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This thursday night 6:30 at the high school library there will be a school board meeting. Please come out and show your support that cutting class size reduction will not help our children but harm them. The board is still considering cutting classroom size reduction and getting rid of 11 teachers. Thus meaning that instead of 20 to one in k-3 it will be 32 to one. Please come out and show your support!

Autumn - I read about this in the paper over the weekend. In case parents don't know. The primary classrooms will be overcrowded with 32 students in them. When you take your child to their first day of kindergarten expect to see overcrowded conditions with half the attention given to each student as would be given now.

Kindergarteners are now required to start reading by the end of the year. If anyone has not experenced it, my chldren went to school before class size reduction in primary and I had to teach them to read at home because the classes were so overcrowded they they were not learning at school. The teachers were not able to give individual attention. That was way back when the standards were lower and students were not requrired to read at the end of kindergarten by the state.

So, parents unless you plan to teach your child to read at home after school it may be wise to attend the board meeting and express your concern.

BTW: I don't teach in this district, but, this is a concern for the future of the children who live in our community.

As a high school teacher, Your children will be affected by this. Most district's collective-bargaining agreements do not dictate the number of students per-class, it addresses the total student-load. My anatomy-physiology classes are small, but my general biology classes are crammed to 36 students. In a 55 minute period, that amounts to 1.6 minutes per student. If your child has any special needs (they all do), they will be treated as herd animals, instead of individuals. I do have to pass out papers, collect papers' take role, blow my nose... I have about 30 seconds to interact with each student on an individual basis. It is reprehensible to do this in the primary grades. Please be thoughtful as to whom to blame. Your child's teacher is doing the best they can. Even your local school board does not want to dismiss promising, energetic new teachers. Please address your ire to the governor of California.

While studying for my master's degree in teaching, the overall indicator of student achievement was: CLASS SIZE. It didn't matter which method of teaching reading was used, number of years teacher experience, socio-economic status of student - I could go on and on. Please be there to get the message to our school board. Our young students deserve the best situation, which is a 20 to 1 class size.

The County of San Bernardino employs upwards of 15,000 people.

The amount of people being let go: Zero.

The reason why is the County anticipated the usual roller-coaster nature of the California economy and PLANNED ACCORDINGLY. Remember the dot-com boom/bust? That didn't happen 75 years ago.

I don't see why Rim Schools (and many other districts) didn't see this coming. They ARE run by people with some rudimentary college-level education, aren't they?

TP - actually the county has taken another turn in this. They have been non - renewing contracts of some of their newer untenured teachers. I personally know a few in this position. They may not be laying off tenured teachers, however, they are letting go of some untenured which is not getting the press that some other districts are getting.

The issue the parents should be concerned about is how this is going to cause their children to be in overcrowded conditions which are not condusive to learning. I think they need to address this both with local and state officials.

they have let one tenured teacher go, she was her first year tenured meaning 3 years working up here. But that is totally beside the point. If they were to stop class size reduction parents are going to have to do most of the teaching at home. Most parents work now so they are unable to come help in the classroom, like 15 years ago. So as Shelli said parents will have to teach their kids to read. I can not imagine that! Some parents just don't seem to have time or make time or want to, they feel it should be the schools job and yes in most cases it is but not once kinder has 32 kiddos verses 20.

The budget cuts are coming from the state. The district has hard decisions to make in order to meet the new budget. I doubt that any cut will make us happy. Some school districts have done away with busses in the past. Some districts charge more than ours does for bus service. I have had a child go to school without class size reduction. I agree that it is better. However, I do not believe it is the end of the world. Class size reduction or not we have worked with our children outside of school on their classroom material. I understand that giving up class size reduction is scary to elementary parents. Perhaps you should take on fund raising to add money to the budge for aides during core teaching times or teachers to reduce classroom sizes.

Here's a way to support Rim HS on May 31st.
http://rimoftheworld.net/columns/neufeld/potential

Wow Mitty, that sounds like great fun and I great idea. I think it is awesome that the parents have planned for a way to help the high school. There are truely some wonderful parents on this mountain.

I am still concerned though for the elementary school students who will face overcrowding and lack of support.

Having had 34 students (or more) for most of the past 11 years in elementary, let me tell you, it will be even worse now. How can California be 46th in the country in education spending and in the top 5 in standards and test difficulty? How can our governor actually say that it is inexcusable for a state like California be in the 20s for anything when talking about our lottery, but try to put our schools at the bottom of the 50? Every year since he has been in office he has attacked education. He borrowed and then tried to pass legislation to avoid paying back. Most of us never got it back in that deal. He tried to repeal 98 and then tried to suspend it. California needs to realize that we aren't getting COLA. We have made gains every year in spite of having less and less and now we were already going to have to do the same without meeting the rising prices out there. Cuts will expect us to do more with less than ever. We can't even meet the status quo.

DevKon - I am right there with you. I don't think the primary teachers will be able to do more. Bottom line student preformance is going to go down starting from kinder on up. There is nothing that the teachers can realistically do from watching scores drop if they are forced to take more kids then they can realistically teach the current standards too. As for intermediate kids. Once the primary kids who have been overcrowded work their way up to intermediate their skills will be much lower then what we have seen with 20:1. I feel sorry for the kids. The Governator is really cheating them more then anyone.

We had a bad governor and he was kicked out only to be replaced with a much worse governator. We are just going to have to hang in and do the best we can until he comes up for reelection. No doubt once the parents see that their kids are not learning the necessary skills they will be on board for change. It's to bad it has to come to that.