VOORHEESVILLE — Some parents of Voorheesville elementary students are requesting that an additional class be created for next years second graders to lower class sizes from 23. In a report, district administrators say that would not be feasible, and offer alternative solutions.

Forty-three parents submitted a petition to the school board last month, prompting the board to ask Superintendent Alan McCartney and elementary school principal Kenneth Lein to put together a report on the effects of smaller class sizes children in kindergarten through third grade, and on the district as a whole.

McCartney and Lein completed a seven-page report and distributed it to the petitioning parents.

In the report, Lein, who wrote it while McCartney helped with the research, compared the various national studies on class size and concluded that, in order for smaller class size to be effective in the long run, it has to be maintained through the first four early elementary years.

In order to reduce class size for kindergarten through third grade, Voorheesville would have to hire four more teachers, Lein said. It would also cause a space crunch in the building to the point where the district would no longer be able to house Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) classrooms and, as a result, receive no revenue from that, he said.

Additionally, Lein compared the district class sizes and fourth-grade English and Language Arts test scores to other Albany County districts, which showed that the school is doing well academically.

Parents’ response

Ed and Christin Wilcenski , parents of a soon-to-be second grader, were at the school board meeting this week.
Since the report states it’s not economically feasible to create another section, they asked, what is the next step the district is going to take"

Kindergarten through third grade are considered the fundamental years, when reading, writing, and math basics are instilled, the parents have stated.
"I’m not a academic. I don’t need a study. From my observation, 24 kids in class is too many," Mr. Wilcenski said. He went on to say that he thinks the children are well educated at Voorheesville, but he doesn’t want to wait for the education to fail before the school does something about the class size.
Mrs. Wilcenski said that, in the second week of school this year, she asked her daughter how she was liking school and her response was, "I really like my teacher but there are too many kids in the class."

Mrs. Wilcenski said she asked her daughter what she meant, and the first-grader said that all the kids couldn’t fit on the rug for story time. Wilcenski then asked her daughter why that mattered, and the little girl’s response was that then the students are not a part of the story.

Wilcenski said she didn’t want children to be feel left out.

She said, since Lein’s report said that it wasn’t economically feasible at this time to hire more teacher and to create more classes, what other incentives will be taken.
"Based on cost it seems funding would best be spent on continued training in instructional strategies and the development of environments that ensure keeping disciplinary issues to a minimum, " Lein wrote in the report. He also stated that, without well trained and enthusiastic teachers present, reducing class size alone will have little impact.
"It’s not easy to teach 24 students, it’s not easy to teach 16 either though," Lein said.

School board president Robert Baron said that the district becomes nervous about class size when kindergarten through third-grade class sizes reaches 25 students and grades four through five have 28 students.

Lein’s ideas

In an interview with The Enterprise on Tuesday, Lein said that his approach to combating the negative effects of larger class size is to make sure that there is always a second person in each class during the two-hour reading language block.

Often, there are teachers’ aids, and teaching assistants in and out of class rooms, and students are also pulled out of class for one-on-one or small-group reading instruction in the resource rooms, but, Lein said, he is going to work out a master schedule coordinating all four second-grade classes’ and teachers’ schedules so that, during reading workshops, there are at least two adults in the classroom. Lein said that wasn’t guaranteed this school year.

According to Lein’s plan, when one teacher is doing whole-group instruction, there won’t be aids or teaching assistants in that classroom. Instead, they will be next door with a teacher who is doing small-group work.
"There’s no exact science to reading," Lein said.

He wants to train teachers to work with a variety of techniques until they can find a way to help all students.
For example, halfway through this year, the first-grade students started a program called "Fun-damentals," which is about phonemic awareness using a multi-sensory approach, Lein said.

This summer, Lein will be constructing two book rooms, one for kindergarten through third grade and one for fourth through fifth, but they’re libraries where students go, he said. They’re resources for teachers, he said.

Lien said he has already allocated the space in the building and he is in the process of ordering subject books. Along with help of some volunteers, Lein will be labeling books from A to Z, A being the easiest level and Z being the most difficult reading level. When a teacher goes into the book room, there will be baskets and shelves with baggies full of 6 or so copies of the same book to be used students’ group-reading sessions.

This will help out lessen the teachers’ work load, Lein said. They won’t have to spend their time searching for different books for students with different reading abilities, he said.

Lein said it pains him to watch a student struggling with a book that is too difficult for her and to be forced to read out loud in a large group. In group of 6, students will be reading with other students at their level, he said.

Discipline
A big part of success in kindergarten through third grade is achieved by reducing the typical young-child disciplinary issues, Lein said. Next year, Lien said, he is starting a new initiative called "respectful schools." It will "model what we expect" of the students, Lein said.

Just because a child does something wrong, such as pushing in line, it doesn’t mean that student should be in trouble, but it also doesn’t mean that teachers should ignore it.
Educators need to pay attention to the things that used to be labeled as "‘little things’, what used to be called ‘kids will be kids,’" Lein said.
"But we need to address it, we don’t want send the wrong message," Lein said.
When bullying is going on, it is important to stop it, and explain that, "We don’t want to do that because we respect each other here," Lein said.
"Reducing class size doesn’t guarantee" academic success, Lein said. "We’re not ignoring the issue" of the large class sizes, Lein said, "We have been paying close attention to it."