Elem Enrollment Projections

I also made a comment that the three elementary schools should have equitable class sizes per grade level. Further, that it would be unfair if Shafer had students redistricted into its building and then had larger class sizes as a result.

The issue was raised because elementary enrollment projections were released at Monday's Board Meeting and Shafer is projected to have 103 K students (of which one is my own) with class size of 21.6 compared to Bushkill with 76 and 19 per class, and Lower Nazareth with 85 and 17 per class.

This is only one grade, but on the night the Board voted on redistricting Dr. Lesky stated there would be staff added if needed, despite the hiring freeze. On that night there was also a discussion of class size, the lower the grade level, the smaller the ideal class size with 15 being considered ideal at K. EDK classes do have 15, but for obvious reasons, the NASD tries to keep the class sizes at the K-3 grade range at or under 22, not 15.

The projections show Shafer with 21 per class and Lower with 17. If you cut one class from Lower, they too would be at 21, but I wouldn't advocate raising Lower, instead the NASD should honor its word and add a K class at Shafer to bring it to the level of Lower.

What about the other grades? Overall, if you divide projected enrollment by staff for grades 1-5 (excluding K because of half day, edk etc.), Bushkill has the highest average with 535 students, 25 teachers and 21.4 per class, compared to 571, 28, and 20.4 for Lower and 493, 24, and 20.5 for Shafer.

Of course if your child is in Bushkill's 5th grade next year with 25 students per class, you'd be rather unhappy because a class was taken away (your child would have had 20 per class). Instead, Lower Nazareth's 3rd grade gained a teacher and class size went from 22.2 to 18.5.

There are always tough choices, and higher grades get more students. Many people will say I had 30 in my 4th grade class, and I had classes like that too, but when we are considering these numbers for our school district we need to consider them within the context of the three elementary schools. Are the class sizes per grade level acceptable? Are they equitable?

It would seem K is not equitable with Shafer on the short end, and Bushkill's 5th grade is in the same situation.

On Wednesday, April 25th the NASD will be having a special budget meeting and I'm certain class size will be one of the issues discussed. If you have concerns regarding any budget item you will want to attend this meeting.