Districts look ahead to potential enrollment increases

By Audrey Henvey

Former English teacher Elizabeth Negoslawski misses the sight of students walking into her classroom and hearing them ask how her weekend was.

She misses the rapport between students and teachers that you could only really get if you were there.

She does not miss hearing about staffing cuts. She doesn’t miss having 34 children crammed into that same classroom, and she doesn’t miss having limited time to provide feedback to each student on their writing.

According to the North Texas Education Agency 2017-2018 report, public school enrollment has increased and is expected to continue increasing in the southern and western parts of the United States. With a prospective population increase in North Texas school populations, school districts are preparing to make room for the climbing numbers.

In the midst of those long term plans, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos gave a testimony supporting the idea that students will benefit more from larger class sizes, “if by hiring fewer teachers a district can better compensate those who have demonstrated high quality and outstanding results.”

“This is contrary to decades of long-standing credible research like the Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio that actually recommended on average student-teacher ratio be 15 to 1,” said U.S. representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-California).

Roybal-Allard asked Devos for evidence supporting her claim. Devos stated there was plenty of research supporting the idea that limiting class sizes does not yield results, and that she would provide the research upon request.

“She’s either mistaken or lying,” said Bradley Davis, Educational Leadership and Policy Studies assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Davis worked as a fourth, fifth and sixth grade teacher in the Houston area before becoming an assistant professor. He said based on his personal experience and research, a lower student-teacher ratio is always a good thing.

Davis also cited the Tennessee Class STAR Study, a four-year experiment surrounding class size by Jeremy Finn and Charles Achilles. The study is the most cited when it comes to discussing class-size reductions, and was the only large scale, experiment of its kind in the U.S., Davis said.

The study revealed improvements in teaching conditions, student performance, student learning behaviors, fewer disruptions and fewer retentions, according to a report on the study written in 1999.

There isn’t an overall effect of having reduced class size, Davis said. However

Numbers courtesy of PISD

research across the board that reduced class sizes are good. He said he is not sure whether those implications are enough to affect policy.

Negoslawski, a teacher for 15 years, taught classes sized anywhere from 13 to 34. She said there were benefits and drawbacks to both ends of the size spectrum.

While small classes with a good chemistry presented an opportunity to have good discussions and socratic seminars, she said the disadvantages in the smaller numbers were that students felt more conspicuous with smaller sizes because of how small the group is.

Larger classes introduced an opportunity for more engagement, Negoslawski said, because students who work well can support quieter students in small groups. However she didn’t have time to get to everyone when teaching a larger class, she said. In those instances, Negoslawski said the experience felt a bit like a whack-a-mole game, not in a negative sense, but in the sense that many students would need her help at the same time.

“I would find myself saying ‘I promise I’m going to get to you. Just give me one second,’” she said.

The need for a teacher’s attention is not just in relation to students who need extra educational support, Negoslawski said. More independent learners and stronger writers also want to experience growth and need confirmation.

“I know the best writers ever, they want to grow in some area whether it’s vocabulary or sentence structure,” Negoslawski said. “Or they just want that, or need as a human, that confirmation relationship with the teacher that they’re important as a student and they have growth potential.”

Davis said having smaller classes implied a need for more teachers and additional classrooms, which cost money.

“There’s always pressure from both sides of the public to keep spending under control,” Davis said.

With proposed legislation in the Texas Legislature supporting teacher salary increases and increased funding for educational systems, Davis noted there was an unorthodox bipartisan agreement to put money in schools across the state.

As local districts face the prospect of an increasing population, education funding has been on the rise.

Numbers courtesy of PISD

Plano Independent School District, despite seeing a recent reduction in student enrollment, has seen a general fund increase in every year from the 2014-2015

academic year (the last-recorded budget that is available on the district website), to the 2018-2019 academic year, according to the yearly budget reports on the district website. The yearly increases to the general fund, averaging about $48 million per year, have grown with each passing year.

PISD’s most recent bond election approved a 2016 bond financing $481,000,000 for renovations, fine arts, technology, pre-kindergarten, safety and security, according to the Texas Comptroller website.

Based on personal experience, Davis said he would support across the board reduction in class sizes. But with that comes a potential need for more space.

Most districts are in need of more buildings, Davis said. Funding for that would probably come from board elections and bond elections. However, the required plan depends on the context of the city.

“All districts that aren’t insane have a long term plan,” Davis said.

Numbers courtesy of PISD