Reprieve would allow up to 35 students per room, spare district millions in fines
Reprieve would allow up to 35 students per room, spare district millions in fines
Faced with the threat of millions of dollars in fines – which would imperil the financially strapped Hollister School District – officials have sought a second, two-year waiver to allow average class sizes to exceed state limitations.
The state granted a similar waiver to the district in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years to expand class sizes in kindergarten through eighth grade. Had the waiver not been granted, the district would have faced an estimated $3.1 million in penalties. The waiver sought for this year and next would help the district to avoid $3.6 million in penalties, which officials say it could not afford.
“If we didn’t have this waiver, we’d be taken over by the state,” said Dennis Kurtz, the district’s director of human resources. “It’s in our budget assumptions that we’ll receive this waiver and not have to pay these penalties. If that proves to be false, that puts us in deep trouble.”
State education code stipulates that the number of students per teacher in grades K-3 cannot, on average, exceeds 31 for kindergarten and 30 for grades one to three, and that the maximum number of students in a classroom can be 33 for kindergarten and 31 for first- through third-grade.
In grades four through eight, the average number of students per teacher cannot exceed 29.9.
Prior to 2010-11, the district stayed below those state-mandated maximums. But as it laid off staff members to save money – including a number of teachers – those student-teacher ratios expanded, prompting the waiver request.
The district is now seeking class sizes of 33 to 35 students.
The “history isn’t clear” for the success of districts seeking a second, two-year waiver of financial penalties from the state, Kurtz said.
“Districts that have done this in the past typically haven’t gone beyond two years,” he said. “I have no idea now what the state’s response is going to be given the financial situation that a lot of districts find themselves in.”
Approximately 100 FTE (full-time equivalent) positions have been eliminated in the Hollister School District since the 2007-08 school year.
“The magnitude of the layoffs has given us a very measurable increase in class sizes,” Kurtz said. “We’ve had to ask for the waivers to protect ourselves.”
Last year, local officials went to the state board of education meeting at which the waiver request was heard, but they were not called to speak. The district expects the new request, which was sent two weeks ago, to be on the board agenda in July.
District budget projections show that it does not have enough reserves or anticipated revenue – approximately $1.6 million – to hire the estimated 20 teachers district-wide required to keep student-teacher ratios at or below state limits, Kurtz said.
“The law makes sense in that if there were no limits at all imposed by the state, some districts would put 50 kids in a class and ask for the money for it,” he said.
If the state were to impose penalties for exceeding class size limits, it would reduce the amount of funding that it sends to the district, rather than ask for payments.
“It’s like garnishing your wages,” Kurtz said. “They don’t spread it out or give you a payment plan.”
As the district awaits word on its waiver request, officials are hoping that the state grants a reprieve.
“We feel like we’ve already trimmed – more than trimmed, slashed – far more than we’d like to in any educational sense,” Kurtz said. “We don’t want large class sizes. We want teacher to spend more time on an individual basis with every child.”
