it might be easier to get a bond measure placed before the voters. But the timing of that measure is thought to be delicate politically.

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Some education officials worry that a small voter turnout, which would almost be guaranteed at a special, off-year election, might decrease the chance of a large school expenditure passing.

Eastin also said she will ask Wilson to expand the popular class-size reduction program to serve all students in kindergarten through third grade, an idea that aides say Wilson is giving careful consideration.

But it would be hard for crowded districts such as Los Angeles Unified to expand the program to all four grades without additional funds for new buildings.

Gordon Wohlers, the assistant superintendent in charge of class-size reduction efforts for Los Angeles Unified, said the district has ordered 1,000 portable classrooms that will be in place by next October.

Even so, the 668,000-student district is 27,000 seats short of what it needs to reduce the size of all first-grade classes. In addition, the district this fall experienced its largest-ever one-year enrollment increase of more than 18,000 students.

That means classes are meeting in computer rooms, parent centers, auditoriums and libraries or are sharing rooms.

“The only solution in the future is new construction,” Wohlers said. “Even if we had the money in place right now, we wouldn’t get those schools built for three to five years.”

Only 44 districts in the state chose not to participate in the program. Almost all of those are tiny districts in rural areas of the state.

The 18,400-student Modesto City Elementary school district, which has an average class size of more than 29, was the only sizable district in the state that chose not to participate. Administrators there said they were concerned that the state support for the program would not keep pace with rising costs.