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Fuzzy math complicates debate on class sizes

By ANDREW SKERRITT
Published December 6, 2005

The battle over educating our children has always been a cynical numbers game.

Are two teachers teaching a class of 36 students an appropriate method of meeting voters' requirement to cut the size of our classes?

Gov. Jeb Bush and the state Board of Education have said no. Team teaching is academically acceptable but constitutionally flawed, they argue.

In the words of a state Department of Education spokeswoman: An overcrowded classroom is still overcrowded whether it has one teacher or two.

But in talking about class size, were voters talking about the four walls or about teacher-student ratios?

The numbers matter beginning in the 2006-07 school year. That gives districts eight months to get their classrooms in order.

That's not going to happen. They need too much money; they don't have enough time.

Meanwhile, the Florida School Boards Association and some local boards plan to seek to block the rule and restore the practice known as team teaching or coteaching.

Other school boards are looking closely at what happens.

The Citrus County School District attorney has asked his board to wait and see before making a decision on joining the lawsuit.

Pasco County superintendent Heather Fiorentino told School Board members she thinks it's "unwise to smack the hand that feeds you." She urged the board to discuss the coteaching lawsuit issue during a workshop session in the new year.

In Pasco, most of the coteaching arrangements involved special education teachers and students. To comply with the class-size amendment while continuing the present model, it could cost the Pasco school district $5.4-million: the price of 100 additional portables at $54,000 each, according to assistant superintendent Sandra Ramos.

That's a steep price tag.

In Hernando County, newly elected School Board Chairman Jim Malcolm plans to urge his colleagues to join the lawsuit.

Because lawyers are expensive, Malcolm would also urge his board colleagues to raise the money themselves so taxpayers aren't burdened twice.

Team teaching is a big part of the Hernando elementary school curriculum.

At Spring Hill Elementary, for example, teachers Jennifer Campbell and Thomas Stuckey coteach 31 students in a fourth-grade class.

She directs the reading, writing and spelling classes, while he leads the math, science and social studies. It's like a tag team.

While one teacher directs the lesson, the other works one on one with struggling students.

A third teacher, Lucy Tucker, works with special education and struggling students.

The district has 159 team teaching relationships.

To maintain the status quo, that would require 159 additional teaching positions to the tune of $10-million, Malcolm said.

"Even if we had the money, we wouldn't be able to bring the teaching stations on line in time to meet class size requirements," said Malcolm.

Hence the lawsuit.

But not everyone who disagrees with the governor and the state Board of Education wants to see a lawsuit. Instead of a costly legal battle, state Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, would like some action on the legislative front to put a more modest class-size mandate on the ballot.

The number of students per class is more important for first, second and third grades, he said. Because high school seniors are preparing to enter colleges where dozens of students share cavernous lecture halls, Fasano argues, class-size reduction may not be as crucial in upper grades.

But without more attention from their teachers, fewer of those students are going to be ready for college. Results matter.

By ruling against team teaching, local school officials said, Bush and his cohorts in Tallahassee are trying to make the class-size mandate so onerous as to create a stampede toward its repeal.

They might be right. But voters shouldn't allow that to happen.

--Andrew Skerritt can be reached at 813 909-4602 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4602. His e-mail address is askerritt@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 6, 2005, 08:34:54]