When Bob Kristiansen lived in California, his daughter was in classes with 30 to 35 other students.

Now she is in a fourth-grade classroom with 20 students at Langston Hughes School, and Kristiansen doesn’t want that number to increase.

“It was awful,” he said of the California schools. “The teachers hated it. The teachers didn’t know kids, and the kids didn’t know the teachers. We’ve got it really good here, and I’d hate to see it spoiled.”

Leaders of the union representing Lawrence teachers fear budget cuts and reallocation of staff next year could lead to higher student-to-teacher ratios in elementary classes. They gathered Monday afternoon with about 60 teachers at Lawrence High School for a rally in support of smaller class sizes.

District officials, however, say they’d rather use their potentially bare budget to pay for salary increases and eliminate classrooms that include students in more than one grade level. District officials have said they would need to cut about $2 million in spending if the Legislature approves the governor’s budget recommendation.

Bigger classes ahead

Preliminary projections show the average class size in the Lawrence district would increase by nearly one student next year, if the school board approves a staff recommendation for hiring teachers.

Currently there are an average of 19.86 students in each elementary school class. That would increase to 20.63 if the district approves the staff recommendation and continues to receive federal funds to hire from three to five teachers.

Under district policy, the goal is to have class sizes in kindergarten to third grade ranging from 13 to 17 students. The goal in fourth through sixth grades is 26 or fewer students.

Lawrence superintendent Randy Weseman visits an East Heights site preschool class last fall. These students will be entering kindergarten next school year, and teachers are raising concerns about the prospect of increasing elementary class sizes for the 2004-2005 school year because of budget constraints.

Wayne Kruse, president of the Lawrence Education Assn., said his organization wanted the district to move toward that goal.

“Even though our board set an aggressive goal for appropriate class sizes, they are still faced with the ominous task of balancing our district budget with less funds from our state and federal governments,” said Kruse, a sixth-grade teacher at Quail Run School. “Some districts have balanced their budgets by increasing class sizes. We don’t want our district to move in this direction.”

Focus on problems

Kruse said he preferred to focus on individual classes instead of average class size.

He noted that under the projected class sizes for 2004-2005, a pair of fifth-grade classes at Quail Run would have 29 students each, a pair of fourth-grade classrooms at Hillcrest School would have 29 students each and kindergarten classrooms at Kennedy School would have 24 and 25 students.

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Alison Nye, a fifth-grade teacher at Quail Run, has seen firsthand the benefits of smaller classes. Her classes have ranged from 17 to 30 students during her 24 years with the district.

“Truly the kids who reap the greatest rewards are the ones in the smallest classes,” she said. “Last year I had 17 students, and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

In that smaller class, Nye said all of her students were up to their grade level in academics and she had fewer classroom discipline problems.

The research

Kruse cited the Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio study conducted in the late 1980s in Tennessee as evidence of the need. It showed students in smaller classes performed better in reading and math than students in larger ones.

But Janice Nicklaus, executive director of educational programming and instruction for Lawrence public schools, said other studies showed additional factors affect student achievement.

One study she cited concluded size was less important to student achievement than teacher salaries, experience or education. She said the district would like to make investments in each of those areas.

“Do you want to put all your eggs in one basket?” she said. “We’d rather take a more balanced approach.”

According to the American Educational Research Assn., smaller class sizes are most important at the kindergarten and first-grade levels. It defines small classes as those with 13 to 17 students.

Tough decisions

The school board will have a retreat to discuss budget issues this morning at district headquarters. The class size issue is one of several the board is expected to discuss.

Mary Rodriguez, the district’s executive director of human resources, said part of the reason student-teacher ratios would be higher next year is that the district plans to eliminate the two remaining “combination” classrooms, in which teachers are required to teach more than one grade level in the same room.

She said all class size estimates for next year were preliminary because enrollment projections — which show the district losing 78 students next year — and the state budget have yet to be finalized.

Leonard Ortiz, one of two school board members who attended Monday’s rally, said the board would have some difficult choices about next year’s budget. In addition to class size, other considerations will include salary increases and whether to cut other services such as school nurses, he said.

“They’re really preaching to the choir,” Ortiz said. “No one wants larger class sizes. We all think smaller class sizes are the way to go. But there’s only X amount of dollars each year.”