Elementary class sizes are an ongoing concern for parents and teachers. Davis School District administrators addressed that when they gave a report to the school board on Oct. 15 about enrollment, FTE Ratio (Full Time Equivalent) and class sizes.

“It has a huge impact on our teachers and our staff and our schools,” said Board President Liz Mumford. “But it also affects our student achievement and the overall culture in our school district.”

This is something that comes up in the fall, she said. “As you know people check their kids into school and have different class sizes sometimes than they anticipate.”

“We look at staffing and that begins in the January through December time frame,” said Budget and Planning Director, Steve Snow. “So in that time frame we’re meeting with cities talking about their new developments. In the makeup of those developments we also look at what type of developments. Is it a single family dwelling? Is it apartments or condos?”

Snow said they look at that because it’s a different percentage of students that will come from that depending on which type of housing there is. “In the range of October through January we start gathering the October enrollment information. We look at the births because those are the best predictor for who’s coming five years from now.”

The next one is February through April, said Snow. “Now we're talking about projection time. We have what has happened and we’re trying to predict who’s coming in the fall. So this is, get out your crystal ball and make your best guess and don’t mess it up and we meet several times.”

Snow said in elementaries they look at every single classroom. “When we’re doing this we need to look at how much staffing we’ll need for a whole school, not per classroom. We’ll give it to the principal to make a decision after they’ve looked at their areas and then when we’re done we look at the areas of concern at each school then we’ll send letters to the principals saying ‘here's your total staffing.’”

“How do we consider splits?” said Elementary Director, Ruthanne Keller. “Well if a grade level has large numbers we look at the one before and the one after to see if they’re smaller and so we can combine those from each class of students into one class. So that takes away one teacher and gives a smaller grade level.”

Keller said there are pros and cons to a combination or split class. “In a split class, we’d like to take kids that are independent learners in each grade level. Sometimes they’re just kids that are better academically and that hurts the other classes because you look at those kids a lot as examples.”

Then there are those that have a calming influence in the class, she said. “You can’t teach two curriculums if you’ve got kids that are not behaved or can’t work independently. Unfortunately sometimes the split classes don’t have that advantage.”

One of the benefits of a non-split classroom is students are with their same aged peers, she said. “Teachers also have the ease of teaching only one curriculum. But when they’re in a combination it’s nice I think to make friends with other grade levels.”

“I’m hoping to tee up a little bit of the National Research,” said Superintendent Dan Linford. “I want to hit on this, the Star Study is kind of the ultimate class size study. It did find that there was a significant difference in student achievement as it relates to class size. Students in smaller classes outperform students in larger classes by an increase that’s equivalent to about three months of extra schooling four years later. So they maintained that extra knowledge longer.”

The constant variable in all of research is one teacher, he said. “The research tells us the reason why this class outperforms this class is almost always that teacher in the front of the classroom. This is where reducing class size lands. This is where it lands on the scale of how it affects student learning.”

Linford said that to meet the district’s primary mission, teachers have to feel like they’re effective. “The number one thing was teacher efficacy, right? At the end of the day teachers and teams of teachers have to believe that the work they do, their preparation, their skills all of those things matter for student learning. That they believe that all students can learn. That’s the piece that we spend a ton of energy on, because we’re going to get huge returns on that.”λ