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As part of Evanston/Skokie School District 65’s ongoing effort to cut its budget, the district is aiming to eliminate 22 total classroom sections across all schools for the start of the next academic year.
The move is projected to save close to $2.3 million annually, and it’s also motivated by the district’s struggle with declining enrollment.
“We have some classrooms as small as six to seven kids in the classroom,” Superintendent Angel Turner told a group of parents and community members at a public input session on proposed budget cuts Thursday night at Nichols Middle School, 800 Greenleaf St. “It’s just not feasible for us to do, long term.”
According to Tiffany Taylor, the district’s head of human resources, the administration has convened a joint committee with the teachers union to look at staff cuts that will happen as a result of removing 22 classrooms. That committee is establishing criteria for teachers eligible for honorable dismissals and early retirements, for example. As a whole, the district’s goal is to reduce staff naturally through attrition — planned retirements, nonrenewals and departures to other districts, Turner has said.
But at both community feedback meetings this week, the district’s current guidelines for maximum class sizes — 23 students in K-2 classes, 25 in 3-5 and 28 in middle school — came up as an area of concern for people in the audience. Those are collectively bargained numbers agreed to by the union and the administration.
At Wednesday night’s meeting, parent Peter Bogira said that “seems kind of big” for a target class size. Sara Young, an Evanston Township High School freshman English teacher and a Washington Elementary parent, also noted that freshman classes at the high school are 22 students, which she described as a pretty good number at least for that grade level.
“It’s easy to communicate. I have lots of one-on-one time with my students,” Young said. “It would be harder to have a one-on-one meeting with a 28-person class. If I was like, ‘We’re going to do literary meetings, we’re going to talk about each of your papers individually,’ I wouldn’t be able to do that for 28 kids.”
No more 6-student classrooms
Replying to those concerns about class sizes, Turner said the guidelines didn’t come up during the last round of bargaining with the teachers, so they have stayed the same for at least two contracts in a row. The district could, for example, focus its efforts on keeping kindergarten classes around 20, but “what I know for a fact is we can’t have any more classes with six, seven, eight, 10, 13, 15 kids in a classroom,” Turner said. “We have to reconsider.”
Young told the RoundTable that an ideal class size should really depend on the situation and the students’ needs from class to class. Larger classes are more ideal for physical education, she said, while something like English requires more one-on-one instruction and is more conducive to smaller classes as a result.
The American Federation of Teachers recommends class sizes of 15 to 19 students. “‘One size fits all’ class size plans neglect staffing problems and overcrowding in low-achieving schools, which gain the most from class size reduction,” the organization says on its website.
Omar Salem, speaking in his capacity as a teacher (Salem is also a District 65 board member), said the district should look for a sweet spot “somewhere between the guidelines and where they [class sizes] are now.”
District 65 class sizes are set to grow. How big is too big? is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.
