City’s increase in kindergartners leaves less room to learn

But growing class sizes are a scenario that has become all too real for San Francisco Unified School District teachers, who are facing the pain induced by shrinking school revenue at the same time enrollment is soaring.

About 4,800 young children will go to their first day of school Monday, and for the second year in a row, class sizes will grow — most public school kindergarten classrooms in The City will have 22 students this year, up from an average of 20 students per class that enrolled for the 2008-09 school year.

That’s more than 250 more potential kindergartners applying for the coming academic year.

Aaron Neimark has been teaching a class of 20 at Dianne Feinstein Elementary School since 2006 and recalls when one student had blood dripping from his finger while another had urinated on the floor of the bathroom connected to the classroom.

“Either one of those things I can handle,” he said.

“It’s just freaky to the kids and they are going ‘whoa’ and there’s blood and you’ve lost the attention of the classroom,” Neimark said. “At that point learning just has to wait.”

Teachers such as Neimark are concerned that the latest increase in class size is just the beginning of a constant trickle of additional students into kindergarten classes.

It’s obvious that when children get more individual attention, they learn faster, he said.

State funding policy would seem to support that view. In an ongoing effort to keep classroom sizes down, the California Department of Education has been giving public schools millions of dollars to maintain an average of no more than 20.5 students in classes from kindergarten through third grade. Until this year, those funds were eliminated entirely if the average class size grew to more than 21.9 students.

But the classroom size rules have been watered down. Beginning with the 2009-10 school year, districts are penalized only if classes have 25 or more students and instead of eliminating the state funds entirely, only 30 percent is taken away from schools that exceed that cap.

The SFUSD is slated to receive $15.8 million in funding under the new rules.

“It’s kind of like tampering with a good reform that’s working,” Neimark said.

Meanwhile, the school board has had to make tough decisions.

This year 4,843 students applied for seats in kindergarten classrooms, a significant increase for the second consecutive year. The school district wasn’t going to turn anyone away, district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe said.

There are 72 public schools with kindergarten classrooms in The City and all but eight of them are expected to increase class sizes. The eight schools that didn’t make the leap receive other, additional funds for keeping their class sizes at 20.

“We took every step we could to expand the number of actual, physical classrooms, considering the increasing class size,” Blythe said.

The district must also make sure it follows strict building codes for kindergarten classrooms, such as a requirement that classrooms are no higher than ground level, Blythe said.

Additionally, like other school districts across the state, the SFUSD is feeling the effects of some $5.3 billion in state cuts for K-12 public schools.

In June, the school board approved a $350 million budget that assumes a $61 million deficit over the next two years. Teachers and board members have said they are not expecting to get the $24 million in rainy day funds to help dilute the deficit the district received this year.

Blythe said the 20-student cap remains for second- and third-grade classrooms but that the two-student increase could ripple to first-grade classes this year.

In the meantime, parents and caregivers — and their children — must also work with the larger class sizes.

Katie Olson has three children: a son entering first grade, a daughter one year shy of kindergarten and an 8-month-old boy.

“It doesn’t seem like such a massive change that it’s unbearable, but I definitely prefer it stay the 20-kid class size,” Olson said. “I’m secretly hoping it’ll only last for one year.”

CDE spokeswoman Tina Jung said the department does not analyze trends. But Jung agrees with common speculation about why kindergarten applications are multiplying.

“The population continued to grow but now it’s starting to taper off because all the baby boomers have had their kids,” Jung said.

Neimark wasn’t as optimistic. “Imagine about 90 kids from four classes running around on the playground during recess and only two adults are watching them,” he said. “It’s certainly not going to get much better anytime soon.”

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AP funding cuts force preeminent high school to increase class size

Lowell High School boasts 96 Advanced Placement sections but took a hefty blow when The City’s Board of Education decided to reduce AP funding by about 20 percent, or around $400,000, this fiscal year.

Like other high schools in the district, Lowell had been using its AP budget to fund staffing across the board, so even though Principal Andrew Ishibashi left the AP classes unscathed, Lowell has increased enrollment in other classes, such as English, math and visual performance, to share the burden of the budget cuts across the entire school, Ishibashi said.

“You can either start talking [about] cutting AP classes or raise the number of students in some of the freshman classes,” Ishibashi said. “It hurts the kids,” he said of the cuts.

Lowell is known as a high-ranking high school — about 2,700 students are admitted each year based on Stanford Achievement Test scores, grades, extracurricular activities and socioeconomic factors.

AP economic science teacher Kathy Melvin said there is no way the school would let the cuts hurt AP classes, especially because Lowell gets money for every test that is taken. Nearly every senior at the school takes at least one AP test.

The cuts could hurt further down the road, too, according to Melvin. A handful of teachers on sabbatical have not been replaced and Melvin said she is worried about how the school will find money to pay them when they do want to come back. The school has also let go of a couple computer lab technicians — which means less access to computers for the students, Melvin said.

“There’s a whole lot of feelings. [The AP budget cutting] implies disrespect,” she said. “English is crucial. You can’t do well in everything else if you can’t do well in English.”

Ishibashi said he did not want the economy to take away from the excitement of the new school year.

“It’s always an exciting time of year,” he said. “The kids are excited to be here and the teachers are really energetic.”

— Kamala Kelkar

Bring your own paper, pencils

Students shouldn’t be surprised if their teachers don’t have paper or pencils when the first day of school rolls around this year. State cuts have forced many San Francisco public schools to slash supplies budgets to $0 as schools try to compensate for funding cuts in other departments.

“Let’s say the copier machine breaks. There’s no equipment fund to get copies. The teachers pay for it,” said United Educators of San Francisco President Dennis Kelly, who represents about 6,000 teachers in the district.

When schools decide to cut supplies budgets they are following a trend seen in past years too, said Lowell High School Principal Andrew Ishibashi. If the school is lucky, money pops up from other places and the school manages to get by. But the ice gets thinner each year.

“I don’t have any papers or pencils, but at least I have classes,” Ishibashi said.

— Kamala Kelkar

Bad time for budget cuts

With a $5.3 billion blow to K-12 graders hitting the state budget, the San Francisco Unified School District is expecting to receive less revenue from federal, state and local funds overall and on a per-pupil basis this fiscal year — even as enrollment continues to rise.

Source: SFUSD

Student influx

Enrollment in The City’s school district has increased overall for the second year in a row.

2009 spring enrollment

2008 spring enrollment

Spring enrollment numbers reflect confirmed student totals for the academic year as enrollment may fluctuate at the start of the academic year.

Source: SFUSD