Class size threatens school accreditation

Wednesday, March 6, 2002 | 11:09 a.m.

Two-thirds of Clark County's 33 high schools have been told to reduce their class sizes or risk their accreditation status, a demand Superintendent Carlos Garcia said may be impossible to meet anytime soon.

In fact, Garcia said, it's likely the number of students assigned to each teacher will go up before it goes down, as the school district struggles to find money to support its soaring student enrollment.

"I'm sure we all want smaller classes for the students and the teachers, but its not necessarily a question of what we want, but what we can actually do," Garcia said.

The Northwest Association of Schools, the organization that monitors Nevada and six other states, has put 10 of Clark County's 45 junior high schools and 22 of the district's 33 high schools on notice for having too many students assigned to individual teachers. That notice is the first step toward losing accreditation.

Most colleges will only accept coursework from accredited high schools. Accreditation is a way for school administrators to demonstrate their commitment to improving education, said Leonard Paul, superintendent of the Clark County School District's northwest region. In addition to the class size cap, the schools are required to have ongoing improvement plans and conduct yearly surveys, said Paul, past chairman of the accreditation association.

The association says teachers can't see more than 160 students a day, which means 32 students per class for a traditional five-class schedule. The school district recommends 32 students per class, but often goes over that because of booming enrollment.

Garica said the problem in hitting that target is money. The school district, which has already cut more than $74 million from its budget in four years, must reduce next year's total budget of $1.1 billion by another $10 million, Garcia said. He has said class sizes may have to increase from 32 students per teacher to 33, which could save the district $1 million.

The nation's sixth largest school district, Clark County currently has 266 schools, 245,000 students and opens 14 to 16 new facilities each year. Three new high schools are slated to open in the 2003-2004 school year, but even that won't solve the class size problem, Garcia said.

At all grade levels, schools rely on portable classrooms to handle overflow, and rooms once reserved for art or music have been converted for academic courses, teachers say. Six new elementary schools and one new middle school will open in the fall and relieve some of the congestion. But that won't change the fact that the distrit's enrollment, which has skyrocketed 37 percent in five years, is only expected to continuing climbing.

Susan DeFrancesco, principal of Bonanza High School whose school is on the list of facilities with teachers seeing too many students each day, said it was "impossible" for the school to meet the existing standard on class size.

"Last year we managed to make things work, but this year we just couldn't," she said."Every time the district raises the teacher-student ratio it just kills us."

Bonanza's struggle is complicated by the number of honors and advanced placement classes offered, DeFrancesco said. If only 20 students sign up for upper-level calculus, it means there are 12 students that will have to join another math course, raising the class size in other courses, DeFrancesco said.

While the Clark County School District tries to limit class sizes to 32 students, school officials debate the point with the accreditation association.

"It's a debate as to what is the most critical element in terms of an instructor's ability to deal with all of the needs of each individual student," Paul said. "Class size plays a part, but it isn't the only factor."

The association is the regional authority for Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Other states may not be able to match Clark County's unprecedented growth but school districts in Oregon, Washington and Utah are facing similar crunches in the classroom, Paul said.

At the association's upcoming meeting in June, the standards committee is expected to debate the class size cap and possible waivers for districts such as Clark County, Paul said.

Paul said the district disagrees with the association's formula that a teacher can see no more than 160 students a day. Under the county's "block" schedule, a teacher may have six classes that meet the district's 32 student per class guideline, but that schedule would put the teacher over the 160-student limit.

"The class size cap is based on a very old educational model," said Paul, who is past chair of the association. "We need to look at the existing standard and see if it is outdated."

A school's accreditation is important because students leaving the school get credit based on their work.

There are several levels of accreditation status, said David Steadman, executive director of the Northwest Association of Schools, based in Boise, Idaho. The first time deficiencies are found schools are "approved with comment."A second year of violations results in a school being "advised." Schools that are "warned" have three consecutive years of violations. If the problems are not corrected by the fourth year, a school can be "dropped."

Schools that have been issued warnings or dropped can appeal the decision to the state accreditation committee, Steadman said.

At Cashman Middle School on West Desert Inn Road, six of the 22 teachers are seeing too many students each day, Principal Sheri Hales-Davies said. Cashman, the only middle school in the county at "advised" status, receives federal funds as a Title I school serving a low-income area. Each year about 100 new students arrive at Cashman who are in the United States for the first time, often speaking little or no English, Hales-Davies said. The federal funds help pay for five additional teachers, Hales-Davies said.

The school district's cutbacks have hit Cashman hard, forcing administrators to restructure the English as a Second Language classes which were once held down to 23 or 25 students each, the principal said. Cashman has tried to keep the ESL class sizes down and instead put more students in each of the regular classes, she said.

"You have to look at the needs of your students and build your academic program around those needs," Hales-Davies said. "We're fortunate to be a Title I school. I would hate to see what our classes looked like without those five extra teachers."