No Trims This Year in Third-Grade Class Size

Citing a shortage in funding, teachers and space, school board members this week decided against shrinking the number of students in third-grade classrooms during this academic year.

Reducing the third-grade class sizes would have cost about $2 million in capital improvements alone, Fullerton district officials said. District schools have no space left to create more teaching stations, and portable buildings would have had to have been purchased.

Numerous portables were ordered over the summer to house kindergarten and second-grade classes, which earlier this year were reduced to no more than 20 pupils.

The state’s class size reduction program, which offers some funding to districts that cut class sizes to 20 or fewer students, was implemented in the first grade last year.

Rather than implement the program in the third grade, district officials said they will apply for about $700,000 in state funds to help pay for the portable buildings that were ordered for kindergarten and second-grade classes.