School Board Meeting Tonight and Class Sizes

There is a school board meeting tonight and the agenda has been posted (read it here).

Didn't see too much of interest on the agenda, but did want to make note of some enrollment numbers I noticed.

Last year the Administration recommended and the Board approved a redistricting of the elementary schools. I have no problem with redistricting, providing resources are allocated to accommodate the change in student population. Right now it seems Shafer class sizes (21.75 per class across the entire building) are larger than Bushkill (20.25) and Lower Nazareth (20.33) across the board.

• 5th grade has largest disparity with Shafer at 26 students per class, Lower at 20.6, and Bushkill at 21. At five classes at 26 Shafer could have had one more and brought it in line with Lower and Bushkill.
• 4th grade at Shafer has 25.5 compared to 23.4 and 21 at Lower and Bushkill, respectively.
• 3rd grade was close with Shafer at 22.6 and Lower and Bushkill at 21.8 and 22.
• 2nd grade 20.6, 20.5 and 19 (again Shafer, Lower, Bushkill).
• 1st grade 20.8, 17 , 19.6 (Shafer, Lower, Bushkill)
• K was the one grade that Shafer had the lowest class size: 17.4, 19.4, and 18.

The clearest inequity occurs looking at like sized classes. Shafer's 2nd (103) and 4th grade (102) are very close to Lower's 1st grade (102) and 5th grade (103), yet Shafer 2nd has five classes, 4th has four classes, and Lower has six classes and five classes.

Enrollment Growth: September 2006 vs. September 2007 there was a gain of 54 students across all grades.

MS Watch: the new building to open in 2009 will accommodate 1340 students, 5th and 6th grade combined right now is 717.